A few weeks ago, I wrote a post comparing win rates on cross and close positions 4-player maps. Here’s what it looks like with the WCS replays released by Blizzard yesterday.

(Edit: Fragbite also released their replays, so those are included as well)

Methods and Discussion

The replays are mostly from tournament replay packs, with the vast majority being from WCS. Of course, all conclusions must be drawn from what is still a relatively small sample size.

Note that close positions are twice as likely as cross positions. I’m not sure whether that fact is noted as often as it should be.

A confounding factor here is bans. I’m not exactly sure what the effect is, but I’m sure it’s relevant since it’s not a uniformly random sample of potential games.

Frost appears to be far more favorable for Zerg at cross positions. Notably, it crosses over the 50-50 mark depending on the positions. It’s not immediately clear to me whether that advantage is coming early or late, but the game lengths are visible on that page as well if you want to look into that.

Alterzim is less clear, though that PvZ is quite dramatic. It’s a super-small sample size, though, but there may that does or doesn’t confirm common knowledge.

Let me know if there’s any other analyses I have previously done or that you would like to see in the future. The data just got a lot richer and relevant, so hopefully there’s good stuff in there to discover.