He was one of the first korean progamers to join a foreign team to be able to travel a lot but misses his teammates when doing so. He visits MC for lunch and DongRaeGu once bought him new shoes: Kim ‚Oz‘ Hak Soo is one of the friendliest progamers in the world and so we all should congratulate him very dearly on his 25th birthday today. Though he never won an important tournament, Oz belongs to the best players in the World – and the next World Ranking will reflect that.

When asked about the importance of prize money in an interview once, [oz] replied: „Being on a finals stage is more important to me than money.“ And he has been on countless final stages since, but he never was able to hold the winners trophy in the air. That is if you don’t count his success at 2012 Ritmix Russian StarCraft II League Season 3 – which was an online tournament. But Oz involuntarily prefers the position of the runner-up: He was second in GSL Code A of October 2011, at the MLG vs Proleague Invitational 2012, at IEM Shanghai 2013 and most recently at WCS America 2014.

Though this seems like continuos efforts, Oz fell in a whole skill-wise from 2012 to 2013, event though he had called it his „most important year as a progamer“. But after a fifth place in GSL May he dropped and dropped and dropped – even out of GSL completely by October. A rather unknown [hwangsin] beat him at MLG in November, [slivko] knocked him out in the group phase of IEM Singapore and in the GSL Team League he ended up as the 57th best player of 68 contestants.

This had a reason though: Oz proved to be too ambitious. As one of the first korean players he participated at MLG in 2011 – his second tournament in his career – and joined Fnatic in 2012 to be able to travel to tournaments all over the world. A mistake as Oz later recalled: „I attended a lot of foreign tournaments so I couldn’t maintain my health very well so my condition affected my results.“

All got better when Oz changed a few things: He started streaming his ladder games in December 2012 even though he felt to be too bad of a player to do so and switched teams in March 2013, signing with Evil Geniuses, moving to their team house and participating at WCS America. Newly motivated he started practicing on his old schedule again which involves around 30 to 40 games a day – less when losing, more when winning. The effects kicked in during summer: Fourth best player at Proleague Round 6, second at IEM Shanghai and Ro8 at WCS America – Oz‘ best results for more than a year. Since then he improves constantly: The third WCS season ended on rank 3, the first of 2014 took him to the finals so for the new season… you get the hint. Even without winning WCS, [oz] will climb into the Top20 in the May update of the World Ranking next week – setting him on an even level with players like [hero], [life] and [parting].

That is even more deserved as Oz is one of the friendliest progamers out there. One that needs a team like a family. When he parted with fOu in 2011 and joined FXO he felt sad about leaving his old teammates behind until they were signed by FXO too – just to miss them again when traveling abroad for tournaments. When [nestea] stated in an interview that he would choose [oz] for his upcoming GSL group (back then players could choose their opponents) the latter called him and joked around: „Hopefully he makes the right decision and doesn’t choose me“. In February 2012, [dongraegu] eliminated Oz in the MLG Pro Circuit Winter Arena. Oz was so sad about it, that DongRaeGu promised to buy him new shoes from the prize money he had won.

Just recently [oz] joined a new team, Planetkey Dynamics, after being teamless for about four months. With the german organisation he is hoping to get back „more of a family atmosphere. I think that was kind of lacking in EG and Fnatic.“ His only teammate is the young german talent [gungfubanda] – so maybe it’s Oz‘ turn to buy a present from his WCS prize money this time.