#8: sOs – Greatest Players of All Time

The Greatest Players of All Time

By: Mizenhauer

• First 3-time world champion
• Top five all-time Proleague win total
• Did we say 3-time world champion?

Notable tournament finishes

• 2013 WCS Season 1 Finals: 2nd place
  
• 2013 WCS Global Finals: 1st place
  
• 2013 Red Bull Battlegrounds New York: 2nd place
  
• 2014 IEM World Championship: 1st place
  
• 2014 Hot6ix Cup: 1st place
  
• 2015 MSI Masters Gaming Arena: 1st place
  
• 2015 WCS Global Finals: 1st place
  
• 2016 Code S Season 2: 2nd place
  
• 2017 Code S Season 3: 2nd place
  
• 2018 IEM PyeongChang: 2nd place
  
• 2018 GSL Super Tournament 2: 2nd place

sOs is an anomaly among the storied champions that grace this list. Considering that long-term consistency is a common trait in this top ten, sOs' career was more of a roller coaster ride in comparison. However, his ability to peak during the very biggest events is almost unmatched in StarCraft II history, and for the first nine years of the game, he was the only player to have three world championships to his name.

Even though sOs did not display the same day-to-day dominance as his peers, he still accumulated a respectable number of high tournament finishes in non-world championship events during his lengthy career. Additionally, he was an incredible workhorse during the KeSPA Proleague era, and has a case to be called the greatest Proleague player ever based on sheer number of games won.

Beyond the resume, sOs was an unforgettable player due to his playstyle. He was sui generis among top-tier players in how he possessed both unmatched strengths and glaring deficiencies. His overall mechanics were lacking compared to the very best players of the time, and he was not a particularly fast player in terms of multitasking or micro. He was also prone to committing calamitous errors from time to time, and he lost to inferior foes more often than you'd want from one of the greatest of all time.

However, more than any player ever, sOs was able to out-think and out-strategize his opponents in important games. Whether it was inventing entirely new build orders that his opponents had never seen, or simply knowing where a series of 'regular' cheeses were best deployed within a series, sOs could knock any opponent off balance. At his best, sOs would take complete control of the game by abruptly diverging from the standard meta—reducing it into a chaotic environment where outcomes are unpredictable and improvisation is crucial. If anyone ever demonstrated that the "strategy" portion of RTS mattered just as much as the "real-time," it was sOs.

Career Overview: $O$

sOs entered StarCraft II alongside the rest of KeSPA in 2012, and became one of the players who was quick to adapt to the new game. While he lagged slightly behind the Wings of Liberty vanguard of Rain, INnoVation, and Soulkey, he reached the top four of the first Heart of the Swarm Code S Season in early 2013. He did so in a changing-of-the-guard run, mostly beating non-KeSPA players including MarineKing, Bomber, TaeJa, and Losira. While he fell to eventual champion Soulkey in a seven game semifinal, the Woongjin Stars Protoss had put himself on the map as an innovator and star in the making.

sOs managed to one up his Round of 4 appearance at the WCS Season 1 Finals less than a month later. He avenged his previous loss against Soulkey, this time winning their semifinal match by a 3-2 score. The finals didn't go nearly as well—he was swept by an INnoVation who was in the midst of the first of many stretches as the best player in the world. However, the high finish did help sOs earn enough WCS points to earn a ticket to the WCS Global Finals in November.

When autumn came around, sOs had become one of the underdogs with just 2% of TL.net readers picking him to win in a community poll (granted, such polls were heavily influenced by fandom). He had cooled down in the second half of 2013, and was seen as a quirky player with too many flaws to go the distance. Much of the focus was on fan-favorites such as Jaedong and NaNiwa, or players in fantastic form such as Dear .

Day one of the 16-player Global Finals turned out to be full of upsets, with Duckdeok taking out INnoVation in the first round while Jaedong defied the odds to defeat the red-hot Dear in the RO8. As for sOs, he quietly advanced through his side of the bracket, defeating Liquid`HerO (3-1) and Polt (3-1) in somewhat routine wins. Neither was considered a major title contender at the time, and those matches were expectedly relegated to the B-stream.

