EPT
*next Zerg Bonjwa*
Life is best known among the foreign community as a ZvZ master, but it is his mastery of ZvT that is making tongues wag in the Korean team houses. Over the last three months he has quietly become the best ZvT player in the world.
His raw statistics are mind-boggling. Since he officially joined StarTale, Life has won 33 out of his last 38 sets in the matchup. His last serious loss in a BoX series (the TSL4 KR Qualifier final versus Keen was blatantly thrown, no one can argue otherwise) was against TOP in the ESV Weekly Open all the way back on July 9th. From that date Life is 41-6 and he has won 18 straight series in official competition. With the exception of Kas in the TSL4 Ro16, all of these games were played against his Korean contemporaries. He has beaten some of the best terrans in the world such as Keen, Polt, Jjakji, Alive, Ryung, MarineKing and Taeja. Whether it was a televised GSL match or the MLG Invite-Only Qualifiers, Life had maintained remarkable consistency in dispatching top-tier terran opponents.
What accounts for his extraordinary form at the moment? There are many different explanations to choose from. You can believe Life is riding the wave of momentum from his Royal Road journey. It makes sense to credit StarTale’s practice regimen and summer vacation with his rapid improvement. Then there is the matter of his strange playstyle. Life does not operate according to the conventions of standard ZvT and shies away from the broodlord/infestor/corruptor deathball which is so popular with his contemporaries. Instead he relentlessly harasses with zerglings, banelings, and infestors while expanding across the entire map; by the time he has to choose between ultralisks and broodlords, he has usually battered the enemy into utter submission. This gives him an inherent advantage in any match. His opponents simply don’t know how to deal with his strategies.
All of these factors are important pieces but none of them explain the stranglehold Life has over the matchup. We are talking about the Korean scene, the most concentrated pool of SC2 talent in the world, after 2 years of strategizing and figuring out the game. At this point in time everyone is good enough to take games off top players. There are so many tournaments and so many responsibilities that nobody can dominate a matchup. Yet Life is beating everybody regardless of maps, stylistic differences, and tournament format. Furthermore the games themselves are mostly one-sided stomps.
Let me propose something different. Life is perhaps the best ZvT player in the world right now because he does not play the matchup like anyone else. He approaches it from such a radically different perspective that it is nearly impossible to replicate it. It is truly impossible to understand it unless one watches all his games and forgets how ZvT is “supposed” to work. No matter how hard and how many Korean zergs attempt to mimic it, they cannot make it work as smoothly and seamlessly as Life executes it over the course of an entire game.
. 
