I’m afraid the whole forum already struggles depicting said unforeseen balance circumstances. So I won’t risk commenting about those on this thread. 
There is little point in arguing with a smurf they don’t understand or don’t want to understand. They live in their world, it’s like arguing with someone who thinks the earth is flat. The best is to ignore them and hope the ladder doesn’t go to sh_t too much
You are absolutely right. Though, they are first hand source regarding their motivations, and sometimes, I did get some answers. But as I’m gathering data about them, my case is special.
But for most players, most of the time, noting and ignoring them is the way to go. Getting trashtalked or flamming them serves no purpose. Not that it serves against any opponent, that being said. ^^
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We are much better at being able to tell when someone is in the appropriate league than you are. Marginal increases in things like micro are much more noticeable to us, and we can tell directly after the game whether someone was in the appropriate league or not.
No, this would be the probability of any randomly chosen game being between two smurfs.
You don’t even understand the difference and it would take me way too long to explain the simple basics to you.
** I am not telling you that you are wrong because I have some sort of agenda, I am telling you that you have a very biased and inaccurate estimate of the proportion of smurfs because its true**
Its not by definition a random sample means that any member of the population has an equal chance of being chosen. There are many many populations that you are not going to touch (for example the people in different leagues, players who play at different timezones)
There is no good way to estimate afaik, the only thing i might be able to think of would be to grab the entire ladder statistics if blizzard has that data publicly available.
** This does not mean that we can just use biased methods and just go on pretending that they are good **
You are entitled to your own opinion, but as someone who has coached hundreds of people I highly highly disagree, lower leagued players are ** very ** bad at trying to analyse their own games, so they cannot identify these “small” differences in skill at all.
You are completely in denial here, if you don’t believe me then ask people who have not played in several seasons.
Mate, you literally tried to explain to me how probability works and you were completely wrong in your implementation of it. Do you understand how biased and out of touch that was? Consider, just for a second, that you could actually just be wrong and smurfing isn’t that big of a problem.
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Eh, who really cares?
Well then I’m certain that you do understand that being much better at, isn’t an objective replicable standardized method. Does “being much better at” seems like a more replicable and objective method to you than checking if for ≥ 2 freeloses in a player’ history ? Yes or no ?
That probability is still lower probability than a regular player playing a smurf. Yes or no ?
(and that supposing you not providing a numerical answer doesn’t come from your inability to do so).
In case you didn’t understood, argument from authority is the weakest proof level mankind ever invented to constitute statistically significant evidence. Yes or no ?
Coming from there, you repeatedly trying to dodge the fact that you didn’t apply any replicable nor objective method because of being much better at, or because it is true, does not in any way prove the superiority of your method over mine (provided there was even one, what you did seems more like lifting a finger to the wind to me). Let’s say my procedure of data gathering is mediocre to bad, yours is worse than bad, supposing it does exist in the first place.
I am fully aware my method isn’t perfect. Yet it’s somewhat randomized, it’s objective, and replicable. So as faulty as it is, it’s the most objective data gathered yet on the subject ; and this is acceptable as we are simply talking about a game.
That being said, I may provide detailed updates from time to time, so that everyone can ascertain the exact numbers and procedures behind those.
Users from intermediate to low leagues I suppose. Possibly even the devs. It’s about the same than people reporting the banes doing spell damage instead of regular damage. It’s not all that important, but if it’s never reported it’s not gonna improve. 
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When i played on my main on this region I was always getting Zergs that max under 8th min n creep spread like crazy. And had unranked or even lower league.
Meanwhile real D2 D1 look kind of ez
I watch these n APM to detect smurf cause usually M league have over 200 apm diams around 150 n any lower leagues around 100. Protoss turtles have 60 apm
Z players the most butthurt on ladder then tell me they aint popular in Diam + …
i got days in which 10/18 games in same evening - Zerg
Unusually high APM, can be an indicator ; but it’s not sufficient to be sure : your opponent could just spam, or be focusing on creep, and so on. It would be interesting though, if you checked among those 10/18 if you can spot freeloses (≥ 2) in their history, right after having played them. If you see several freeloses, then you can be sure your suspicions were right. If not, you cannot say. 
thats why i say that plus how fast max supply n creep spread
Check their history then, you’ll be able to confirm.
I disagree with like 95% of this post.
If you are hiding your name because of a tournament that is fine. usually those guys play games at their own rank. which is acceptable.
If you are trying to teach people to play, and the only 2 that comes to mind is pig and vibe… then that is ok. not even sure if I would consider that smurfing. as long as they explain what they are doing during the match up.
Everyone else falls into that category of trying to get wins because they dislike to lose. For instance you are a masters or a gm and doing a random build back to your level.
Most likely no matter what build you are doing. if its a reasonable build you will get back to your level… whats the point in that. to prove that something works
If they wanted to prove that it worked they would do it at what ever rank that they are on and post the win/loss ratio.
