15 Year Old Flash Wins GSI!

The 15 year old Terran prodigy has won the GOM STAR Invitational, coming up on top over 16 of the Worlds top StarCraft players.

At the tender age of 15 Flash has accomplished what many older StarCraft players only dream of. In front of a large International audience he has beaten Stork to finish his great tournament run. With his only other high profile finish being a 4th place finish in July of 2007 at the Daum Starleague, this solidifies him as a true contender in StarCraft.


Flash started off with a bang in Group A going completely flawless against some of the best StarCraft players in the tournament circuit and ended up beating the player he would eventually play against in the semi-final round. Even then a lot of critics would think that he would not be able to make it much further than the next bracket of play.


Once again Flash was able to silence his critics and push himself just that much closer to making StarCraft history. TvZ was not his best match-up, but he persevered through it, and wouldn't struggle from this point on until the finals of the tournament.


As this match-up was a rematch from the earlier group play, AnyTime[gm] was looking for his revenge. Getting a quick 1-0 jump on the young Flash things looked to be going well for AnyTime. Game 2 was going nicely also as the Protoss favored Katrina was played, but through it all Flash wouldn't give up. His control over his goliaths was amazing, and his positioning even better. Once Flash won that game, he controlled the rest of the match and would be the youngest player to reach a Grand Final in such a high profile tournament.

Here it was, the big time. Flash vs. Stork, New vs. the Established, Terran vs. Protoss. We had seen how Flash proved that an unbalanced map can still be won by an unfavored race with his previous matches, but would this experience be enough to push him to victory? In a pre-game interview Flash talked about the amount of practice he put in and a lack of eating, but he said he was prepared. The previous night he played a game and beat Protoss Hero Bisu, 3-1. He managed to get a bus for his fans from his hometown of Taejon, South Korea about an hour from Seoul. During the match many time the camera cut to his parents as they sat, visibly stressed during the tournament. The last statement that Flash said was:

Stork also showed confidence in his pre-game interview saying that he had been practicing a lot, especially with his teammates and other progamers from STX. In his final statement to the crowd, Stork made a promise:

But what happened was completed different. Game 1 was a tightly contested match with Stork teching to Carriers while Flash kept a mech build. He dropped a double armory to get upgrades twice as fast and this was a build we would see him use throughout the entire match-up. While it looked like Stork had full control of the map, Flash was able to regain his composure and use the Goliaths to the best of their abilities and take an early 1-0 lead.

Game 2 would tell a different tale as Flash went with the same counter to the Carrier build which is so popular in the map pool for GSI. Flash didn't manage his Goliaths nearly as well as he did in the previous game and it cost him as Stork's excellent Carrier micro won him the game. This was one of the longer games of the night and really well played by both players with Stork evening things out with a win tying it up at 1:1.

Game 3 ended up being a more methodical macro oriented game as the uniqueness of Baekmagoji has the double minerals/gas at the main. Stork opted to expand much more efficiently and quicker than Flash and this really set the tone of the game early as Stork was able to max out and just wear Flash down and crush any hope of expanding and possibly winning the game. Stork was in his stride and looked really strong at this point sending the 15 year old into a must-win situation by taking the lead 2:1.

Game 4 may possibly go down as controversial. Stork was doing really well with a very safe tech to Carriers this time, and almost had Flash pinned before even getting to that point. Some solid micro kept Flash in it though and as a Shuttle came out Flash's turret's quickly shot it down, but then Flash paused the game! As an illegal move in the professional leagues there was a sense of urgency and worry now filling the room. It took a little while for Tasteless to get word on what was going on and pass it to us, but eventually it was sorted out that Flash's monitor was disconnected. Reportedly he may have accidentally tripped over it (the monitor's cord) in between Game 3 and 4 and a movement by his chair may have popped it out. The game was resumed and Flash seemed to really take advantage of the pause in action. He has very solid micro and macro from there on out making sure he upgraded his units constantly and amazingly enough took another game from a Protoss player on Katrina sending it to the final game all tied up 2:2.

Game 5 was very classic in the sense that it was not rushed, but a pure test of micro at this point. Both players went to similar builds in a goliath/tank/vulture build vs. a carrier/dragoon/reaver build. Flash kept his focus and composure and really controlled his goliaths well using the hold command to maximize the life span of his goliaths and force Stork into constantly spending money to resupply his carriers. Eventually Flash was able to solidify his economy and take full control of the map and seal the victory. Amazing play by all players in the tournament, and if you missed these final matches we here at GosuGamers recommend checking them out as soon as they are online.

Flash 3:2 Stork
Flash	>	Stork	@ Katrina
Flash	<	Stork	@ Blue Storm
Flash	<	Stork	@ Baekmagoji
Flash	>	Stork	@ Katrina
Flash	>	Stork	@ Blue Storm

We here at GosuGamers thank you for supporting us through our coverage here for the GOM Star Invitational and we want to take this time to thank Nick "Tasteless" Plott for lending his great shoutcasting abilities to the first ever English broadcast of a Korean tournament. From what he was saying during the broadcast it sounds like this was very successful (reports indicate 500,000 unique IPs watched during the tournament) and that we will be hearing him again soon!

Links
gis.GOMTV.com - Brackets