StarCraft 2: Lowko vs AlphaStar!

I am about 95% certain that I recently played and beat alpha star on the ladder in Starcraft 2 a few days ago I played a match of zerg vs terran on the letter and while the game was a little bit odd i wasn't too suspicious it wasn't until the day after where someone called alex reached out to me in game and he mentioned that he also played against the same account and that he noticed a couple of very odd things now initially i was very skeptical because well ever since I made the video where I explained that alpha star is now playing on the European ladder basically every single loss that I've had I've jokingly blamed on the fact that I was playing against the google deepmind computer now here's the thing that one replay alone is certainly not enough for me to be convinced it wasn't until we started cross-referencing other accounts and Auto replays that were posted on reddit that I realized that something was not quite right so at this point I'm about 95% certain that I played and beat alpha star on the ladder so here's the full story enjoy did I just get this same MEP again I'm not a Terran player I mean are we gonna go for the built hat-trick where I did the same build three times in a row on the same map versus the same race I don't know if it's it's a thing but build Hetrick does have a nice ring to it I'm going up against a bar code that must be alpha star yes with that logic everyone's alpha star alright so we'll try and go for the roach ling push once again that is if he's opening up one one one right like we can't really know if he's doing so that's why we want to try and figure out here scouting around with my second oval or just to try and see if we can find any expansion or any any buildings going up on my Saturn I map gotta be careful so hatch gasp ooh rallying the next three drones to the gas geyser now we'll send out a worker in a little bit to take that dirt base pretty early now this map it is quite good though I don't know if actually going for a quick third base on this map is that great because it is quite good for like Reaper rolling sand heavy reaper focus place LLC I've lost that build once when going 3 hatch opener but I don't know I haven't seen it too too much haven't seen an SCV here eater there's a Reaper okay correct timing got two sets of zerk links to Queens coming up as well we want to see if there's a factory there is a factory when I go up to 36 drones as fast as possible which is when we will try and ad on the road horn I haven't seen any aliens yet at the turns back to gas okay so 3:30 it's a correct amount of workers that we have right now as well it's good can I make another gas geyser a couple of extras or clinks not too many that's not a rally point here okay make a couple of extra overlords I think I'm actually a little late with those yeah I am a little late with DOS just a little bit first couple of Hellion should be countered Oh [Music] looks like we cleaned it up at home you think he's lifting his buildings look what is this silver leak Shan Shan what is oh my god dude I have not had someone waste my time that much in a very very long time so basically what he's doing is he's forcing me to go up to muna Liske quick spawning pool you killed a queen though what a beast well as long as he's not gonna lend a bass without us knowing we should be okay someone just whispered me he says are you loco hello I think you just beat alpha star how sound you think you think my previous opponent was alpha star wait two seconds I sent to you I always get a little worried when anything gets sent to be by strangers I meet on the Internet he's like he links me like some sort of file-sharing website just download this link real quick okay it's mediafire calm okay now a link a link this account this barcode did I play against this guy hey yeah I didn't beat this guy yesterday drone Zilla I did play that I won that game yeah I know I I mean I don't want to brag Alex for come on man what do you expect you thought I would lose versus Google supercomputer now you mentioned actually this is a bit of a suspicious account five placement matches in one day then not playing for a couple days and then winning a stupid amount you will see that it doesn't have any control groups Wow I'm gonna check it out wait wait wait wait so you're saying the Terran player that I faced off against yesterday this one it's this one right here right this was the game that I played yesterday where I did the same built three times in a row I played the same map three games in a row same matchup it's this one right here so wait someone's saying that this might be alpha star so this is the vision of the supposed alpha star it is odd that there's no hotkeys I'll give you that but how do you figure out if someone's alpha star now how would you absolutely no local cast his game I mean I literally played it yesterday I remember what happened I went for a 36 drone all in it was a road to ravager one I called it to build hat-trick because I did the same bill to three times in a row on the same map against the same race and I wanted to build hat-trick I did three times the road rabbit is circling only it is very odd that there's no hope keying at all I think the weirdest thing about this is the guys win-loss ratio which is extremely high and the fact that there's no cultural groups whatsoever up to this point like if you look at my vision here you can see that I've got three whole Keys set up and that I'm happily spamming my buttons over and over again to make myself look more impressive than I actually am so hopefully people use their Twitter Prime to subscribe to my livestream but this guy not spamming at all but also not using any whole turkeys actually hold up let me did he even make anything during all of that so I want to see once he sends out to Reaper so now two Reaper is selected he selects the barracks here at some point after the Reaper moves out he selects the barracks okay okay so this is now when he clicks the Reaper then he switches over to the barracks how did he click the barracks here this is the leg this is the screen at which he clicks on the barracks I mean I can keep playing the x-files tune but that's a little odd how to heck do you click the barracks over here it's at the top of the screen yeah but how are you gonna click that you have to beep so once again this is the vision right here right I'll I'll go back I'll go back to 2 minutes and 10 seconds right so he selects the Reaper that he switches to the natural and he clicks the barracks with this exact screen you have to I couldn't even do it you have to be right here in order to click it right there that is a little bit strange is it possible for someone to hide their hold keys like say I set my Hokies up to like not 1 through 9 but I have him set up to like I don't know page up page down is it then still