Board 8 > What four contest matches are on the Contest Upsets Mount Rushmore?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Kinglicious posted...

Frog was slightly favored on B8 but a huge bracket buster. But I'd consider any bracket buster an upset, regardless of our opinions.

I mean I feel like the spirit of the question is what was surprising to us.

If you want a Chief match that he was actually favored to win on B8 and was a huge bracket buster, the pick is Sub-Zero > Chief (still the lowest prediction percentage for a round 1 one-on-one match, I believe).

that's a pretty good one too!

though i don't see the spirit of the question that way either. if 78% of people who made brackets all said 'yeah this guy wins' and then he doesn't, that's very much so a major upset by definition. that's how many picked Chief. it's Contest Upsets, not B8's opinion on contest upsets. or phrased differently, the matches people freaked out about, as opposed to the one B8 did.

It's funny so many are putting Starcraft > Halo as a huge upset

This was before I joined the board but I had Starcraft winning there and confidently. Master Chief in 2003 made me think Halo was gonna be junk on this site.

Of course I had Kingdom Hearts beating it in round 2 BUT yeah. Starcraft beating Windwaker was always the "inconceivable!" moment to me

actually Starcraft vs. Halo is a great example of what i'm saying too in terms of Frog vs. Master Chief.
44% of B8 said SC > Halo, 24% of the brackets did that.
51% of B8 said Frog > Chief, 22% of the brackets did that.

both are contest upsets. not because of a 7% difference of opinion on B8 that are close to 50/50 but because 3/4 of people didn't see it coming.

I picked Starcraft over Halo because it's a 16 > 1 (still the only one we've seen), and it was the big Ulti upset special, which eventually helped him win the contest and become Ulti as we knew him.

I also don't think Frog > Chief really fits the spirit of the question either way though. It wasn't a massive casual upset. People remember it because it was close and had massive vote swings, not because it was shocking.

Also it's not that 22% of people had Frog beating Chief. 22% of people had Frog getting to Round 3. There is a distinction.

Leonhart4 posted...

Also it's not that 22% of people had Frog beating Chief. 22% of people had Frog getting to Round 3. There is a distinction.

Yeah that's a big deal

Honestly to me the biggest upset of Frog vs Chief was Chief trying to win.

Part of Frog's upsetting there was that he just beat Liquid Snake in a nail-biter...not all of us were confident Liquid and Master Chief were that close together. Frog also nearly snuck a Noble Nine-break in the next round too thanks to the sprite round against Solid. Frog's run deserves a mention for being as close/fun/unpredictable as it was, and Frog > MC best represents that.

Most anytime Master Chief loses is a viable pick for this topic -- board-shock is important in this, but I think if you have the prediction-numbers overall that can be a form of qualification too. Casuals have eaten it a bunch of times so not just any casual-loss should get a nomination here, right, this isn't just the Mt. Rushmore of GTA-losses...but I think Frog's run fits the bill enough here.

Sub-Zero > Master Chief fits the bill too, though I felt like the board thought that was more possible at the time even when the prediction-picks didn't align with that.

Sub-Zero > Chief is absolutely the Chief losing pick to make here

Chief wrecking people in 2007 is the actual best Chief pick though

Master Chief almost lost to Felix in 2003. Even a close match against Liquid probably would not have shaken a lot of confidence in Frog.

Also the breakdown in prediction percentage for the fourpack was probably something along these lines:

Chief - 50%
Liquid/Frog - 20-25% each
Crash - Less than 10%

In other words, probably close to half had the Frog/Liquid winner beating Chief. They just picked the wrong winner in round 1. Putting it that way makes it much less of a massive upset.

And yes, GAME FUEL Chief might be the answer here.

Starcraft > Halo
Starcraft > Wind Waker
L-Block > Link > Cloud > Snake
Vivi > Mario > Ganondorf

I'm assuming SMRPG > SF2 doesn't count.

Starcraft's run gives me an idea since we've had some great divisions in our contests before.

Nominate: contest divisions.