Headed into the second and final day, fan opinion hadn't changed too much on sOs. The TL.net poll on the eventual tournament champion now favored Jaedong heavily, while sOs came in last place with 15% of the vote. In the semifinals, sOs once again took care of business, scoring yet another 3-1 victory against Bomber. On the other side of the bracket, Jaedong continued what seemed to be his run of destiny by taking out Maru.

While it's hard to say who the grand finals objectively favored at the time, Jaedong was clearly winning the battle of popular support. The living legend of Brood War had endured a remarkable kong stretch during the 2013 season, finishing runner-up in four major tournaments. With all the pre-tournament favorites out of the way (and Dear dispatched by his own hand), it seemed like it was finally time for Jaedong to become the first ever double-champion of SC2 and Brood War.

But, unlike Dear, who played the best version of standard PvZ at the time, sOs brought an entirely different approach to PvZ. His plan was to get Jaedong out of his comfort zone, and he leaned into the reviled tactics of the Protoss arsenal: cannon-rushes, all-ins, and hidden bases. He played mind games with Jaedong, going for committed attacks even when scouted and changing tech at a moment’s notice to keep his foe perpetually behind. Jaedong simply could not make sense of his vexing opponent, and after five games, sOs collected the four GG's needed to sign off on his first world championship. It was the beginning of the legend of sOs, as he took home the biggest prize of the year through a combination of composure, cunning, and audacity.

At the time, TL.net's stuchiu wrote the following in an article: "sOs stands as the WCS 2013 champion, and has forced StarCraft 2 fans around to give him their respect.. The weeks ahead will be an important test for sOs, as he participates at two major tournaments at Red Bull Battle Grounds and DreamHack Winter. With good performances, that grudging respect may become support. With championships, support could become adoration."

Obviously, sOs did earn that adoration in the end, but he took a somewhat convoluted route. While he made it to the finals of Battle Grounds, it ended in an anti-climax as he lost 1-4 to PartinG. DreamHack went far worse, as he finished in the top 12 with a loss to Patience (as a result, sOs suffered the shame of being ranked merely 3rd in TL.net December 2013 Power Rank, despite being the reigning world champion).

Some believe that a hangover can be cured by drinking even more, and at least for sOs, that applied to his championship hangover. His cup of choice: the 2014 IEM World Championship. The notorious tournament featured a $100,000 winner-take-all prize, the subject of much controversy at the time. However, as cold and brutal as the format was, it didn't compare to the cruelty of sOs' play. He ripped through his bracket with wins over Oz (3-1), jjakji (3-0), and TaeJa (3-1), setting up a PvP finals against herO.

sOs was well-known for his trickery and subterfuge by this point, but herO didn't expect the depths of villainy that sOs was willing to sink to. sOs started with a double-nut punch out of the gates, taking the first two games with back-to-back proxy-Gateway all-ins INSIDE herO's main. To herO's credit, he preserved enough of his mental to get a map back with a Dark Templar rush in game three, but all the momentum was still on sOs' side. sOs proceeded to make the $100,000 read that herO would keep trying to play aggressively, and held off two consecutive all-ins to win his second world championship in five months.

It would take a few more years for IEM Katowice to accrue the prestige it has today, but it was already clear at the time that sOs had done something special. With GSL 1st place prizes having come down from their $100,000 peaks, BlizzCon and Katowice were the biggest paydays anyone had to play for since 2011. To take both purses forever immortalized sOs as the ultimate prize money hunter and big-tournament player.

After reaching such impossible heights in Poland, the rest of 2014 was more of a mixed bag for sOs (a predictable pattern in hindsight). He continued to struggle to break into the deeper rounds of Code S, and didn't attain any notable results in the handful of international events he competed in. sOs paid a steep price for this lack of individual league success, as he missed the top 16 cutoff for BlizzCon 2014 at 18th place in total WCS points earned. On the positive side, he was excellent in Proleague for new team Jin Air, winning the award for most map wins that season. He also closed out the year on a high note, winning the 2014 Hot6ix Cup.

