I won’t waste your time; I want to get right into talking about GOML X. The tenth iteration of Canada’s premier major series is coming up, and we have so much to jump into. Once again, for this column, I’ve used my “major simulator” model to roughly simulate this event 1000 times. If you’re curious about the methodology, I’ve gone into it before, but what you need know is the following, more or less, for how I’ve calculated this, along with my recent changes:
- I’ve manually input expected win-rates for each of the Top 32 seeds among each other in a head-to-head matrix. While this is inherently subjective, I’ve done this factoring in set histories, character matchups, and recent trends for how they’ve performed against each other.
- I am assuming that the Top 32 seeds all make it to their projected winners matchups, just to save time.
- HOWEVER, I have also created a cumulative “Top 33 to Top 64 seed” player as a stand-in for other players in the projected Top 64 that could make a splash in the tournament. This “player” (or this series of players) will be present in my simulations from Top 48 onward, starting in the loser’s bracket.
Now, keep in mind that because of the inherently high number of potential outcomes we’re dealing with (along with my simulating these series of events 1000 times), you’re going to notice some weird outliers. Also keep in mind that I still haven’t found a way to preserve bracket paths in my simulations: just the final placements for each of the Top 32 seeds.
In the rest of the column, I’m going to be jumping into whom I believe are the eight favorites to win this event. Broadly speaking, I’ll be talking about their best case scenarios, their worst scenarios, how this GOML bracket currently shapes up for their chances, and how these eight players fare among each other.
Wizzrobe
Let’s start off with something pretty interesting in Wizzrobe’s presence at this event. We haven’t really seen much of him this year, but we don’t have any reason to necessarily think more “poorly” of Wizzrobe than before. All things considered, his seventh place run at Genesis was pretty good – he lost to moky and Cody, he beat Hungrybox, and he defeated everyone else he played. Still though; predicting how he’ll perform is going to be inherently way more speculative than many of his peers.
Curiously, Wizzrobe isn’t actually the eighth seed of this tournament; that would be Soonsay, who both has a home field bias of sorts at home, but also, to his credit, defeated Cody recently and even stole a local set from Zain in lower stakes. Nonetheless, Wizzrobe has just as many doable matchups at the top echelon as he does hard ones. While we don’t have much data to go from, I think you could argue him as favored over aMSa and Hungrybox, maybe a slight underdog vs. each of moky and Jmook, and highly disfavored vs. each of Cody and Mango, with Zain likely falling into that latter group for now as well.
Looking at his bracket, as well as the saved placements from simulations where Wizzrobe wins, it really just seems predicated on how he performs vs. each of Soonsay or Cody. If he can beat both of those players (or whomever takes their spot), he has the runway to a potential tournament victory, with any duo of Hungrybox, moky, and then most likely aMSa to enter grand finals from the winners side. If he doesn’t, obviously his chances are going to nosedive, but it is possible (although in 10 of his 32 wins, aMSa is his grand finals opponent).
Jmook
Jmook is an amazing player. However, he’s an amazing player that’s also going through a slump. Since the last time I talked about him, he suffered yet another upset to someone outside of the top echelon. In many ways, doing well at this GOML would be a symbolic turning point, since it’s also the same series where he had his worst major showing since his breakout to the top level.
Unfortunately, because Jmook has been so shaky vs. the field, I currently have him actually missing the top eight more times than making it (599). This may seem strange because he has a relatively “favorable” matchup with Zain in winner’s quarters, but simultaneously this is also an opponent who’s done a complete 180 in the head-to-head. In their last five sets, Zain has won four of them. Meanwhile, there’s aMSa lurking on the other side of bracket, and even if aMSa ends up not being in Jmook’s way, Jmook will still have to deal with a suddenly resurgent Mango, a moky that is turning around his head-to-head with him, or potentially, worst of all, Cody, who has really handled Jmook as of late. I just think that Jmook’s top-level head-to-heads are either pretty poor or trending in a dangerous direction.
Now, with that in mind, I think my model (and, by virtue of it, me, in a sense) is overstating the likelihood of Jmook missing the top eight. For example, 205 of his performances end up being 17th place showings, and I just don’t really see it. In the current bracket for GOML that we have, this would involve losing to Spark, which just happened at Pat’s House, and then having to play any of Ben or Bbatts afterward. For reference, this is basically saying that we should expect Jmook to specifically finish in 17th place three more times than moky winning GOML; I don’t think that’s true at all. I will need to revisit my numbers for this.
Hungrybox
Are Hungrybox fans eating good? It seems to be the case, since it wasn’t long ago when he double eliminated the best player in the world and defeated the current world number 4. While he had a bit of a return to Earth at Battle of BC, Hungrybox’s presence in top eights has been basically a surefire lock at this point; something you come to expect from every single major.
