Disasterpiece Theater: soO vs Flash (2015-7-12)

By: Mizenhauer

Today’s Disasterpiece Theater is a departure from our regular programming. The game itself isn’t even THAT bad—hardly deserving of a spotlight under normal circumstances.

However, the circumstances around this game were anything but normal. If previous editions were mostly about singular bad games, today we’re examining a whole clusterf*** of bad mapmaking, bad fan logic, and bad criminal enterprise surrounding the 2015 KeSPA Cup Season 2.

On September 9th, 2001, an eight-year-old soO tuned into the finals of the 2001 Coca-Cola Starleague. It was the series where the legendary Boxer won his second OSL title, but soO found runner-up YellOw to be the more appealing player. He simply found something to be cooler about YellOw, and he immediately became a fan of the hyper-aggressive Zerg.

Little did he know that this would be one of the most influential moments of his life—for fate has a cruel sense of humor—sending him hurtling down the path of becoming StarCraft’s most tortured progamer (this may sound like something out of a fanfic but, I s**t you not, I heard this anecdote directly from soO himself).

By July of 2015, soO had fully inherited Yellow’s second-place legacy. Like his childhood hero, he had become one of the best StarCraft players in the world. And, also like his idol, he became a living example of the difference between being ONE OF the best and simply THE best. Through the 2013 and 2014 GSL seasons, he set the historically cursed record of losing four Code S finals in a row, thus supplanting MarineKingPrime to become the undisputed heir to the Kong-line.

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This definitely falls into the “adoration” category

To the silver-shellacked soO of 2015, the LOTTE Homeshopping KeSPA Cup came as a curious tournament. There was no mistaking the modestly sized event with something as prestigious as Code S—it only had around $22,000 in prize money to the GSL’s ~$93,000, and it was awkwardly crammed into the only free calendar slot between Proleague rounds and seasons of GSL/SSL. It was as if the KeSPA Cups were created solely to ensure there weren’t ANY gaps in the Korean SC2 calendar between the months of January and October (as we’ll mention later in this article, there was a much more logical—if illegal—reason for it to exist).

Still, more StarCraft is better than less StarCraft, and soO entered the KeSPA Cup with a chance to at least somewhat alleviate his silver-sullied suffering. soO started off with a 3-0 sweep against San in the first round of the single elimination bracket, which he followed-up with another impressive showing in the RO8 by defeating herO 3-1.

That brought soO into confrontation with Flash in the semifinals. Now, there’s a lot I could say about the god of Brood War and his many adventures and misadventures in StarCraft II. However, for the sake of this specific article, it simply isn’t particularly important who soO faced. It will suffice to say Flash was nearing the end of his SC2 career at this point, and this would be one of his last few individual tournament appearances before retirement.

Game one on Iron Fortress saw Flash try to take advantage of the macro-favoring map and play his ultra-defensive mech style, but soO was able to swarm over Flash with Lair-tech units before the Terran defenses were fully set.

Mech might have been Flash’s calling card, but he was definitely capable of much more. With game two set to be played on the brand new map of Moonlight Madness (with KeSPA Cup server as a ‘preview’ before the official ladder change), Flash headed in with some trickery in mind.

(Incidentally, soO almost never played in this event in the first place. Rain’s forfeiture allowed soO to compete in a play-in match versus Zest, who had been responsible for one of soO’s runner-ups in the GSL. Of course, soO beat him in the play-in match to win entry to the tournament).

The Match: soO vs Flash – Moonlight Madness

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According to Liquipedia, Moonlight Madness ended up being a statistically very balanced map, with all three match-ups being close to 50/50. However, it had a defining characteristic that could make games very unusual (read: awful): Completely land-locked cliffs that let Tanks fire at the main base Vespene Geysers.

With soO teching straight into two base Muta, Flash showed us exactly how one could utilize this terrain. He opted for what would have been a terrible build on any other map at the time: after expanding, he rushed out a Medivac with one Tank and four Marines. These units were immediately sent over to the high-ground cliff overlooking the Zerg main, and they began to lay siege when soO’s Spire was barely halfway done.

SidianThe Bard, I like you as a person, but what were you thinking?

Now, it has to be noted that this was not the first time this strategy was put to use. FanTaSy, one of soO’s best friends due to their time together on SK Telecom T1, had tried a similar strategy against Dark in the earlier rounds of the KeSPA Cup. While FanTaSy’s version of the strategy ended up failing, Flash recognized an opportunity for abuse when he saw it. Never one to turn down an advantage, he had given the strategy his own, optimized twist and unveiled it against soO.

The strategy worked to perfection. Flash’s initial landing force was rapidly reinforced by a stream of Medivacs, including SCV’s to build Turrets and even Thors as total overkill against Mutalisks. This denied soO the 4-Gas economy he needed to make 2-Hatch Mutalisks work, while the map’s expansion layout also made it virtually impossible to take a replacement base.

Moreover, this advance position served as a beachhead for Flash to launch deeper raids into the Zerg main, making it imperative for soO to kick out the invaders as soon as possible. This effectively baited soO into several taking terrible engagements to try and remove the Tanks and Turrets, all of which ultimately failed.

After around 16 minutes (in HotS time), soO’s infrastructure was in tatters and Flash had assembled an unstoppable army back at home. Flash marched across the map, collected the GG, and tied the series at one game apiece.

The situation grew increasingly untenable as Flash could threaten TWO bases simultaneously

Fortunately for soO, this rather annoying loss didn’t seem to affect his mental at all. He made mincemeat of Flash in the following two games, winning game three on Terraform against Flash’s mech, and using mass Mutas to finish the job on Bridgehead.

