Yoon-Su “soO” Eo is getting yet another shot at coveted GSL championship.
Since 2013, zerg maestro soO has been chasing a gold medal from GSL, South Korea’s premier StarCraft 2 tournament. On his second GSL appearance, the then SKT player reached the highest stage on local turf, only to lose Dong-Jun “Dear” Baek.
Dear set soO on a path of silver from which he is yet to stray away. SoO’s return to GSL the very next season awarded him with another grand final and another silver medal after another loss to a protoss. GSL Seasons 2 and 3 of 2014 saw soO make the finals again and again, making him the first four-in-a-row grand finalist in the history of the franchise. In 2014, he was the only zerg to reach the finals of the league and he kept missing on the gold.
On March 25, 2017, soO will try for the fifth time, as the zerg ousted two-times World Champion Yoo-Jin “sOs” Kim in today’s semi-finals.
It took soO six games to go through the decorated protoss, showcasing strong mid-game and late-gameplay alike. A highlight of the series was soO’s multi-pronged defense and clever maneuvering on Abyssal Reef, patiently exhausting sOs’ resources before the protoss’ tap-out put soO on match point.
Before the former SKT stars finally hoists the gold, however, he will have to go through the winner of Dae-Yeob “Stats” Kim and Dong-Won “Ryung” Kim. Although past his 2012-2013 prime, Ryung has been showing good play so far throughout the year and has a real shot at the grand finals, though numbers are certainly not in his favor. Ryung already lost to Stats earlier in the league and the protoss has also taken home two consecutive IEM silvers on top of three premier top fours during the fall of 2016, including the one from the World Championship. If Stats comes ahead, soO will have to play the dreaded ZvP, a match-up which lost him three of his four GSL grand finals.
Photo: Kevin Chang / Team Liquid