gonna show up in the whole key settings cuz look do you see that he did produce it an SCV there without switching screen so look while the Reaper is selected Reapers selected here here Reaper selected look at the bottom selection of the screen it uses a hope key here to make an SCV but I'm pretty sure right if you go into like the whole key setup and you like change one of the I don't know one of the control group or piece say you change this one to like page up right which is a really dumb idea don't do that but say you were to do that I'm pretty sure it would still show up over here as hold key for because I know that's what some of the pro gamers do local I also weird key bytes they still show right yeah you can put them on whatever key buns you want but this should still show up now there is a setting in the in-game settings that allows you to height your control groups that only shows a live game play doh when you go into replace because I know for example like Sue and zest play without their whole key shown if I'm not mistaken but if you look at their whole key files it will still or rudder on their replay files it will still show their hold keys so I'm very confused that this guy does not have any hope he's showing them APM is not a very good way to figure out if you're playing against alpha star this was played on a European server and I did announce that it's only gonna be playing on the European server I'd like different skill levels but they did cap its APM and also the amount of actions it can do per second so it kept its it's kept its its APM and ApS I guess like actions per second to a minimum because apparently what they did back in the day is give it like a maximum amount of actions it could do in a minute to say it could do like 400 actions in a minute at most right what it would sometimes apparently do is save up actions until like the second it needed it and then use like 300 actions in one second which is not very realistic so apparently it's it's limited in ApS and then also an APM so there's two things that make me a little suspicious here once again they've announced that we won't know if we're playing against alpha star until they're released the replay pack and the paper that they're writing about it so we don't really know many ways nothing is really looking all too suspicious in the game other than the lack of hold keys which is odd so that's that's really like in the game at least the most the most strange part here the fact that it seems to use hold keys while not having any whole key set up at the bottom section of the screen I know of no way that you can hide that he lifts all structures and puts them all over the map I thought that this guy was vme me and it was trying to like you know he's throwing a hissy fit you know like but people doing in like silver League and stuff where you have to like make mutizen order to deal with it so that why I'm already that's already why I'm going up to what's a layer here but that wasn't odd that was an old game and he also this was also strange look at this okay I was starting to be a little skeptical and I didn't think it was right but this guy loaded up a freaking met effect with SUVs and then he killed a queen that was odd I don't know what's going on so look there's eight SUVs in a plane and I go over here and I'm like I'm just you know I thought he was trolling me so I decide to make go and like I think I'm making a spawning pool with this one yeah I make a spawning pool just be a jerk but he actually ends up killing my queen with suvs which is weird while floating buildings I know this game is over the weirdest part about this guy's win-loss ratio is that it's extremely high and that the account is very new so all five placement matches were played five days ago and then it's been winning left and right that's really really odd this high of a win-loss ratio is pretty ridiculous forty five and five so what we know is that it doesn't seem to use hotkeys while clearly using hotkeys which is weird it's got an insane win-loss ratio it played a very heavy amount of games over the last few days but then all of its placement matches like five days ago all in one sitting and we beat it which obviously means that we are literally better than the Google supercomputer right wait supposedly alpha Starro and forty five and five according to beasty QT what does that mean this account did go forty five and five it's probably gonna have around like the same amount of APM every game it's it's hovering like late 100's 200 ish but honestly that doesn't really tell you that much because my APM is also gonna be pretty similar although I would be curious to see like a longer game because we now know okay so this is a longer game and it's still actually hovering around 200 most people at least that's what I notice in myself I've got like lower APM and shorter games and when games go longer cuz there's more to do my APM goes up this guy seems to be hovering around 200 APM I saw this ready threat a couple of couple of hours ago so someone claims he played against alpha star slash deep line he says hey guys after reviewing the replay and looking at this profile I'm pretty sure I encountered alpha star on the ladder first it's play looks pretty normal playing a totally standard zerk build is as great link micro first Reaper okay but really stood out was that the borderline perfect micro ravages splitting in an arc to minimize siege tank damage even more suspiciously this guy just played against cero this guy just played against era but anyways here's the link if you want to check out the replay so this is once again a barcode player can I check out his betel net profile yes can I have a look at that that is a wait so this is the guy I played he's 45 and five this guy has also played 50 games whoa the plot thickens this is this account also has played exactly 50 games okay so someone says it's likely I look through GM contender for similar accounts that I found these new subscriber detected so this is a Pro Tools I played against the Terran right is that this account if this guy is this account the one that I just mentioned I think it must be level 21 Terran level 21 Terran total career games 5050 yes so wait so one okay so someone just broke this up without like me specifically looking for it right like this is literally the account that I played against yesterday whoa the one replay I found with Pro Tools also at zero control groups used and they're both also new accounts that played game 50 games in that stuff no way no way in addition all three accounts exhibit the same pattern where the five placement matches were played four days ago followed by 45 additional games in the past two days they also appear to have the same map vetos preferring to only play on the order maps Kairos Junction cyber forest Kings Cove a new repugnancy we also played on new