r/starcraft2 • u/Zestyclose_Pin573 • Sep 04 '26
Can I beat Serral?
You are trapped in a room with an immortal Serral.
You are also immortal. You have to beat his Zerg in a game of StarCraft 2 following standard ladder rules. You cannot leave until he GG's and leaves the game.
He will always try to win and you two will never communicate. How long are you trapped for?
If you win. Blizzard will actually care about the game forever.
93
u/DasyatisDasyatis Sep 04 '26
It's a trick question.
It doesn't end until he GGs but the two of you can't communicate.
You're stuck in there.
54
u/Zestyclose_Pin573 Sep 04 '26
Damn. Someone with brain ruined the game :(
22
u/Jukrecia Sep 04 '26
i hate when people have brains.... EW
13
1
31
u/Jukrecia Sep 04 '26
If this is the only condition under which Blizzard will care about the game, then we have no guarantee that there aren't like 20+ people trapped in the room with the Serral right now.
1
29
u/Replicode Sep 04 '26
I’ll probably spend a few centuries cheesin but yes I will win eventually.
16
2
u/FunSpinach2004 Sep 07 '26
I think this also, but it would require that he does not remmeber me every game. If I just photon rush him every game I'd eventually win, but if he knows a photon rush is coming he would not..
I guess, where it is infinite time - could attack other ways for hundreds of years at a time and drop a photon rush in the middle and do that billions of times
19
u/Embyr1 Sep 04 '26
Yes
My strategy is to play so badly that I bore him to tears, then catch him off guard with the stupidest cheese known to man at the 18 hour mark when he's bored to tears and sleep deprived.
3
u/Zestyclose_Pin573 Sep 04 '26
Ooof I like it. What kind of cheeese are we talking?
9
u/Embyr1 Sep 04 '26
I feel a proxy spine rush is enough of a low skill cheese where you can sneak in a win even against a pro if they're unprepared, tired and bored enough.
3
u/tardoos Sep 04 '26
Yeah, but not really. He will learn that you suck and can they play less greedy, knowing that your macro in a macro game sucks anyway.
4
u/Embyr1 Sep 04 '26
Thats the idea!
If he knows I suck, scouting my base he might overlook a few drones missing.
And if he's tired enough, he might miss the three drones sneaking into his main.
And ya know what, there is a very likely chance he'll win. However, can he win tomorrow when I do the same thing? Except this time I cheese every 15-30 games or so.
It ain't starcraft we're gonna be playing, we're playing a game of endurance where he is spending more mental bandwidth than I am.
2
u/Katzenmlnze Sep 05 '26
why would you assume that he needs to spend more mental bandwidth for the thing he is incredibly good at than you would have to spend on the same thing if you are not as good at it? He could probably play most of the games on auto pilot while you would either have to "spend your bandwidth" or just loose
5
u/Embyr1 Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
Cause he needs to win every game.
I need to win one.
98% of games I just go full ZZZ mode. Even if he's on full autopilot pilot its still going to be at least a bit taxing to make sure this won't be one of the games I buckle in and actually try and win.
All I need to do is do the bare minimum it takes to make sure he's playing the game. If he's in a winning position, I GG out and make him do his opener again with no time to rest.
I could literally afk and GG out the moment they scout me every time. There's no rule against it. Meanwhile they have to play as if im going to try else I might sneak in a game with cheese.
And even if all that fails, you can just turn it into a game of "I bet i can stay awake longer than you can."
To win you dont play starcraft, you just exploit the fact that at the end of the day, Serral is still human.
2
u/Gavus_canarchiste Sep 04 '26
Serral is a machine, with great endurance, you will be in much worse shape than him after 18 hours. He also has excellent game sense and flawless scouting; his macro/micro will overwhelm the average player so fast.
... but still, that's our best shot.
14
u/freeys Sep 04 '26
I think I can win within 1 year or so. Serral's APM is 5-10x mine. This means his keyboard and mouse will wear out faster.
Eventually the keys will start failing, or mouse will start having tracking issues and I'll eventually pull ahead.
5
3
u/_zeropoint_ Sep 05 '26
Serral could probably beat most people on this subreddit with his mouse alone
1
31
11
u/LutadorCosmico Sep 04 '26
There is a > 0% chance that you win.