This set up a team-kill final against SKT teammate Dark, who was temporarily on his own road to Kong-dom after finishing runner-up in an earlier KeSPA cup that year (an event which featured my personal favorite promo in StarCraft II history). Unfortunately for Dark, he had only partially unlocked his potential at that point in his career, whereas soO was the best ZvZ player in the world. Dark took the lead in the series with some Nydus shenanigans in game one, but soO rallied back to win the finals convincingly in a 4-1 gentleman’s sweep.

For the uninitiated, this is what’s known as a MEGA DRONE

And lo, soO had finally done it. He had earned his first Liquipedia-Premier event victory of his career. In the moment of soO’s victory, there was a glimmer of hope that he might at least partially shed his designation of Kong. However, as history bore out, this would be a very vain hope indeed.

Not All Championships Are Created Equal

Let’s get back to YellOw. The Kong mythos was founded on his three OSL/MSL finals losses in 2001-2003, but other factors contributed to it becoming a meme that’s persisted for decades. Part of it was numerology, with fans finding the number ‘two’ constantly recurring in Yellow’s career.

Another big factor was Yellow’s uncanny knack for winning championships at so-called ‘special event’ tournaments such as the 2003 KPGA Winner’s Championship, 2005 BlizzCon Invitational, and the 2005 Snickers All-Star League. Some of these events were actually quite well prized and featured strong competition. Yet, the Korean StarCraft community was able to twist these accomplishments so they somehow counted against YellOw, branding him as the greatest almost-champion.

Thus, when soO won the second KeSPA Cup of 2015, history-savvy fans knew there was only one way to interpret it. It. didn’t. count. He had only reinforced the notion that he was a true Kong, following in the exact footsteps of his illustrious predecessor. Even the old MLG vs. Proleague Invitational—an online-only tournament soO won way back 2012 before his first GSL silver—was dredged up to further the narrative of soO being YellOw 2.0.

It must have left a bitter taste in soO’s mouth to realize there was no relief to be found (well, the ~$9,000 first place prize was probably pretty sweet)—only further mockery from the Korean community at large.

Fans LITERALLY made statues recreating soO’s expression as he stood onstage after losing to Classic in Season 2 of Code S way back in 2014

(Amusingly enough, this Kong-logic actually worked in soO’s ‘favor’ on some occasions. In 2014-2015, he picked up two more runner-up finishes at DreamHack Stockholm and IEM GamesCom. However, the Korean community remained consistent in its evaluation of tournaments, not counting those two runner-ups against soO due to their ‘tier 2’ status.)

Actually, we’d rather forget this tournament happened at all

In a previous article, we went over the 2015’s saga of Sonic and SBENU, where a superfan/businessman spent a boatload of money he didn’t have to support StarCraft and left his business partners to eat dirt when the bottom fell out.

This would easily have been the biggest scandal of 2015, if not for the fact that the KeSPA Cup would later emerge at the center of a huge bribery and embezzlement scandal involving then KeSPA Chairman Jun Byung Hun (this only became public knowledge in 2017).

Now, going over KeSPA’s history of overall scumminess is an entire article in itself, so here’s just a few examples: their laughable ‘free agency’ policy during Brood War, stealing Proleague from OGN/MBC and selling the rights back to them, and or colluding to suppress player salaries.

However, all of KeSPA’s previous antics were of the vaguely legal sort—the run-of-the-mill, soulless, profit-seeking you can see in any industry. What happened with Chairman Jun was the first time something undeniably criminal occurred. To quote the TL.net thread news on the scandal:

Hmmm, I wonder who sponsored KeSPA events in 2015? Let’s take a look:

Proleague: SK Telecom

KeSPA Cup 1: olleh GiGA internet

KeSPA Cup 2: LOTTE Homeshopping

Ah.

Of course, the legal situation had nothing to do with soO or any of the participants of the event. Their job was to compete, and the KeSPA Cup was one of many competitions. But, for the most cursed player in StarCraft II history, it was tragically fitting that his one ‘championship’ at that time came in an event that may only have existed to funnel a $250,000 political bribe.

How All This Nonsense Ended

Moonlight Madness was cycled out of the map pool after a single season.

It took until 2018 for prosecutors to finally wrap up their investigation and bring a formal indictment against chairman Jun. By that time, Proleague had been over for more than two years, Jin Air was the only remaining KeSPA team that maintained a StarCraft II squad, and the KeSPA Cup series of tournaments ended up being largely forgotten.

The only exception was Neeb’s historic victory in 2016, which was magically conferred ‘it counts’ status in contrast to soO’s KeSPA Cup win (could it be because narrative matters more than anything else?).

As for soO, he had added to his Kong legacy, achieving his fifth and sixth Code S runner-up placements, and even finished second place at the 2017 WCS Global Finals.

In 2021, after an appeal, Mr. Jun was found guilty of receiving bribes, embezzlement, and other crimes. He received a suspended sentence and served no jail time, and was later pardoned in 2022.

By then, soO had won absolution at IEM Katowice and gone off to fulfill his mandatory military service. Perhaps we can’t say ‘all’s well that ends well,’ but it offered a comforting coda to one of the most unique careers in StarCraft history.

Still, one can’t help wondering what might have happened if soO sided with BoxeR on that fateful night.

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• Source: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/615731-disasterpiece-theater-soo-vs-flash-2015-7-12