Knuckles > Magus (2005)
Cloud > Link (2003)
Snake > Sephiroth (2010)
Vincent > Crono (2007)

Morrigan/Spyro
Squall/Luigi
Knuckles/Magus
Snake/L-Block/Sonic/Squall

I was trying to avoid relatively meaningless round 1 or 2 upsets, but picked StarCraft > Halo since it was followed by a deep StarCraft run.

Squall/Luigi and Magus/Knuckles are two examples of matches that were bigger shocks to us than the general public. I forget what Squall's prediction percentage was, but it was high enough to suggest he wasn't that far behind Luigi.

Knux's prediction percentage was around 35% against Magus. An upset, to be sure, but the disparity was much higher on B8. Sub-Zero was around 20% against Chief.

Chief's successful run doesn't feel like much of an upset, that's what make his losses so good.

Chief has never done anything like that before or since. It's one of the biggest outliers ever because of GAME FUEL.

Also I originally had Snake > Sephiroth on here because it was the first time Clinkeroth had lost one-on-one to someone other than themselves, so I thought that was a notable occasion.

Also I'm pretty sure it cost ExTha at least the Guru if not the contest.

It's an outlier yeah but most people had him move on. He was the favorite and performed like it, 3 rounds in and over half the brackets still had him in it, the 4th barely dropped to under half. It surprised B8 but not a contest upset when most people had him advancing. That's just B8 being wrong.

Spoilers that's what upsets are, when a lot of people are wrong

The casuals getting lucky that Master Chief finally performed as well as they think he should doesn't make his run unsurprising because their confidence in him had no basis in prior performance.

When discussing contest upsets, what surprises B8 is way more important than what surprises the casuals. Everything surprises the casuals. Rallies excluded, we get way more stuff right than wrong.

It's surprising to us but not to them. That's the difference of a contest upset on B8 and one overall, which is what the question is. They didn't "get lucky" with Master Chief, they just read the room better.

I'll give an analogy since I don't think you're getting it. Say someone is specialized in a certain betting contest, like horses or football. They crunch numbers, they make bets, they usually get things right but a few things wrong. If a race or game happens that goes wildly out of scope, they adjust accordingly. For reference this isn't a pure hypothetical, people like this exist. Now make a board full of them. What they get right or wrong is not what an upset is in that respective sport, what determines the upset is the people in the overall pool. That includes the casuals. B8 is good at predicting the right 3:1 odds winners. That doesn't mean we're right and sometimes what we think is 3 to 1 is actually the opposite.

Kinglicious posted...

That's the difference of a contest upset on B8 and one overall, which is what the question is.

This is pedantic and very few people are going to interpret it this way.

Or to simplify, I'd basically call a match where 10% of all brackets and 90% of B8 got right an upset. But a match where 90% of brackets and 10% of B8 get right? That's just us wildly missing the mark and is the furthest thing of one.

Best matches usually have both.

Kinglicious posted...

They didn't "get lucky" with Master Chief, they just read the room better.

If Chief always has high prediction percentages (and he does), no, they didn't. They got lucky. If Link always had low prediction percentages, it wouldn't mean they "read the room" the three times he didn't win.

Kinglicious posted...

I'll give an analogy since I don't think you're getting it. Say someone is specialized in a certain betting contest, like horses or football. They crunch numbers, they make bets, they usually get things right but a few things wrong. If a race or game happens that goes wildly out of scope, they adjust accordingly. For reference this isn't a pure hypothetical, people like this exist. Now make a board full of them. What they get right or wrong is not what an upset is in that respective sport, what determines the upset is the people in the overall pool. That includes the casuals. B8 is good at predicting the right 3:1 odds winners. That doesn't mean we're right and sometimes what we think is 3 to 1 is actually the opposite.

Oh, you mean sharps? Yeah, those people absolutely impact betting lines and determine if something turns out to be an upset or not.

The public loves to bet underdogs. That doesn't mean it's not an upset when one wins.

Mario vs. Crono (2003)
Link vs. Cloud Strife (2003)
StarCraft > Wind Waker 2004

Pac-Man > Revolver Ocelot

I think there are some matches being mentioned here that were much closer to toss-ups than to significant upsets. None of them are getting a lot of votes that I can see, but I guess it kinda displays a disconnect with what I think of when I hear "upset." I generally think of a wildly unexpected result rather than something that could have feasibly gone either way on any given day.