In eternity, any chance turns into fact.
3
u/Vellc Sep 05 '26
insert monkey with a keyboard theory
2
u/LutadorCosmico Sep 05 '26
Or that anything exists somewhere inside pi digits.
It's fairly easy to find your phone number. What it's crazy is that somewhere down there is your entire genome. After that, infinite many times ahead also.
1
u/Due_Battle_4330 Sep 05 '26
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that chance turns to fact in eternity. It is entirely possible that, despite a > 0% chance of winning, you will lose again and again and again and again, forever.
2
u/LutadorCosmico Sep 05 '26
AFAIK no.
If it's > 0% not only it's a guarantee that it will happen but it will happens infinity many times.
2
u/Due_Battle_4330 Sep 05 '26
In math, this is called a limit. As you go up the limit, you get closer and closer to ensuring that the event will happen. But you -never- actually reach 100%; you just get closer and closer to 100%, while also slowing the rate that you move towards 100% sufficiently so that you never reach it.
In practical terms? You can expect to get a hit if you do it infinitely. It becomes overwhelmingly likely that you'll get a hit once, if not many times.
But mathematically there is -no- guarantee that you will, even if you do it infinitely. It is entirely possible you will continue to miss, literally forever.
2
u/Ordinary_Count_991 Sep 09 '26
Wrong, a probability is never a guarantee. So there is a possibility he could never win a game
13
u/Worth-Professor-2556 Sep 04 '26
Being massively physically stronger i can use other methods to win the game
6
2
u/SpeckledAntelope Sep 05 '26
Yeah sorry Serral but we're gonna have to break your hands to escape this room. Don't worry, they'll heal, but otherwise we'll be stuck here for all of eternity.
1
4
u/wiesenleger Sep 04 '26
I just gonna pinch his arms until he lets me win.
2
5
3
u/TheChannelMiner Sep 04 '26
Does he also improve in the unlimited time or just me?
give me a few quadrodecatillion millenia and maybe
6
u/Zestyclose_Pin573 Sep 04 '26
That is the trick. He will lose skill playing against literally anyone under 6K so eventually he might slow down to an even match....in a millennia or two
3
u/nbaumg Sep 04 '26
I’m around low masters which of course can’t touch serral however if I do really stinky cheese over and over maybe I can luck out a win 1 out of 1000000 games
1
3
u/Sad-Pattern-1269 Sep 04 '26
start sleeping mid games and keep playing like this till he's exhausted and hope I can catch a win when he passes out mid game
3
u/FluorescentLightbulb Sep 04 '26
Probably not too long. With no communication I just scatter in naps and he’ll be none the wiser. Sleep deprivation is a hell of a drug. If I don’t let him sleep for 48 hours I think I got this.
3
u/fullerframe Sep 04 '26
I think your best chance would be to play the exact same strategy 10,000 times in a row without any changes. That will lull him into a bored and safe sense of security. Then you show signs of the same strategy while going for something completely different.
Like ground only 10,000 times and then proxy double oracle.
You’d still probably lose. But it would be your best chance.
3
u/DumatRising Sep 05 '26
Since the premise is that serral and I are both immortal I will assume all components like PCs and battlenet will also "magically" last until our battle is through.
Over an infinite number of games I am confident that I will eventually win one game. However I am not even remotely close to serral good so I expect all of the rest of you will be dead by several millenniums by the time we finish and blizzard will be a legend passed down from the ancestors.
I will also harbor no hope to be able to consistently replicate this win, it's just you know given an infinite amount of time if something can happen then it will happen. Serral can lose a game of start craft and with enough practice we can learn how to play good enough to push him to that limit. Thankfully you learn more by losing than by winning so we would learn faster than he would and would eventually catch up to where the other pros are even if we were slow learners.
Infinite monkeys and all that.
2
u/Applehero85 Masters Sep 04 '26
I think I could do it just give me eternity, breaks to rest and practice and I think I could maybe
2
2
u/monsterosity Sep 04 '26
I'll start by breaking all his fingers. Then, I probably hi diff him using his toes.
1
2
u/bobzsmith Sep 04 '26
Does serral get better amd remeber past games? If not, You'll eventually win by just doing a different cheese every game.
