Also, I doubt you are the worst 1v1 gold trophy holder. Top#30 is not that bad. I am confident you can beat Fizzer, for example. (No offense fizz, but you took the trophy way back. Think you will have a hard time in the current field.)
Fizzer is 4-2 against me in 1v1, although I won the last 2.
I do think some people underestimate the skill of the people getting 1st place in the old days of the ladder. Most of them didn't specifically train for the 1v1 ladder and were able to play on very different templates.
Stalling to get number 1 was less pronounced as it is/was during recent years, so most people who got to number 1 were at least top 5 at the time they got it. The truly weakest number 1's were probably the early stallers around 2012 and 2013 whose names nobody remembers simply because they were not worthy of that first place anyway.
Of course, if you compare the level of number 1's in 2011 to the level number 1's in 2016 at this moment, the 2011 bunch is a lot weaker, mainly because many of them haven't played for many years. But that's a bad comparison. In that case, I would also better than almost all top players now if you would compare our level in 2011 which is not fair either.
Think of the sports, for example basketball analogy: is Kobe or LeBron (or my man Durant) better than Jordan? Are the Jordan Bulls better than the Warriors or the Spurs this year? People want to compare, but it's not possible: it's a different time with different rules with a lot of factors playing a role, which for WL include template, number of players, members/non-members playing, more ladders, etc.
So, if we would do a big tournament with all ladder number 1's at this moment, I agree Troll may be (one of) the weakest. But if you'd do a basketball tournament at this moment with all the MVP's (or something similar) at this moment, Jordan wouldn't win either.
So to see who's good or bad, you'd need to compare their level to the level of the field at that time. So to finish my analogy with basketball.
* Impaller would be Bill Russell, completely dominating, even obliterating the field for a long time in the old days.
* Heyheuhei would be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a long carreer and probably the longest time in the top 3 / top 5 / top 10 in the history with regular first places, but not at a Russell level.
* Gui and Timinator might be a little like Michael Jordan. Being able to absolute dominate, but also trying other things in between and then returning at a later time and get number 1 again.
* And I guess I'm like Paul Pierce or Jason Kidd. Clearly not the top, got that title once during a particular good run, but a long carreer at a pretty decent level, occassionally beating some good players and losing against bad players. :-)
* Troll and Fizzer would be like Paul Arizin or Bob Petitt. Great players that got the title once in the olden days. But are they better or worse than say Klay Thompson, Chris Bosh or Kahwi Leonard, to name a few, I think it's impossible to compare although many will try.
Edited 4/30/2016 13:24:13