repugnancy wait no way I think it's actually alpha sources someone else here's another replay from the same profile so I want to just check out real quick so this is against a zurich accused version of alpha star does it use what keys oh there's no hope keys here at the bottom of the screen eater so you know what that means right guys I mean mana and TLO get defeated by alpha star I ended up beating alpha star supposedly maybe that means I'm literally better than pro gamers okay now that's not what it means that's detected so someone responds to this replay that we just checked out 100% either a hacker or alpha star selects unhooked lead larva without looking at it that's what we noticed as well right the guy produced or the guy it produced out of a command center that was not hot lead someone else responds 100% alpha star I found some weird game weird things in both games but super clear execution against Terran the overwrought pathing super weird nobody does this attack without scouting weird second gasp timing now there is obviously this thing called confirmation bias where we're looking for evidence for results we've already found right and usually when you're looking for set evidence it's very easy to overlook other things I'm very happy to be disproven right if you think I'm not right feel free to let me know even after like right now just let me know unlike Twitter or something because I was very skeptical but it might actually be the case so someone else is going against the grain he says yeah like the other converter said I think this is just game time lettering on EU if you get the opportunity to play against it again open with two clogged benches and see if alpha star is able to defend its fourth base against them so that could be but it's three accounts terran protoss and zurich right three different accounts that played 45 games over the course of two days so you'd have to play a hundred and fifty games alike - that's a lot of games ain't have to win ninety five percent against opponents that are pretty good again I don't think that's I don't think that's game time that doesn't make any sense so so here's what we got here's what we got there's a couple of things that really stood out to me first off it's playing one of the order maps which is not that crazy but it makes more sense right secondly we're going up against an account that did all of its placement matches the same day as another account that's playing Terran and another account that's playing or run another account of playing Zerg and another account displaying Pro Tools then they all played 45 games exactly over the last two days on all three accounts right and they all have a very high winrate so that's that's outside of the game that care enough surprises me a little that's a little bit strange right playing this many games is not that crazy but you know the other option would be that it's like a human pretending to be alpha star but then I don't think that would play 45 games on three accounts over a course of two days that's insane like that that's like 150 games in in two days that's way too many games I'm actually curious we might be able to check the one account right here played its last game 20 hours ago this account was also playing 20 hours ago so it certainly is not a pro gamer pretending like if both of the accounts that I looked at right here we're both playing 20 hours ago it's not gonna be a pro gamer just trying to be cheeky and you know just pretending to be able to start right so I don't think that means that it's a human but at the very least it's not gonna be a cheeky programmer pretending to be alpha star loco it could be three pro gamers conspiring together well it could be yeah anyways so that's a little bit odd that's a little bit odd that there's three barcode accounts all playing one of the three races all doing their placement matches in the same day and then all playing 45 games over the course of two days after that right that's weird secondly in the games that I've checked out there are no hotkeys this Terran player is not using any hotkeys that's weird that's very weird and then the last thing right here that I also think is strange is when that Reaper comes out when it moves across the map right this is the one thing that really stands out to me because this is so strange so it goes to the Reaper right now and then it goes back home and it selects here in just a split second the barracks how did it select that barracks cue it again and lastly in this game as well which I found very odd is after I end up rushing it so drone Zilla is my account after I end up rushing it and I get a bunch of damage done with the roaches and ravages and circlings the guy goes for a lift on all of the structures and then drops me with suvs so here's my push it wasn't expecting that one it also went siege tanks which is a little bit strange here it's a little bit early for siege tanks but then it does like lifting or it lifts up all of its structures and it's like throwing an SUV that's so weird I think I may have actually played officer I I don't see I don't see how someone can bring up the exact same account as being suspicious as the one that I was advertising right before this one without me knowing that this would be here like that's weird now we won't actually be able to find out exactly whether or not this is alpha star until Google releases their research paper which supposedly goes up after they have finished their research we don't really know when that's gonna be my expectation would probably be like around Blizzcon so end of the year probably in November it makes the most sense to give an update at that point again because the last time we heard about it was very recently and then the time before that was January so I think November makes a lot of sense so we won't really know until then I would imagine maybe they give an update sooner than that I don't know but that's that's pretty fantastic that's that's pretty awesome why would wait why would Alpha star be abarca because there's so many barcodes it doesn't make that much it's not that crazy if you're playing at 5.5 HK MMR and you're not playing hold keys just imagine how good you would be if you played with whole piece that since that like that's absurd this is also a strange move right like hold up like this is weird so it lifts up the to commence centers here and then it's my crowing them individually and then it's sending them back to our to that corner you see that now that's the - command centers being micro individually if you're really that guy in a guy right if you're the kind of guy that lifts up his structures at the end of the game where you lose are you really gonna look like are you really gonna micro your command centers and send them to individual places and then reroute them a couple times because you're indecisive that's weird [Music]