Save for one particular player, you could argue that Hungrybox has actually great chances vs. the field. I checked all 56 of Hungrybox’s tourney wins, and what surprised me was the relatively good spread of victories. Unlike moky or aMSa, in which their paths were heavily predicated on the outcome of other sets, Hungrybox’s major wins were actually pretty varied. 11 came through aMSa, 14 came through Cody, a surprisingly low 6 came through Jmook, 8 came through Mango, only one came through moky, and a surprising 4 came through Zain. This is not to say that he has the best overall “win probability” of the field, but in terms of the bracket structure variance, it would certainly help Hungrybox if he could save his toughest opponents for later. Volatility also seemed to favor him: the most shocking part of the Hungrybox Wins Universe was the fact that six of his wins came through Trif, two came through Axe, and, most hilariously, one came through defeating the mighty ckyulmiqnudaetr in grand finals.
Now, some of these are just weird outliers. But what really shocked me was the fact that in spite of setting high win probabilities for Hungrybox vs. each of the players in the 10 to 32 range, he still ended up missing the top eight a surprisingly high 204 times. I’m inclined to think this runs downstream from multiple upsets happening at the top echelon and potentially leading to scenarios where someone like Hungrybox may suddenly have to play Cody or Zain for ninth place. At the same time though, come on. This can’t be right. Hungrybox hasn’t missed a bonafide major top eight in ten years. It’s not three times more likely to happen than him winning the event; that just seems wrong.
Mango
It’s not a surprise that I like talking about Mango; he’s a fun player to predict and an interesting, dynamic one to follow in the scene. He’s not necessarily great to make predictions for though: every time I look at his head-to-heads, I always feel like they lie and that I have to make exceptions for him. Initially, I thought I was just biased in his favor, but at a certain point, the numbers don’t lie; if Mango is winning this tournament, it’s probably not going to happen if he runs into a guy that’s now beaten him (offline) ten times in a row.
And yet to be fair to Mango, we do have two okay reasons to doubt the short-term numbers: the first being the “shorter-term” ones (his last tournament) and the “longer-term” ones (his whole career). It’s also worth noting his consistency; sans his uncharacteristically poor Full Bloom showing, he’s been pretty reliable at defeating the field. Of the players I made predictions for, only Zain and Cody made top eights more times than Mango; he missed it only 18.1 percent of the time. I also think that this is, on an opposite note to aMSa, largely due to the bracket structure. Unlike aMSa, who has to make it through Frenzy and Trif, Mango gets Pipsqueak and Axe, whom he has utterly handled for years now. While I love Pipsqueak and would be thrilled to see him repeat history again, even he would tell you that Melee competition hasn’t been a priority for him, and Mango is fresh off defeating the best player in the world twice. What helps Mango is that he’s proven capable of beating Trif too; in other words, shown the ability to defeat another obstacle in a peer’s path.
There’s four universes in which Mango gets 33rd – I have to imagine they involve some combination of Pipsqueak pulling off another all-time upset and Mango DQ’ing or playing Dr. Mario. Still; this is undeniably a great bracket for him to succeed in. There’s a few areas that are bumpy – I have little faith in his ability to defeat Zain and we need to see Mango actually try his hardest and not run into the corner 12 times against Hungrybox to believe he’s turning that head-to-head around – but if you’re a Mango fan, this is a good event to take an underdog bet on.
moky
We then get into moky, whose chances are clearly more of underdog chances, but ones that look pretty good when you consider the fact that he hasn’t finished second at a major yet. Although moky has recently missed a top eight, as well as been upset in the middle of top eight at Pat’s House, more often than not, he’s fairly consistent vs. the field. Before top eight, he has matchups vs KoDoRiN and Hungrybox, which are fairly interesting because of how differently my conception of these matchups has changed over time. Last year, if you asked me what I thought around this time of the year, I might have said that KoDoRiN was still a tough draw for moky, relatively speaking.
If anything, it’s moky’s uncertainty vs. the top echelon which gives me more pause. To be clear, it’s not there’s anyone he simply cannot ever defeat – Zain is the only player who comes close to approaching that. But there’s a difference between being able to defeat someone and doing so multiple times. Of moky’s 62 simulated victories, a combined 45 of them have come against aMSa or Cody, two of the only people moky has beaten multiple times since last May. The other one is Jmook, a matchup that moky’s only seemingly turned around to be competitive this year.
In line with the other “worst case scenarios” for the top seeds, I have 7 uncharacteristic 33rd places out of 1000 for Canada’s hero. If this were to happen, in all likelihood, it would require one of KJH or 2saint to defeat him before Top 32. At that point, moky would then need to lose one of Inky or Stiv – or, more likely, in an outlier bracket, one of Hungrybox or Bbatts. He could DQ as well; but I think the most likely outcome is his recent hand struggles lead to an uncharacteristically poor showing.
aMSa
aMSa’s a tough cookie to crack. How exactly do you evaluate someone who’s literally lost to only one person in both majors he’s gone to this year? If Cody Schwab were not on this planet, aMSa could have won both tournaments he entered. What’s especially encouraging for aMSa, by the way, is the fact that he finally showed a sign of life over moky, a player who’s record vs. aMSa was starting to reach Cody-levels of hopeless.