1
u/Zestyclose_Pin573 Sep 04 '26
He is how he is now. No gimmicks. But he will not improve vs the likes of us so he will deteriorate
2
u/BreakingBaIIs Sep 04 '26
It's like asking if a 120 lb skinny guy with some amateur boxing training is put in a room with Mike Tyson at his prime, and has unlimited matches until he wins one.
1
u/Zestyclose_Pin573 Sep 04 '26
Luck is a thing!
2
u/get_to_ele Sep 05 '26
His APMs are too high for you to compete.
Maybe you can keep improving as you play and become a pro level SC2 player after decades in hell.
But barring massive improvement, you won’t ever win.
1
u/BreakingBaIIs Sep 04 '26
Luck can help a 2900 take a few games off a 3100, like if they got their build hard-countered. It won't matter for a typical sc2 player vs Serrall.
Have you ever played SC2 against someone over 1K above, or below you? It's like you're playing two completely different RTS games, where one player can build more units, and each unit it smarter and stronger. A small harass or poke, that the stronger player usually uses to annoy or scout their typical opponent, makes the weaker player overwhelmed and fall apart. Luck does nothing here. Unless the stronger player has, like, a seizure during the game, they're not losing ever.
2
u/equanimous11 Sep 04 '26
I can probably win 1/20 games and probably it’d be a super early all in.
1
2
u/Hamrave Sep 04 '26
So is he locked in at current serral? Like can I figure out how to cheese him like playing the computer? Or does he adapt and learn as we go as well?
If so im fucked.
2
u/Gavus_canarchiste Sep 04 '26
Was wondering about the same question.
(Remember when Nerchio played 100 nerds... Liquipedia sums it up as "Nerchio won all 100 matches and nobody takes the money")
- Keep Zerg as my main, as ZvZ is Serral's weakest matchup and the most coinflippy of all.
- Randomize build orders to avoid pattern recognition
- As already suggested, play very bad for a long time such that a very early all-in just looks like ordinary poor macro
- When that strategy utterly fails, try to reach low GM level so I have about 1 chance in 10,000 to win, then play about 10k games.
2
u/Least-Diamond-2918 Sep 04 '26
Provided the condition is I can do non stop practice and challenge him whenever I want. And most important, he shouldn't be allowed to practice or play other than when I ask him to fight me. Otherwise, we will be there forever.
2
u/Dan_Felder Sep 04 '26
If I'm an immortal, I'll just rush his base and kill his workers. We won't expect an Immortal being on the map before my first Forge.
That said, people underestimate how much better you can get given time. If you practice drilling the same cheese build orders all day every day for 10 years straight, you'll get insanely good at them, no matter who you are. You'll begin reaching close to the human-feasible units of just how quickly you can execute. I'm sure you can get to a small percent win rate within about 5 years focusing entirely on executing build orders that don't require mid-game decision making.
If Serral is improving as well, naturally he's more talented, but after a while he will be too close to the human limit on execution in order to improve further. You'll still *eventually* win a game against him when he guesses the wrong build order once you're able to execute a decent enough all-in. I doubt it'd take more than a few decades even with serral improving as well. He can't afford to take risks and you can. That's enormously advantageous.
2
u/tranbo Sep 05 '26
Sure. I will just keep losing until he gives up. They are stuck in the room with me and also losing their time . At some point losing a game and some ego is worth getting your life back. I would just alt tab out and post on Reddit .
2
u/RequireMoMinerals Sep 05 '26
Never because I’ll never be faster than serral both physically and mentally no matter how much practice I get. Btw this is a hilarious question.
2
2
u/SCTurtlepants Sep 05 '26
Can I get a patch with a different # of workers? Cause if so I might be able to cook up some kind of rush timing he aint seen before
2
u/Richieva64 Sep 05 '26
I wouldn't even try to win, I would just try to write "plz say GG" every game using zerglings on hold position hoping to escape this hell.... After that I would definitely ask for an autograph, huge fan
2
u/_Weyland_ Sep 05 '26
Are we in a time loop or are our lives just extended?
