ESL Open Cups: Retrospective by the Numbers

by Wax

From January 12th of 2020 to August 26th of 2024, the weekly ESL Open Cups were one of the most reliable and steady pillars of the competitive StarCraft II scene. Throughout 242 weeks of competition and 726 individual server cups, the competition was a place where players could test their skills and fans could enjoy top level StarCraft II year round.

With the ESL Open Cups now on indefinite hiatus, it’s time to take a look at the statistics and numbers that defined this venerable competition. Here’s to hoping that this article isn’t an epitaph, but the epilogue to chapter 1.

A Heck of a Lot of Games Played

Over the course of 726 cups, players competed in 42234 series and 95016 games. Europe was the most active competition, with 49985 games played. The Americas came in second with 32147, while Asia/Korea trailed with 12884 games.

MaxPax played the most overall games with a whopping 3915. In effect, the demure Dane was present in over 4% of all ESL Open Cup games in history. This extreme participation also helped MaxPax rack up the record for the most map/game wins with 3044 (1379 series wins).

While MaxPax earned the most total wins, he was bested by two other players in terms of win percentage (both series and map). Clem achieved the highest map and series win-rates by triumphing in 80.33% of his maps (2545-623) and 88.72% of his series (1140-1145). HeroMarine, a dominant force in the first two years of Open Cup play, came in second place of both categories with a 77.81% map win-rate (2160-616) and 84.96% series win-rate (966-171).

The Kings of The Cup

As one might guess from Clem’s ridiculous win-rate and enormous number of games played, he holds the record for most Open Cup championships with a clean 100 (75 EU, 24 NA, 1 KR). The other top cup winners included MaxPax (93), HeroMarine (58), Dark (51), ByuN (50), herO (50), Solar (47), Zest (44), and Cure (33). In total, 60 different players won at least one open cup during its four year run.

The record for most consecutive weeks of winning at least a single cup goes to MaxPax, who was victorious for 8 weeks in a row (weeks #225 to #232). He even scored a couple of doubles during that time, winning 10 total cups in 8 weeks (7 Americas, 3 Europe). The single-server win streak records belong to Dark on Asia (7 in a row, cups #166 to #172), MaxPax in the Americas (7, cups #225 to #231), and HeroMarine and Clem in Europe (6, #31 to #36 for HeroMarine, #64 to #69 for Clem).

Eight players achieved a weekly double (winning two server cups in the same week): MaxPax (11 times), Zest (9), herO (6), ByuN (5), Clem (4), Dark (4), Cure (4), Solar (2). However, the holy grail of a weekly triple ultimately went unclaimed. Still, MaxPax, Cure, and Clem all managed to achieve a career triple, winning at least one cup title on all three servers.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

A total of $336,900 in prize money was awarded through the ESL Open Cups, with MaxPax winning the largest share of it with $30,950. Overall, the top ten prize money winners took home over 50% of the prize money.

Balance Implications (Not Really)

Protoss was the most represented faction in the ESL Open Cups, being present in 77.08% of non-mirror games (equal race distribution would see each race represented in around* 66.66% of games). Terran was present in 64.34% of non-mirror games, while Zerg was the least represented at 58.58%.

*This isn’t an exact measure of race participation due to a variety of factors, but I think it’s a passable alternative as I was unable to obtain the race % breakdown of every cup entrant in history.

On top of being the most played faction, Protoss also came out with the best overall map win-rates. PvZ was the most skewed with Protoss leading 11743 to 9788 (54.54% win-rate), while PvT favored Protoss slightly at 12701W-12309L (50.78% win-rate). As for TvZ, Terran had the edge with 7323W-6516L (52.92% win-rate).

However, it’s hard to draw any larger balance conclusions from these numbers due to the large discrepancies on each server. For example, the TvZ win-rate in the EU Cup was as high as 57.30% (3899-2906), but as low as 47.14% (907-1017) in the KR Cup. Ultimately, the only thing I’d take away from the ESL Open Cups is that Protoss is disproportionately played at the low-pro/high-amateur level.

The Greatest ESL Open Cup Players of All Time

What’s the point of all these numbers if we can’t use them to arbitrarily rank some players? Thus, here’s the OFFICIAL TL.net GOAT list for ESL Open Cup Players.

1. Clem
2. MaxPax
3. HeroMarine
4. Zest
5. ByuN
6. Solar
7. herO
8. Dark
9. Cure
10. Reynor
11. ShoWTimE

---