2015 was another year of counteracting highs and lows for sOs—at least up until November. His Korean Individual League (Code S, OSL, SSL) results were unremarkable—if not flat out bad—save one Code S RO4 appearance in Season 1. However, he was great once more in Proleague, and ranked among the league leaders in wins as Jin Air finished second place overall. Also, he did much better in individual competitions played overseas, winning MSI Masters and placing top four at DreamHack Stockholm. Those last two results ended up being quite important, and they gave sOs enough points to return to BlizzCon for the 2015 WCS Global Finals.

Unsurprisingly, sOs' standing in the scene was very different from his first BlizzCon. This time, the TL.net champion poll had him solidly in second place with 18% of the vote, trailing only god-mode, 2015 INnoVation (25%). Even Aligulac.com gave sOs the second place nod, with his strong Proleague performances pushing him up the point rankings in spite of his humdrum Korean Individual League showings.

Such expectations proved to be rightly founded, as sOs blazed a path through the finals with wins over Parting (3-2), Rain (3-0), and Rogue (3-0). The other side of the bracket saw BlizzCon 2014 champion Life survive the melee, defeating Lilbow (3-0), INnoVation (3-1), and Classic (3-2), to set up a super-hyped grand finals between the two previous Global Champions.

Unlike his two previous world championship finals, this time sOs met an opponent who was very much his equal. Life wasn't just extremely skilled and composed—he shared sOs' talent for disrupting his opponents' rhythm with early aggression. The two exchanged blows evenly on the first six maps, with many games decided by the success of their opening gambits. Going to Iron Fortress for game seven, fans waited to see who would draw their sword first.

As it turned out, both players were looking to take the initiative, with sOs opening Forge-first against Life's fast Spawning Pool. Upon scouting, sOs realized he would have to change to a defensive stance, and he took his Nexus while preparing to parry whatever Life might send his way. Life, on the other hand, was fully committed, and went for a Ling-Bane all-in off of one base. Fitting for a match that had been so close up to that point, the game wasn't decided in the first clash of blades. Life's initial strike inflicted damage by destroying sOs' natural Nexus, but it was not quite enough to decide the game either way.

It was here that sOs' fantastic crisis management shined through, as he held off Life's follow-up attacks and slowly reestablished his natural. Knowing that his opponent was playing from a deficit after his all-in start, sOs played out his lead with extreme patience, only moving out with Stalker-Sentry when he knew his lead was unassailable. Indeed, Life didn't have the forces to resist the attack, and he surrendered the GG that made sOs the first (and only) player to ever win the WCS Global finals twice.

Despite having not made the finals of a Korean Individual League StarCraft II career, sOs had permanently carved his place in StarCraft II history. In the three and a half years in which he had played StarCraft II, sOs had somehow won three of the four world championship tournaments held during that period. For years, it put sOs on a transcendent plane that seemed unassailable, and much of Rogue's future legend was built on tying that mark of three world titles.

sOs' career is a story of two halves, and the less glorious portion began after his remarkable achievement at BlizzCon 2015. Whether it was due to lack of motivation after his many successes, or simply his inability to transition fully to Legacy of the Void, sOs went down a path of slow decline. He continued to be great in team competition, helping Jin Air win their first title in the final, 2016 season of Proleague. However, his Korean Individual League results continued to flag. Even as he attained career-best Code S runner-up finishes in both 2016 (1-4 vs ByuN) and 2017 (3-4 vs INnoVation), he failed to garner enough overall WCS points to qualify for the newly region-restricted WCS Global Finals in either year (8 out of 16 spots became reserved for WCS Circuit players).

