Lim Yo-Hwan (Revised Romanization: Im Yo-Hwan; Surname: Lim), known by the pseudonym SlayerS_`BoxeR` (usually shortened to Boxer), is one of the most successful players of the real-time strategy game StarCraft to date. Dubbed Emperor by his legions of admirers, he is the most popular Starcraft player with a fan club of more than 600,000 members and a DVD compilation of his greatest games released in South Korea.
Success
Lim had an impressive record with 500 wins and 336 losses in his professional career. This success has brought him the highest salary of professional gaming, exceeding an annual income of $300,000 US Dollars per year, excluding the 90,000 dollars contributed in endorsements. In 2004 he was voted the greatest gamer of all time by readers of ESReality, one of the most popular western electronic sports websites, and in June 2006 he was included in an MTV list of "The 10 Most Influential Video Gamers Of All Time."[1]
History
Lim first came to fame by dominating professional Starcraft while choosing to use the Terran race at a time when this was seen as a relatively weak choice in comparison to the other two Starcraft races. In fact, Lim admits in an interview that he actually chose Protoss as his race when starting to play early on, but later chose the more defensive Terran race over the offensive Protoss or Zerg. This reign of dominance earned him the nickname the "Terran Emperor". During this early time in his career he innovated heavily, creating many new strategies which are still used today, most notably making much more effective use of the Terran Dropship unit than had been achieved in the past. He also gained a reputation for being able to turn around matches against the odds and having excellent micromanagement (unit control) skills. In contrast, his weakness is thought by some commentators to be poor macromanagement (economy/unit production) skills in comparison to other top-level professional Starcraft players, although his macromanagement has improved over the last few years.
Though he is no longer the dominant force he once was, he was ranked 11th in the April 2006 Korean e-Sports Players Association (KeSPA) rankings, and made it to the finals of the EVER Ongamenet Starleague of late 2004 (losing to iloveoov by three games to two) and the finals of the 2005 So1 OnGameNet Starleague (losing to Anytime by three games to two).
Lim has played professionally since version 1.07 of Starcraft, and has managed to stay competitive by constantly changing his style, and has had a great influence of the development of modern playing styles, especially for Terran players. He is the all-time leader in games played and won. He is a two time OSL champion, MSL champion, two time WCG champion, and former leader of the SK Telecom "T1" team. He is considered to have a strong eye for talent in that position, as he drew Choi Yeon-Sung (iloveOOv), among others, from the amateur ranks. His team has consistently been the strongest in the Proleague. He now leads the Korean Air Force Team.
Last August Lim announced at the MSL group draws that he had received his draft letter from the government, and would be entering the Air Force by the end of the year. He later said he would try his best to return after his 2 and a half years of service.
After Lim joined the Air Force, he started putting his fame to work. After a month and a half an Air Force progaming team was created. Lim found some retired pro-gamers who joined the Air Force before him, including H.O.T-Forever, CLon, ChRh, fOru, Rage, Qoo) Sunny and MuMyung. Together they formed the first military progaming team ever. After 2 months the team was announced, ACE (Airforce Challenge E-sports) was official. ACE is playing in the 2007 ShinHan Proleague.
Major achievements
- Most wins on televised matches and most televised matches (500 and 886)
- Two times World Cyber Games champion (2001, 2002 and the only StarCraft player to do this)
- First player to achieve 100 wins in Ongamenet Starleagues (OSL)
- First player to win more than one OSL (Hanbitsoft 2001, Coca Cola 2001), and only so far to have won two consecutive OSL's
- Longest time to hold first place in KeSPA (Korea e-Sports Association) rankings (17 months)
- The first progamer in the world to earn a record income of over $US 200,000
- Won the first KPGA Tour (now MBC starleague)
- Has finished 2nd in Ongamenet Starleague 4 times (2001 SKY, 2002 SKY, 2004 EVER, 2005 SO1)
- Finished 2nd in the first KT-KTF Premiere league
- KPGA MBC Starleague Champion February 2002 to March 2002
