Meet Oliveira: The Underdog Who Won Starcraft II's IEM Katowice

IEM Katowice 2023 was a great esports event. Its main competition was the CS:GO tournament, which ended with the victory of G2 Esports. But there was a second competition that mostly flew under the radar. Its number of average viewers was 31.500 and at its peak, 77.000 people watched the action.

This was IEM Katowice’s StarCraft 2 tournament, which featured 36 players and was won by a 22-year-old named Li “Oliveira” Peinan, who hadn’t won anything significant in his entire career.

In total, this player participated in many SC2 events and won close to $400.000 from them. But all of them, with the exception of IEM Katowice 2023, were small.

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IEM Katowice SC2 Results

The tournament featured all the heavyweights: Cho “Maru” Seong-ju, Kim “herO” Joon-ho, Joona “Serral” Sotala, Riccardo “Reynor” Romiti, and many others. Any of these players could have won the trophy. But instead, the winner was this young Chinese competitor who was probably underestimated by everyone.

Ahead of the tournament, the only indicator of his strength was his second place result at World Team League 2022 Winter. In that competition, Oliveira teamed up with Serral and managed to finish 2nd. The duo was defeated only by herO’s and the score in the Grad Final was 4-5.

Based on that result and on the fact that the great Serral had decided to team up with him, people should have known that he is quite strong. But in reality, many players probably assumed that his 2nd place at World Team League 2022 was largely a result of Serral’s exceptional abilities.

In other words, people thought he got carried by a much better teammate. But that wasn’t the case.

Tournament Results

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At IEM Katowice, Oliveira barely survived group A and was one of the four players who finished with a 2 W – 3 L record. But, thanks to his overall map score (+0), he finished ahead of three other strong players.

Meanwhile, Reynor, Maru, herO, and others had perfect or nearly perfect results in their groups. Serral struggled and it was clear that he wasn’t feeling great. His record was 3 W – 2 L.

In the playoffs, Oliveira defeated both Reynor (2 – 3) and herO (3 – 1) after he crushed Gabriel “HeRoMaRinE” Segat in the round of 12 (3 – 1). His Grand Final against Maru was incredible. Up until that point, the South Korean player had dismantled several opponents, losing almost no maps in the process.

But in this final match of IEM Katowice, he won the first map and then lost four maps in a row. Nobody knows what happened but it’s clear that Oliveira reached his peak right when it mattered most. This was by far the best match of his entire career.

Header: ESL