CHAD gumiho UNDERSTANDS strategy

General Discussion
1

He holds a bane allin without a bunker or ebay block.

He can beat a bane allin here so he makes it look like he’s weak by putting addons on the outside of his wall, having no bunker, a delayed factory (no siege tanks), and having no ebay block to reinforce the depots.

The key is to appear weak when you are strong and appear strong when you are weak. When you are strong, you want your opponent to attack you so that you have a defender’s advantage. When you are weak, you want your opponent to invest into an attack and then abort the attack after the investment is made.

There are two main ways to do this.

  • Take middle ground stances, that are hard to read, and have hyper refined followups. This is a game of having more refined responses than your opponent. You make a few lings, but not quite enough to defend, but actually it is enough to defend because you have super refined response.
  • Make deliberate misplays that open up specific weaknesses, then hard counter the attack that would take advantage of your weakness. This is a game of scouting manipulation and it serves to make your opponent mistrust his scouting. If he sees something, tries to take advantage of it, and fails, then he will be less likely to read into your mistakes in the future. In fact, he may even correlate your mistakes with him losing, confusing him into thinking the mistake is an advantage, causing him to never take advantage of your mistakes. This then allows you to make mistakes and he can’t tell if it’s bait or a real vulnerability. A common way this is done is by putting an overlord where a terran thinks he can kill it then killing his marines with some zerglings now that the marines leave the bunker.

Gumiho clearly understands this because this game was an obvious type-1 fake. He’s taking a middle ground stance that kinda looks like it can be bane busted but in reality he’s totally ready for it. Because attacks like this require guaranteed damage to the zerg’s own economy, merely by making lings instead of drones, the risk analysis should be heavily skewed against doing a bane allin – the use should be extremely rare, and only when you are 100% confident he can’t hold, such as if one of the barracks was proxied (making it harder to wall both the nat and the main on time).

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2

Byun will hold off the push without the need for a wall with reaper micro only, take it to the late game then lose to ultras.

The old Gumiho would’ve had depots up in time, let him explode the banelings then use a supply drop that gets +500hp. In fact, I’ve already done that against a baneling all-in.

3

I have personally bane busted byun’s 3 rax reaper and I can tell you he absolutely cannot defend with pure reapers alone. 14 hatch 14 gas 14 pool (before overlord) is an extreme hard counter to all reaper plays. Queens and lings are out so fast you snowball faster than the reapers. The moment you see the double rax, you make 8 lings and send them across the map to make banelings. Ling speed is so fast that you can catch him off guard and trap the reapers. You run across the map and bust his wall while he’s still in the process of making techlabs and reactors on his rax. No reaper micro can save you.

The best part is that it’s still reasonably economical so you don’t have to bane bust him. You could easily macro out of it. He has to gamble because he has no idea what you are doing meanwhile your overlord sees everything he does at his wall. You just do opposite of whatever he does and it’s a free win.

Gumiho has always struggled with the micro tricks so I doubt that. He wins by making decisions and you can clearly see that in this game. He decides to look vulnerable to a bane allin then to give up the low ground. Easy win with minimal micro, which avoids his weak points as a player. Obviously a highly strategical player.

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