Subsequent years followed a similar pattern, with sOs occasionally showing glimpses of his old brilliance amid a general decline. Certainly, some of those glimmers were bright indeed. Most memorable was when he met Maru in the 2018 WCS Global Finals, and made the 3x Code S champion forget how to play StarCraft II in perhaps the biggest upset of the entire year. Then, following his worst year of professional play ever in 2019, he waltzed into IEM Katowice 2020 as an Open Bracket player, and somehow earned a top eight finish while knocking out two title contenders in Stats and TY. However, eventually, even those types of performances also dried up, and sOs announced his retirement in September of 2021.

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The Tools: So Evil, but so Good

When it comes to the players on this list (and even players in the #11-20 range), sOs is possibly the least mechanically gifted of them all. But for what he lacked in speed, sOs more than made up with his ability to take his opponents off their game. Between his mad scientist concoctions and run-of-the-mill Protoss devilry, he had an terrifying arsenal of builds that he knew exactly when and how to deploy. Of course, sOs' creative strategies could fail spectacularly on occasion, but three world championships tell us he was wildly successful on the whole. Also, the simple threat of such builds forced his opponents to play scared, and give up the edges that would typically let them roll over less mechanically sound players.

sOs was also a great in-game decision-maker, but in an unconventional way. Like GuMiho, another brilliant but mechanically-challenged player (relative to other top players), he knew that making games weird, initiating basetrades, and just being an all-around agent of chaos was a great way to drag top players down into the mud.

While mentality and intangibles are difficult to rate, it seems safe to say sOs was one of the very best players ever in these departments. He won his first two world championships surprisingly easily, picking up the pieces as his two finals opponents fell apart. Even during his decline, sOs was uniquely capable of striking fear into the hearts of his opponents, as seen in Maru's disastrous collapse against a fading sOs at BlizzCon 2018. And, while he was not always among the favorites to win Code S, he was frequently one of the least desirable opponents during group selections—however low the chance, no one wanted to be the player to get sOs'd.

The Numbers: Triple World Championships + All-time Great Proleague player

a: While there is no firm formula for determining a world championship-tier event, both prize money and strength of field are taken into consideration.
b: WESG tournaments are assigned to the year the grand finals was actually played, not the official date on the tournament title (which is one year early).
c: The 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2016 IEM world championships were of lesser scale compared to other iterations.
d: Player was later banned for match-fixing in unrelated tournaments. ESL still recognizes YoDa as the 2013 winner; Blizzard stripped Life of his title.

a: Included tournaments: WCS Global Finals 2013-2019, IEM Katowice 2014-2023 (except 2016), WESG 2016-2018, Gamers8 2020

sOs' mark of three world championships has been repeated constantly throughout this article, and their value is largely self-evident. Whether it's due to prize money, tournament format, or simply the prestige we've collectively placed upon these events over time, the centrality of world championships in StarCraft II history is one of the few things fans can agree upon.

Even though nearly a decade has passed since sOs' last victory at a world championship, it is impossible to think of such events without sOs coming immediately to mind. From 2015 to 2019 (before Rogue matched sOs' count of three titles), no one came close to sOs' reputation as a big-tournament player, as a player who might come in and win any event regardless of his current form. While it speaks volumes of Rogue that he was able to eventually equal sOs (and of anyone who might join the three world titles club in the future), it does not diminish the impact that sOs made by being the first player to accomplish this feat, and the fact that he held this distinction alone for over four years.

a: The 2011/12 season was excluded as it was played in a hybrid Brood War + SC2 format.
b: Playoff statistics included.
c: Classic's nine games as Terran (2-7) were excluded

A secondary, but still important part of sOs' resume is his excellence in Proleague. As mentioned in the introduction article, Proleague was at least as important as Korean Individual Leagues (Code S, OSL, SSL) from a practical point of view, as Proleague performance determined the steady salary players could command from teams.