In a similar way to how Zain has numerous distinct “matchups on lock” within the top seeds, the nice thing with aMSa is that not only does he have something similar (vs Jmook) – he something unique in being able to have one of those matchups be Zain himself. I looked at all 83 of aMSa’s simulated GOML wins, and he has a pretty wild ratio here: 35 of those wins came over Zain in grand finals. If you need a reference point here: only 1 of moky’s 62 wins happened vs. Zain. This is a pretty unique strength that aMSa has vs. his competitors.
Now, with that said, if we look at aMSa’s path, it’s actually pretty tough. Assuming the seeding holds up, he will have to play Trif to even get to Mango in the first place, and Trif’s an opponent whose sets vs. aMSa have looked excruciatingly difficult for aMSa to win, even if not impossible. I would actually go as far as to say that among the WR16 matches, Trif is much harder for aMSa to defeat than each other of the eight players I’m talking about in this column; that he might even be slightly favored over aMSa. The sky is clearly the limit if aMSa gets by him (or if Faust defeats Trif), gets to Mango, and then plays literally anyone but Cody, but getting by Trif is just really not a surefire thing, and we’ve seen aMSa flame out in loser’s before top eight. For whatever it’s worth, I have one simulation where aMSa finishes in 33rd place after losing to a Top 33 – 64 seed (in this case, one of Frenzy or prof), and immediately gets cleaned up by another similar caliber player. I imagine that if this were to happen, it would be at the hands of Frenzy and then possibly Elliot for a very strange, but weirdly possible bottom percentile of outcomes for aMSa.
Zain
I’ve mentioned this multiple times before, but the nice thing with Zain is his consistency. Although we did see this crack, in a sense, at Mango in Progress, where Soonsay stole a set, it also isn’t exactly the most unique thing for Zain to lose sets where the stakes are nowhere near as high. However, when we talk about beating Zain being a near impossible feat, we’re talking about majors.
But I want to talk about Zain’s bigger strength here and what I think is even more stunning than his ‘consistency’ vs the field: it’s his consistency at the top echelon vs the people he needs to beat in order to win majors. He’s won 10 sets in a row vs Mango, 13 sets in a row vs Hungrybox, and 12 sets in a row vs moky. Only Cody and aMSa have had his number, more or less, in recent history.
I do technically have one scenario where Zain somehow places 33rd. In this case, he loses to n0ne and then instantly loses to his next opponent, who is a player beneath the top 32 seeds. Looking at the bracket as is set right now, and with all due respect to the players whom I’d otherwise gas up against any other opponent, I can honestly say that I don’t think this has any real chance of happening against Zain’s Marth – or at least without insane levels of shenanigans. I genuinely think this would require some insane heel turn from Zain that involves him playing Roy or deciding to DQ from the event for personal reasons. However, I will say that given the bracket we have, the idea of Zain missing a top eight, while still pretty shocking, isn’t too out of the question. All it takes is a loss to either of Ossify or Jmook in winners bracket – certainly not that out of the question – and then having to play one of the top seeds in loser’s bracket. My model currently has him missing it the same number of times as Cody, which seems high given that Zain has made over 40 top eights in a row, but remember: GOML is not your average major. This specific caliber of event still could be one where Zain suffers his first real loss; even if it’s one that’s exceedingly unlikely.
Cody
We know the best case for Cody Schwab: him winning this event. Within the top eight seeds alone, there’s no one with a positive record over him in the last year. The only person who you could even remotely entertain the concept of being favored over him right now is Morsecode, who isn’t even in the same path of bracket.
Now, one thing to consider is that his path is actually quite difficult. My model is telling me that if this specific tournament were to happen a multiple number of times, he misses top eight a tenth of the time. As a matter of fact, we have approximately 104 simulations of GOML where he misses top eight.This may seem relatively high, but even just looking at the winner’s bracket path right now, you’ll notice that he has a rematch coming up with Soonsay from Pat’s House. Before that, it’s also still very well possible – although heavily unlikely – that he could lose to Lucky, or potentially have a slightly worse outcome of the CPU0 set in an SDJ upset coming out. Although he’s handled Jmook over the last year, it’s very well possible as well that both Cody and Jmook get upset in the winner’s bracket and have to play each other for ninth place. Granted, Cody is the heavy favorite, but it is possible.
Keeping this in mind, I think the funniest thing my model generated was the two possible scenarios where Cody goes 0-2. In these simulations, he loses to Lunar Dusk immediately in the first round of winner’s Top 32, and then loses immediately afterward to whomever he plays (projected to be essy). It is admittedly quite difficult to envision this happening, but we do have precedent for a regional hero Ice Climbers stunning a contender for best player in the world before. I will say that in the first scenario, he loses to Lunar Dusk and DQs; in the second scenario, he DQs from the tournament completely. Regardless, I’m not overthinking it here: I think Cody wins GOML X.
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