GSL 2011: Structure

At long last, GomTV has posted information on how the GSL tournaments in 2011 will work. In Korean. Luckily, people have translated the information, but there's a lot to digest. Here's my attempt to boil it down as plainly as possible:

Monthly Tournaments

As previously revealed, each month will have a different competition, and not all these tournaments will be the same:

Month	Competition
January	GSL
February	Ladder Tournament
March	GSL
April	GSL
May	Ladder Tournament
June	World Championship
July	GSL
August	Ladder Tournament
September	GSL
October	World Championship
November	Ladder Tournament
December	Blizzard Cup

• The GSL, which will be different from the three "preseason" 2010 GSL tournaments (more in a moment), is the ongoing offline league played in Seoul, South Korea.
• It appears that the Ladder Tournaments will take place mostly online throughout the world, with the top 16 players then taking part in a (offline?) double elimination tournament.
• The twice yearly World Championship will involve the top 4 players from each major battle.net region (Korea, North America, Europe, and China).
• The top 8 players from the year's events will play in the Blizzard Cup in December to determine 2011's best player.

GSL: Player Classifications

The mechanics of the other competitions are still somewhat obscure, but we now have solid details on how the GSL will work. As previously announced, there will be 32 "Code S" (top tier) and 32 "Code A" (second tier) players. You may have seen discussions of 64 Code A players, but their numbers have been cut since the original announcement. The Code S players have already been decided based on results from the first three GSLs (see my discussion here) as have 20 of the Code A players. The remaining Code A candidates are tied on points and will be settled via a tiebreaker competition, per GomTV's announcement.

Code A: Promotion and Relegation

GSL 4 will be seeded based on 2010 results, but afterward 12 winners from offline preliminaries will be given Code A status, as will 4 invited foreigners from outside Korea. These 16 new Code A players will play against the 16 Code A existing players carried over from the previous GSL. The 16 losing players are relegated from Code A and will have to go back to competing in offline preliminaries. The 16 winners will then play each other, with the 8 losers retaining Code A for the next GSL and the 8 winners getting a chance to play against the bottom section of Code S for a chance at promotion.

Code S: Promotion and Relegation

After the main GSL tournament for the month is over, the bottom 16 Code S players are threatened with relegation to Code A and must play the 8 Code A winners to defend their positions. The 16 Code S players are broken into 8 higher seeds and 8 lower seeds based on their results in the main tournament. The higher seeds play the Code A players first, with the victors going on to Code S in the next GSL. The losers play the lower seeded S Class players, and again the winner goes on to Code S in the next GSL, but this time the loser is relegated to Code A. Note:

• The incoming Code A players get two matches against Code S players and winning either results in promotion. Otherwise they return to Code A.
• The higher seeded Code S players will hope to defeat the Code A player they are matched up against, but if they fail they can still beat a lower seeded S Class player to avoid relegation.
• The lower seeded Code S players are in a do or die situation. They must defeat their opponent--usually Code A but sometimes a Code S player--to avoid relegation.

GSL Main Tournament

The main tournament is played among Code S players. Unlike the first three single elimination GSLs, the main tournament consists of two group stages followed by a single elimination tournament. In the first group stage, the 32 players are broken out into 8 groups of 4 players. After round robin play, the top two players advance. The bottom two players now face relegation, the 3rd place player being what I called a "higher seed" and the 4th place player being a "lower seed". Unlike many group stage competitions (like the World Cup, for example), the 3rd place advantage in the relegation tournament means those eliminated after two matches will still have a great deal to play for. The second group stage sees the 16 players who advanced split up into 4 groups of 4. The top two players from each group go on to the 8 player single elimination tournament while the bottom two players are eliminated, though they remain in Code S for the next GSL.

Open Questions

• How much prize money will be available at each stage?
• Are the matches best of 3? Given there is round robin group play, there will be an incredible amount of games if so, but SC2's map balance (that is, the lack thereof) simply does not permit best of 1 to be anything but a farce.
• Will non-ladder maps be used and, if not, will Blizzard take switfter action to balance their maps?
• How will the non-GSL tournaments work?

Commentary

Well, it's quite complicated, but all in all it's a very impressive system. Although it's no longer possible for someone new to come up from the offline preliminaries and win that month's GSL, being able to go from zero to Code S champion in the span of two GSL tournaments means this is still a very open league. Reserving 4 spots in each Code A tournament for foreign invitees gives the top players who don't live in Korea (and their sponsors) more reason to pay the airfare to come compete. Best of all, the promotion and relegation structure ensures that pretty much all the games are going to be quite meaningful.

The complexity may be a barrier to the casual fan, and it isn't helped by GomTV's English choices. Perhaps "Code S" and "Code A" sound good in Korean, but using names that evoke similar structures in other sports ("First Division", "Premiere League" or "Major League" for Code S, "Second Division" or "Minor League" for Code A) would probably help people get their heads around it. I'm tempted to just ignore their lingo and call them "First Division" and "Second Division" here, but that would just add to the confusion for casual fans hearing Tasteless and Artosis talk about Code S and Code A.

Regardless, there are a lot of great competitions to look forward to in 2011.  GomTV has made a big investment in Starcraft 2, and this will be the year that makes or breaks it.