2 weeks ago, IEM Katowice showed off some sick games. My favorite was sOs’s Phoenix into Colossi into Carriers on Alterzim Stronghold, but the biggest news apparently was Blink Stalkers in PvT. After several crushing games by HerO and sOs, it really looked like Blink was imbalanced in this matchup. The most insightful analysis I saw was from bwindley, and now I have had a chance to label data and crunch numbers, here’s my take on the situation with a few numbers, a little analysis, and some game theory.

The easiest point to make here is the raw win rates. In 33 PvTs, Protoss went Blink Stalkers in 11 of them. The overall PvT win rate was 20-13 for 61% (ref). In games where Protoss went Blink, the win rate was 7-4 for 64% (ref).

For comparison, in Spawning Tool, the overall PvT win rate is 804-767 for 51% (ref). In games where Protoss researched Blink before 6:00, the win rate is 71-58 for 55% (ref).

So Blink wins slightly more than normal, but it’s pretty dang close. One would hope that different strategies would have different win rates, or else the meta-game had stagnated as no strategy would confer an advantage over any other (more on this below). Continue reading →