Fnatic's Lee-Seok 'aLive' Han is the champion of IPL4 winning a massive $40,000 and also his first major tournament win. With IPL4 being one of the most stacked events this year it was certainly a tournament not to forgotten soon.

Not many expected Fnatic.aLive as being the winner but he proved himself winning against the likes of Polt, GanZi, TAiLS, PartinG, MKP, NesTea, and Squirtle! An insane lineup of Code S players.

2012 has seen aLive win a number of smaller tournaments, like the RaidCall Invitational #2 and the NASL Season 3 Qualifier, but this is a huge LAN event against a pool of players that rivals any GSL Code S.

aLive was up against StarTale's Hyun-Woo 'Squirtle' Park in the finals who also had a huge run this tournament defeating several top Koreans in the championship brackets. aLive was certainly favorite to become champion of IPL4 as he had the winners bracket advantage and was already up 1-0 in BO5’s. This ment that ST|Squirtle needed two BO5 wins to claim the win.



Fnatic.aLive started out excellently, sprinting to an early 2-0 lead, which meant that he only needed a single map win to claim the $40,000. The third and fourth games looked like aLive had the victory but somehow Squirtle got back in the game not wanting to give up so early and winning both game three, four and five tying up the BO5 series to 1-1. Squirtle showed us why he was one of the eight open bracket players to advance to pool play, and the only open bracket player to advance into the Championship bracket, and that he had no intention of just throwing away his hard work on the last days.

Another player could go tilt at this point, having the tournament win in the grasp of his hand twice only to have the series reset. After that crazy comeback Squirtle had the crowd and momentum going for him. aLive wasn’t ready to give up so easily though. In the first game of the new set, he deftly executed a cheese despite having it scouted, gaining him back the momentum. The second set was a blind counter victory, maybe not showing his skill, but reinforcing his belief in victory. The third game was a long macro game, and though aLive was ahead early, it looked like the door was open for a Squirtle comeback. With incredible perseverance through the doubt that must have been in his mind he sweeped the last BO5 in a 3-0 win.



This win moves aLive up to 14th on the all-time SC2 earnings list, with $63,020. Squirtle moves up to place 47.

(Photograph courtesy of fragster)


This post was written by trial editor: Mithax

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