ESL Go4CoH2 Statistics, Part IV: Players

Do you have top-notch micro and an awesome knowledge of game mechanics? If only you could anticipate the game plan of these top players. Are you are a big fan of Jove or VonIvan and want to emulate their style of play? Or, perhaps, do you work for ESPN and need some random player statistics for the next CoH2 program? Then, this is for you!

For everybody else: Print out this page, get your scissors and make your own Top Trump-esque card pack, CoH2 edition.

The previous parts of the ESL Go4CoH2 statistics series examined factions, maps and commanders as averages over all games in the database. This part looks at the individual choices of the players. These differ significantly. Apparently, there is not an optimal strategy but instead different ways of playing the game at a high level.

Before discussing the individual players in more detail, the first sections provide an overview over the data.



Most of the tables here are based on the same data set used in the previous articles. These are gathered for all the Best of Three rounds from all 32 ESL Go4Coh2 cups. Since the last article, three more games have been added, for a total of 467 games. About 20% of games played in the series was excluded, due to missing replays. More details can be found here.

This post will cover the 16 players for which the most games are in the database. The order of players in the table is according to the number of games on record. They account for about 85% of games in the data base.


The table above shows the results for all players across the 32 cups. Initially, it was possible to compete both in the EU and NA editions, with Luvnest winning both editions of the January monthly cup. This was changed starting with cups #6.

In total there are nine players in the table that won at least one of the cups: Luvnest, Noggano, VonIvan, Shadowwada, Paul.a.D., BartonPL, Jove, HelpingHans and DevM. SpaceHamster - winner of NA cups #2 and #3 - is not included because only 16 of his games are on record.


This table shows the number of games played by each player, split into the categories “games in database” (the rest of the tables in this post will use only the games in this category), games from the Best of Three rounds (quarterfinals and up); for which no further data is available, and games from earlier rounds.

Disclaimer: Unplayed games, e.g. because one played forfeited, have been omitted. In several cases they are unmarked, so there is a margin of error there. Also, putting the data together is mostly a manual process of going through the brackets. While some consistency checks have been carried out, there is no guarantee that the numbers are 100% accurate.

Some tables have an additional column showing average values. These are averages taken over all 467 games, not just the average of the 16 players in the table. Checking the data for each player, and breaking it up even more over e.g. maps often results in small sample sizes, so in particular win percentages have to be taken with a grain of salt.



The next table shows how often the players picked each faction. The percentages are relative to how often they played on either the Axis or Allies side. So the sum of all Axis picks (and likewise Allies picks) add up to 100%, bar rounding errors.


The differences in personal preference are quite obvious, even when comparing the two players with the most cup wins, Luvnest and Jove. While Jove used all Allied factions about equally often and shows some preference of OKW over OH, Luvnest used almost exclusively SOV when playing Allies and favored OH over OKW by a significant margin.

Most players ignored USF and/or UKF almost completely. Others used them more often than SOV.


The table above shows the win percentage per faction and player. Percentages for less than five samples are omitted.

Another potentially interesting piece of information is how the players did when playing against certain factions. This is shown in the next table. Again, percentages for cases with less than five samples are omitted.




The next tables show the player’s preference in terms of maps. Note that, for most rounds, a veto system was used. This means that players could not nominate their favorite map but instead the map was chosen by what both players opposed the least.


The percentages indicate that Faymonville Approach, overall the most played map, is not Jove’s favorite, while Jesulin seems to dislike Kholodny Ferma, which is the second most played map on average.


The table above shows the win percentages per map and player. This table is less chaotic than the previous ones, but still most players have either a map on which they are doing poorly or very good.



The following tables show how often the more popular doctrines have been picked by the players. There is no sample sized threshold here (although there had to be at least one sample, obviously). Instead, the sample sizes are noted in the lowermost row.

Overall the tables show that commander choices seem to be based to a high degree on personal preference. Even the most commonly picked commanders for each faction are ignored by at least two players.








This section discusses each player in more detail. The players appear in no particular order. The category “Most used cmdr.” shows the most used commander for the most used faction, according to the percentages in the tables shown in the previous sections.

The statements in the discussion below refer to the values shown earlier. In particular this means that any comparison is relative to other players listed here only and also only based on games for which replays etc. where available.