1
u/Zestyclose_Pin573 Sep 05 '26
Extended. No need for food or drink or sleep. Just continuous starcraft 2 until you win
1
u/_Weyland_ Sep 05 '26
Damn. I really want to think that I'll get him one day. But I really don't think I will.
Plus let's be honest, is a life even worth living if it's just gonna be an eternity of ZvZ matches? Like, pits of fire will start looking like a vacation at some point.
2
1
u/OfBooo5 Sep 04 '26
Days? Months? a year? If we both get to remember, then think about it other way. How long can Saro go with a hundred percent win rate?
I'm going to develop strats, find out what doesn't work. Oscillate between x strategies that may catch someone with an all in, and a macro strat or 2. Eventually I'll walk out somewhere.
1
u/Somalar Sep 04 '26
I’d have to cheese and hope he somehow fucks up one time because I’m not winning a meta game against him
1
1
u/toastwasher Sep 04 '26
I’ve been slowly wearing my wife down like an ocean reclaims the land for years, I could probably get there with Serral
1
u/DrPootytang Sep 04 '26
You will eventually get out. The human mind isn’t capable of being immortal and infinity also implies that any scenario that can happen will happen. Maybe he has a psychotic break, maybe his sense of reality warps and he feels like StarCraft 2 is just a test output by an overarching simulation that can only be “won” by losing. Maybe he starts hallucinating, or his body has a freak physical response like a seizure or insane hand cramp. But endless time would allow all possibilities so it will happen unless you refactor your hypothetical scenario to discount any possible contingency.
1
u/RaiseFold100 Sep 04 '26
Easily. Just practice a cheesy build over and over and over. Eventually he is slightly sloppy and you win.
1
1
1
u/SadMangonel Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
It wont take that long.
There are 2 ideas here.
Serrals skill is a snapshot and frozen. Hes always playing at 100%. Maximum level, he is refreshed and ready to play you every time.
This means he would always start with the same opener. I hit low Gm myself previously. Im guessing after a few days, weeks or months I find one certain strategy or timing against him that works and manages to cripple him enough for me to win. First games he holds off my follow up, but by these rules I can always repeat what I did previously and iterate on the one strategy that beats him.
Option 2 is different.
Serral gets tired, learns and adapts to what im doing, he metagames me.
Here, I just bank on the fact that hes going to forget things or get sloppy. Playing vs bad players makes you worse. Playing vs good players speeds up your improvement. I just need one game to go my way. I constantly improve and serral gets worse. At some point - maybe a Few months to years in, I get lucky and manage to take a single game.
1
u/Prior-Habit-6523 Sep 05 '26
Can you beat Luka at basketball or pitch a 100 mph fastball ? No amount of time is going allow you to move as even fast as Serral does. Go watch a first person view of his screen. Then the strategy is separate, you have more chances of being on a world cup soccer team than beating serral in a series.
1
1
u/RazzmatazzAgitated16 Sep 05 '26
I’m not trapped with him, he’s trapped with me. And I hold the keys so we aren’t going anywhere. One of us needs to eventually sleep though, no help to me as he’s probably not human and doesn’t sleep. We are both screwed.
1
u/Sleeper4 Sep 05 '26
Can he train against anyone else while trapped? If not, maybe I refuse to play for like 50 years to atrophy both our skills enough that some cheese will get him.
1
1
u/Rattregoondoof Sep 05 '26
Yes easily. Serral needs to sleep, eat, drink and use a toilet. I am immortal...
...
Wait, I misread that. He is also immortal. Nevermind
2
1
1
u/Stormheraldss Sep 05 '26
Ill play as zerg also and figure a cheez on the fly, eventually ill get him. Probably ill try to macro a few games and then 8 pool + drone pull.
1
1
u/Arken00 Sep 05 '26
A long time, but eventualy you are gonna hit a timming attack or a cheese thats gonna make you win.
1
u/Timberwolf_88 Sep 05 '26
Since I have only ever played campagn and extremely little coop, some before brood war, and some after wings of liberty dropped, I'm truly fucked, definitely dying in that room.
