Eighteen players representing regions from around the world competed for the $150,000 prize pool last weekend in a first-of-its-kind tournament featuring Blizzard Entertainment’s iconic real-time strategy game, StarCraft II. After three days of competition, Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn, the only female competitor to qualify for the tournament, secured the victory as the IEM PyeongChang champion, edging out one of the world’s best players, Kim “sOs” Yoo Jin, in a 4-1 upset victory.
Scarlett – playing Zerg – put relentless pressure on sOs – playing Protoss – to take an early 3-0 lead. sOs managed to rally to take the next game, but Scarlett fired immediately back with a stupendous early rush that crushed sOs’ workers and earned her the championship.
Scarlett’s win at IEM Pyeongchang marks not just her very first win at a premier off-line StarCraft II tournament, but also makes history, as she becomes the first woman to win a premier StarCraft II championship. In addition, Scarlett becomes only the second foreigner in StarCraft II history to win a premier tournament on Korean soil.
Final Placements:
Round of 16
Mikolaj “Elazer” Ogonowski (W) vs Huang “Nice” Yushang; Joo “Zest” Sung Wook (W) vs Ilyes “Stephano” Satouri; Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn (W) vs Le “TIME” Peinan; Joona “Serral” Sotala (W) vs Sebastian “eGGz” Lattore; Diego “Kelazhur” Schwimmer (W) vs Gabriel “HeRoMaRinE” Segat; Kim “sOs” Yoo Jin (W) vs Adrian “DnS” Bouet; Aleksandr “Bly” Svusuyk (W) vs Sean “Probe” Kempen; Juan Carlos “SpeCial” Tena Lopez (W) vs Varun “Demi” Immanuel
Round of 8
Elazer (W) vs Zest; Scarlett (W) vs Serral; sOs (W) vs Kelazhur; SpeCial (W) vs Bly
Semifinals: Scarlett (W) vs Elazer; sOs (W) vs. SpeCial
Grand Finals: Scarlett (W) vs sOs
Winner: Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn
Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment and Intel/ESL