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Let me say it one more time. I am not telling you that you are wrong because I have some sort of agenda, I am telling you that you have a very biased and inaccurate estimate of the proportion of smurfs because its true. I specifically mentioned my background because I know what I’m talking about, whether you choose to listen to me and come up with a better argument or don’t is up to you. However, if you want people to actually listen to you then to find a much better methodology to estimate the true proportion of smurfs.
P.S. I never said that the number of smurfs was low, I mentioned my experiences because I think you and some other people have a biased view on the matter, as well as my own anecdotal experience ,which btw does a much better job at sampling as its from multiple people, regions and across the entire spectrum of leagues, but I have not and will not give an estimate as to the actual population of smurfs because as far as I know there is no good way to estimate the actual number of smurfs. So I’d really appreciate it if you stop trying to put words in my mouth.
This could just be an issue with your own personal playstyle. I think zergs tend to be super greedy on ladder, if you don’t or aren’t good at harassing your opponent then you will get crushed by these guys.
No, once again you are completely off the ball here, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that the probability of playing a smurf is not independent in this case. You are completely butchering and misunderstanding basic probability principles. If you don’t know what you are talking about then either don’t mention it or actually look it up.
I agree. +1 OP
Why more characters needed, blizz? Give it a rest!
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Let me say it one more time then : your demonstration is trash.
You can put trash in bold type if you like the aesthetics.
So basically you’re saying it’s not possible to estimate the number of smurfs, but then you use your own anecdotal estimates (which are baseless if I refer to what you just said) as a base to evaluate others. That doesn’t sound very logic put that way, does it ?
Prove it.
But you did.
Completely neglecting the fact that you and your friends were actually smurfing, by the way. But there are no smurfs, right ?
Anyway, if you want to play with words, I did not give an estimate of the numbers of smurfs, but of the proportions of smurfs I encountered over regular players at my MMR. I will rephrase that in the first post, for the sake of discussion.
And we thank you for your constructive criticism. Your help has been truly invaluable so far.
Your useful suggestions put aside, I may propose something to concerned players if they appear to follow this with some interest, and agree to follow a replicable protocol.
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Thanks Aeligos. I knew players actually having to deal with the issue would feel differently about this. 
I don’t think what I said actually contradicted that. I even gave a link towards a player highlighting precisely that getting mostly if not only victories was the aim behind it.
Now there is a subtlety here, that being that aside of Bronze to Masters runs, most smurfs don’t want to get back to their level. They already have their original account for this. So they will freelose, either regularly or by streaks, in order to keep winning the games they do actually play.
Absolutely. If you’re a master, you have a master execution, and so you will win because your execution, and not because of the strategy used. There would have been a precedent with Crank winning against a platinum player… with a mass probes : 12 nexuses, producing only probes, and going for the kill only with said probes. Sort of a Mengsk co-op applied to 1v1. 
So yeah, aside of actually doing builds tutorials (as there are some builds which would not apply to all levels), the actual educative value of trashing noobs during Bronze to Masters series could be seen as rather low. 
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Lol, you are never going to get people to take you seriously like this. Enjoy whining =).
Oh but some will, because my demonstrations aren’t limited to “because it’s true” or “because I’m better”. As soon as I ask you to prove something you either dodge or hide behind some authoritative arguments. Claims of knowledge cannot fill empty demonstrations.
You weren’t there to be constructive in the first place, so we’ll do without your highly valuable suggestions.
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Okay, so as some mentioned the proportion of smurfs quoted in the first post as difficult to interpret, I figured I would give more details about those in the future. So here are the stats about the smurfs I encountered over the two last weeks :
SMURFS REPORT - W18 & 19 2020
How to read :
- Confirmed smurfs are users who had multiple freeloses (2 or more) in their recent games history.
- Unconfirmed smurfs are users that seemed very suspicious to me (significantly higher leagues in the past, abnormally low total career games (for example making it to P1-D3 in 20 games), unusually high APM with matching skill) but who hadn’t multiple freeloses in their recent history. Hence, can’t say for sure if they are smurfs or not.
- MU smurfs : % of confirmed smurfs who freelosed only one match-up in their recent games history.
- Smurfs ratio : proportion of confirmed smurfs over total players (regular players + unconfirmed). This is a low estimate of the ratio of smurfs played at my MMR. This method probably underestimates the ratio of smurfs, as freeloses streaks made prior to recent games history, or non freelosing smurfs won’t be taken in account.
- +Unconfirmed : proportion of smurfs, confirmed + unconfirmed, over total players. This method probably overestimates the ratio of smurfs.
Users played twice in one day were only counted once.
TL;DR :
Over 90 users played :
- 15,56% of confirmed smurfs.
- 12.22 of suspicious users.
- 84,44% to 72.22% of regular players.
For trivia, special mention to one user who was simultaneously a confirmed smurf, a first seconds trashtalker AND a probable map-hacker. A 3 in 1 formula so to speak.