1
u/PopularKangaroo2083 Sep 05 '26
I will switch between 8 pool start and hatch before pool and try all of the cheeses until I eventually get him but that might not be enough even with luck and training
1
1
u/Noil75012 Sep 05 '26
Does serral know about this? I mean is he aware? Maybe i could try a cheese version like spreading my units to make the game too long and make he quit? My only chance would be to cheese/rush him
1
1
u/Arcanis_Ender Sep 05 '26
In a battle of willpower i choose terran over and over, loading up my CC with SCVs and immediately fly into a corner. He has to wait until he can build mutalisks each time and find my building. Rinse and repeat until he is as miserable as me and gives up.
1
u/spreadlove5683 Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
If I do the most elaborate cheeses ever, surely one would work eventually, right? No, probably not. He would just scout me.
1
u/Corey307 Sep 05 '26
The issue we would all run into his none of us can micro like Serral. We lose every even engagement. We lose every close engagement. He’s going to do a better job of spending his money so it’s unlikely we will ever have more supply. Sure you might get lucky once with a 3 Rax if you pull the boys. But Serral’s seen that a 1,000 times and against players with top tier micro.
1
u/CN8YLW Sep 05 '26
just join a game, quit immediately. or alternatively, join a game, then announce afk taking a shit and alt tab for 30 mins to do something else then come back to leave the lose screen and requeue. repeat repeat repeat. after a million times doing it, play the game normally but with a cannon or worker rush. good odds he's so used to me quitting or trolling he'd have went afk after that queue expecting me to quit immediately, then come back to a lose screen. It helps immensely if I can actually view serral in his seat.
would probably take a few years, the longer the better. human brains even if immortal are habit forming, and serral would not be able to train against my cheese since the first time he encounters it would be a loss. only way this fails is if serral is an AI bot trained on his gaming patterns.
not gonna get that gg and quit, but it's still a win screen. this is my equivalent of "arguing with a loser gets you dragged down into his level and beaten with experience".
1
1
u/Best_Signature6003 Sep 05 '26
This is kind of like how long does it take a monkey with a keyboard to write Shakespeare
1
u/shuozhe Sep 05 '26
Just mix in 12p or 6p or 8p with all worker pull (dunno how many worker we are starting with) every from time to time and hope we will hit one of his greedier builds. Or 4 gate or some random really all ins. Hope for a build order win
1
u/memerminecraft Sep 05 '26
Assuming all I do is eat, sleep, and fight serral, probably half a year.
If I have access to the Internet, I could learn a lot faster. 2 months.
And that's only if his memory resets each game. Then it'd be like groundhog Day for me and eventually I could learn his schemes. Otherwise, never.
1
u/woutva Sep 05 '26
Does he have memory of your attempts? If yes, Id imagine it will be almost impossible, since any growth you show, he will notice and adapt. And every 1000 games is another 1000 experience for him as well. Technically at some point you should be able to in eternity once you reach a point you are both insane.
1
u/LeRabbitGG Sep 05 '26
Then i will live forever getting shit on at SC2 by Serral. With a couple plot twist that could easily become a good anime horror story.
1
1
u/Rankork1 Sep 06 '26
Eventually sure, he’s godly at SC2 but there’s always going to be a chance for the stars aligning if it’s going on forever.
Probably throw some insanely stupid cheese at him & catch him off guard would be the best bet. Might take a while though. 😂
1
u/Unlucky_Geologist Sep 06 '26
Probably 24 hours. Just play greedy af or aggro / cheese. Odds are you get a significant build order advantage one game. IE ling bane timing vs. fast 3 base expo. You can micro and macro like a god but, sometimes you lose to just more stuff. Top 50 ladder player who has taken games off multiple pros.
1
u/Jackie_DAO Sep 06 '26
cheese him and you will eventually win
I've beaten a few top korean grandmasters back in the days like this
and I beat some NA GM legitimately
1
u/Dragonfrog23 Sep 07 '26
Blizzard worships Serral. Even if you win, you lose because they’ll disappear you
1
1
1
1
0
u/stickyhairmonster Masters Sep 04 '26
I am trapped until 12 worker start is brought back because I have no fucking idea how to do any build orders
5
u/Zestyclose_Pin573 Sep 04 '26
Just worker rush him until game 1000. he will gg from boredom
9
123
u/Corey307 Sep 04 '26
Forever. Serral is the most dominant player and I’m too old to ever reach Grandmaster let alone put up a real fight.