Lee ‚Flash‘ Young Ho has won his first major title in Starcraft 2 after two long years of trying: He dominated at Intel Extreme Masters Toronto this weekend, leaving his teammate Joo ‚Zest‘ Sung Wook without a chance in the finals. Other high ranked players disappointed.
[playerbox_flash] [flash] has won IEM Toronto: The 22-year-old legend from Broodwar took the title with a solid 15-6 streak in the main event. However he was twice on the brink of dropping out. In the group stage he lost his first match to [mc] and had to fight back against the same player one day later. But the deciding match was in [flash]s favor and he took home the win flawlessly by 2:0.
That didn’t result in easier games though: In the quarter-finals against [snute], who once again was the best foreigner, he was behind by 0-2 but managed to turn the series around and succeed by 3:2. From then on things went more smoothly: [flash] could beat [taeja] in the semifinals by 3:1 and his teammate [zest] in the finals by 4:1.
It’s the first major title for [flash] in Starcraft 2. He was the best players of Proleague twice so far in 2013 and runner-up of the MLG Winter Championship 2013 where he lost in the finals to [life].
The 17-year-old [life] was tied for the third place at IEM Toronto with [taeja]. Both had impressive streaks of 7:1 and 7:2 respectively before losing their semifinals.
Others disappointed in Toronto however: WCS Europe champion [stardust] dropped out early in the Open Bracket after losing to [life] and [hero]. The latter didn’t make it to the main tournament as well. The two times IEM-champion was knocked out by [snute]. The Dual Tournaments also saw [jaedong] failing against [huk] and [leenock], who took out [oz] as well.
As for the foreigners, [snute] again was the best one: He beat [hero] twice in the Dual Tournament and also defeated [sos] in the group stage before losing to [flash] in the quarter-finals after a 2:0-lead. Gfinity-champion [bunny] had a good performance too: He defeated [oz] and [huk] in the Dual Tournament and [polt] in the group stage before [taeja] and [zest] were too strong for the Danish.
IEM Toronto once again has proven the importance of the Asian Qualifiers which were dominated by [flash] and [zest]. At IEM Shenzhen in July it was [solar] who advanced in the Asian Qualifier and later was runner-up at the main event only losing to [taeja] in the finals by 3:4 – before that he was going on an 11:2 streak.