The HSC 4 audience saw some of the most peculiar decision making as the two of the best performing Koreans in this tournament walked forth to measure their skills. "This game is ridiculous," was Rotterdam's comment during one of the most tangled sets.
The first two sets strutted with a more normal tempo with Sound taking both of them to secure himself a nice advantage ahead of the protoss. StarTale's terran performed particularly well in set two on Antiga Shipyard, outclassing ReaL with multiple bio drops that destroyed both forges, the main nexus and later the third, leaving the protoss sitting on just one base to four of Sound.
Sound brings ReaL down to one base, securing his two-game lead
Game three was when it got all weird. ReaL tried tried to trick Sound by faking a tech opening but once the SCV was dead, the protoss cancelled the second gas and transitioned into a 4-gate. Despite holding the element of surprise, ReaL sacrificed too many units in premature attempt to snipe a supply depot so on paper Sound should have won the set with no troubles. Yet he took the decision to walk out in a most peculiar timing, giving ReaL the opportunity to force field up, slaughter his army and win the map.
Antiga Shipyard was even more outside of what you call a normal PvT. Sound faked a CC and went for a 4-rax but ReaL just sacrificed his fast nexus, warped in some sentries to hold the terran force out and transitioned to 1-base DT. But the Korean Protoss once again worked against himself and threw away all his DTs by doing less than optimal damage, which allowed Sound to counter attack and kill the nexus for the second time. Despite all his misfortunes, however, ReaL was able to somehow amass enough archons and templars to actually bust Sound's front wall but found himself under dropship attack so the game essentially was brought down to a base race. Thus, in a situation unlosable for a terran player, Sound decided to return home, drop down his units in front of archon fire and throw the game away.
The final set was another throw-away game (arguably) as ReaL decided to try a 1-base blink yet he decided to cancel it in the very last second as his proxy pylon and gateway army got spotted and destroyed. In response, Sound moved out and sniped Real's expansion (making Mr. Bitter to jokingly congratulate ReaL for winning the series), giving him a significant base advantage. ReaL did a final effort and pulled off some incredible storms but he was already too far back to win the set.