Channel: LowkoTV

Views: 434,421

Keywords: Lowko, LowkoTV, Simon Heijnen, Tutorial, Guide, Commentary, How-to, StarCraft 2, SC2, StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void, StarCraft 2 2019, StarCraft 2019, Tournament, Strategy, StarCraft 2 cast, StarCraft 2 live, gameplay, Casting, Cheese, Macro, Micro, Master League, Grandmaster League, Grandmaster, 1v1, Google Deepmind, Google, Google Deepmind StarCraft, StarCraft 2 Deepmind, AlphaStar, Deepstar AlphaStar

Id: 3HqwCrDBdTE

Length: 27min 12sec (1632 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/mark_lenders]

New meta incoming: double medivac 16 scv drop

[u/[deleted]]

I love the style of video, it gave me documentary vibes. Love it and love you!! Keep it up

[u/Jeremy_SC2]

The alphastar lifting BM lol.

[u/stopdropandroleplay]

Hey so I took those barcode profile names and converted them to binary, then to decimal. They're sequential:

Screenshot of code and output

If they are NOT AlphaStar (which I think they are), then they at least coordinated usernames.

[u/lburwell99]

I'm a believer. Queue the X-Files tune!

[u/tyrilu]

So this might actually make sense - consider that it was playing against other AlphaStars when training, and that weird strategies sometimes throw AlphaStar off.

Lifting buildings and scattering could have resulted in more wins at some point during the training process and is something it thinks is still worth doing.

[u/Serei]

The thread he's looking at is this one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/cgvu6r/i_played_against_alphastardeepmind/

[u/nodnosenstein9000]

DOES ANYONE HAVE EVEN ONE REPLAY OF IT!

[u/Limette23]

The biggest indicator to me was how the camera movement between from their barracks to their main at the beginning was sooo smooth and pixelperfect every time.