One of StarCraft 2’s best players has finally ended a curse that has spanned six years and seven premier tournament finals appearances. Eo “soO” Yoon Soon finally won a premier tournament by finishing first at IEM Katowice 2019, defeating Kim “Stats” Dae Yeob to take home $150,000 and lift a gigantic weight off his shoulders.
StarCraft 2 and its predecessor Brood War both track what’s called the Kong Line - named after a professional player who made several finals appearances but was never able to take a tournament down. Throughout the history of the game, there have been various players who have held the title of “Kong”, including famous ones like Lee “MarineKing” Jung Hoon. There’s never been a player quite like soO, though, whose incredible consistency in appearing in seven finals prior to Katowice - including finishing second in every single Korean GSL premier league event in 2014 - made him both one of the best and one of the most disappointing players in all of StarCraft 2.
That changed last Sunday, when soO managed to finally win his first premier league event. He limped into the elimination rounds of the tournament with the worst record by far, the only player to make it in with a losing round robin record thanks to some lucky tiebreakers. From there, he eliminated the consensus best player in the world, Joona “Serral” Sotala, before falling behind Stats 2-0 in the grand finals. Historically, soO has crumbled under that kind of pressure, but he went on to win four straight maps and win his first title after six years of chasing them. soO took to Twitter to acknowledge his supporters and the mentality that got him the win:
Most sports have their curses. The Madden cover curse, which stipulates that any athlete who appears on the cover of a Madden game will suffer an injury in the next season they play, is one famous example that crosses over into video games. But esports, as new as they are, have already developed some of the most rewarding stories of 2019 thanks to the fans’ love of statistics and seeing the improbable become reality. Just last month, Shanghai Dragons, an Overwatch League squad that had lost an incredible 42 games in a row, finally got a win with the support of what seemed to be every person who had ever watch Overwatch. Fans love a good underdog story and, while soO was hardly ever the underdog in the tournaments he entered, his struggle to achieve what many expected of him resonated with fans.
Depending on who you ask, this shouldn’t even be a big deal - some people adhere to the notion that soO’s victory at a sixteen player event in 2015 fulfilled the requirements. But many others, including soO himself, felt that a premier tournament win had a bigger prize pool and more adversaries to topple, and so the curse carried on well into 2019 before a resurgent soO was able to shatter it. StarCraft 2 has quietly been the home of many of esports’ best stories over the past few years, and soO’s win is yet another addition to that legacy.
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Source: TeamLiquid