When setting aside the 2011-2012 SC2/BW hybrid season, sOs ties herO as the player with the most individual map wins in the competition. While INnoVation and Maru recorded better win-percentages than sOs, both players competed in one less season due to their time on non-KeSPA teams. Other players may have had better singular seasons, but when considering aggregate wins and win-percentage over all four years, there's a case to be made that sOs had the greatest SC2 Proleague career ever (some may place a higher value on herO's heavier ace-match burden).

While a single player's influence is limited in the Proleague format, sOs' resume benefits from the fact that he was able to lend his talent to strong teams. He finished 2nd with the Woongjin Stars in 2012/13, second again with Jin Air in 2015, and then won the championship with Jin Air in 2016.

The PlacementsOs was a difficult player to position on this list, as his greatness was largely dependent on the valuation of a world championship. sOs did reach the Code S finals twice, but his overall Korean Individual League resume lags behind all of the Korean players chosen for the top ten.

TY, the player directly below sOs in the standings, vastly outperformed him domestically, winning two Code S championships, finishing runner-up twice, and generally showing extraordinary consistency. On top of that, TY won a pair of world championships, making the overall gap rather narrow.

In this case, it just came down to 3 > 2. sOs was the first player in StarCraft II history to win three World Championships, and, while Rogue joined him in that club four years later, no one has managed to do so since. While TY had some amazing single years in his career (2017, 2020), he never had a run of championships results like sOs did from 2013-2015. Winning more than half the World Championships held over a 24 month period (that just happened to overlap with the KeSPA era) made sOs an indelible part of StarCraft II history. What he did was unprecedented and never completely equalled (sOs won his three World Championships in a two year span while Rogue took nearly four). For that he gets the nod over TY and takes the number eight spot among the greatest to ever play StarCraft II.

The Games:

Games were selected primarily based on how well they represented a players' style, not entertainment value.

sOs vs herO: 2014 IEM Katowice - Grand Finals (March 16, 2014)

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While I tried to pick games that represented a players' style over their most famous games played, it just so happens to be that a big part of sOs' style was "winning the biggest matches possible."

sOs opened the finals of the winner take all IEM Katowice in fitting fashion given the tournament format. With $100,000 and the title of IEM world champion on the line, sOs planted his first two gateways in herO’s main, furthering his reputation as a build order madman who was utterly unafraid of taking massive risks.

sOs vs herO: 2015 Code S Season 3 - Round of 16 (September 4, 2015)

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(Timestamp - 0:17:30)

herO seemed to have this game on Expedition Lost well under control, getting Anion Pulse Crystals considerably earlier than sOs in a committed Phoenix war. However, sOs somehow pulled off a Jedi mind trick—you could almost see herO repeat the words "I WILL suicide my Phoenixes in a nonsensical attack."

No, it wasn't really 'good' game per se, but it was a solid example of how sOs could cause opponents to randomly self-destruct.

sOs vs Life: 2015 WCS Global Finals - Grand Finals (November 7, 2015)

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(Timestamp - 1:34:40)

With everything on the line in game seven of the titanic showdown between the last two WCS World Champions, sOs put on a defensive clinic, somehow holding Life’s Ling-Bane all-in.

Watching it back, sOs' decisions might seem pretty obvious, and you might even point out a handful of mistakes. But given the huge stakes of the game—and how often we see players collapse in these scenarios—it was about as perfect a defense as one could hope for (the high ground Gateway was a particularly inspired decision). It wasn't just crazy builds and chaos magic that let sOs succeed—his nerves of steel also played an enormous part.

sOs vs INnoVation: 2017 Code S Season 3 - Grand Finals (September 16, 2017)

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(Timestamp - 1:43:50)

This game could probably be described as a "macro cheese," but that's just insulting to the level of craziness sOs put on display. Starting with a fast gold base, he proceeded to mass expand with seemingly no regard for his safety, while also proxying half of his production for seemingly no reason at all.

You can't really say the strategy worked beautifully, but what mattered is that it did work in the end. And, that's what makes it vintage sOs.

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• Source: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/620110-8-sos-greatest-players-of-all-time