Kim Taek-yong

Kim Taek-yong, known by his screen name Bisu[Shield] or simply Bisu, is a South Korean professional StarCraft player, playing the Protoss race. Famed primarily for sublime performance in the StarCraft: Brood War professional competitions against Protoss and, especially, Zerg, Bisu scored three successful Starleague performances, the most of any Protoss player. Bisu was nicknamed the Revolutionist for innovating the metagame of Protoss versus Zerg matchup.

Since his transfer from MBCGame HERO to SK Telecom T1 team in 2008 Bisu, along with Stork, has been leading the Protoss players and both were called "Twin Carriages". Bisu is ranked 2nd in the Elo rating system. He retired from Starcraft II in 2013. After retirement, he started his personal broadcast by Afreeca TV. Bisu also participates in AfreecaTV StarCraft League.

Early life Kim was born in the South Korean county of Yesan. In his early years, before moving to Seoul, he lived in the city of Cheonan with his home being next to his school. Since childhood, however, Kim did not favour studying and became gradually addicted to computers in grade school. Because he became a professional gamer at age 17, Kim was unable to attend an institute of higher education. As a newcomer Bisu used to watch others' games and particularly liked those of NaDa, as well as Nal rA's strategic gameplay. whose games Bisu frequently watched. Prior to the breakthrough match with sAviOr, which is sometimes referred to as "March 3rd revolution", Protoss players generally underperformed against Zerg. The general advice was to use Corsair units to eliminate Zerg Overlords, narrowing Zerg's observation. Players iloveoov and Kingdom were promoted to coaches instead. While other professional Protoss players have around a 60% win ratio against Zerg, Bisu's ratio against that race reached over 90% in the 2010–2011 competition season. He once revealed, that only after learning the skill of combining different units (i.e. ground, air, high templars, reavers) he began to enjoy playing against Zerg.

Bisu's matchup against Protoss players is statistically in the middle between Zerg and Terran and could be traced back to 2005. From then and until February 2006 he had been in a 3-loss streak against Protoss players and played with intermittent success until the matchup with Nal rA. In February 2007 Bisu achieved a 3-win streak against him, which contributed to Bisu's uninterrupted 6-win streak against Protoss in the same year.

Bisu's win rate against Terran players has been the lowest when compared to Protoss or Zerg, although he managed to defeat veteran Terran players SlayerS `BoxeR` and NaDa already in his early career. Bisu acknowledged his poor performance particularly against Terran Siege Tanks, as well as his relatively subpar control of Carriers. On November 17, 2007, Bisu lost to then little known Terran player, Mind, during the GOMTV MSL final despite being an absolute tournament favorite; Mind instead became the youngest MSL champion at 16 years old. Bisu then went on a slump, making a comeback in the next year On March 5 of that year he was eliminated from the Korean Air OSL by losing to Terran player go.go in the 36th round. Following Bisu's elimination he was given a break, explained by exhaustion from a hectic schedule and poor physical form. after the players' given names and Stork's nickname "Bang". Showing a relatively low win rate against Stork and Flash (41.67% and 38.46%, respectively, as of June 2011), Bisu achieved a 60% rate against Jaedong. Bisu and Jaedong had a period of tight rivalry against each other, competing for the top place of the KeSPA rankings: during the 2008-2009 Shinhan Proleague season both players finished the 4th round with a total tally of 44 wins, while their individual league wins equaled to three at certain point. of professional StarCraft. However, as opposed to Stork, Bisu's OSL title has been elusive. After competing in three OSL qualifiers in 2006–2007 Bisu unsuccessfully pursued the OSL titles of 2008, 2009 and 2010. Nonetheless, as of June, 2011, Bisu collected five Monthly MVP titles, equaling that achievement with Flash, Jaedong and SlayerS_`BoxeR`. On June 7, 2011, having defeated Protoss player Flying, Bisu equaled Flash's record of 57 victories in a StarCraft Proleague season. He also scored the unprecedented result of four all-kills (a form of StarCraft competitions, where one team is eliminated by a single player of the other team). In 2010 Bisu was nominated by Fomos for the title of Player of the Year and Protoss of the Year.

After the transition to StarCraft II, Bisu rarely played for his team SK Telecom T1, accumulating a 12–16 record and eventually announced his retirement on September 9, 2013

Bisu's game performance, as well as that of Protoss in general, has been influenced by maps on which the StarCraft matches are played. Although StarCraft is considered a balanced game in that all three races have successful professional players, the maps differ from each other in properties such as the terrain openness. One thing Bisu did during practice was to take notes, so he wouldn't forget what he practiced and learned. Bisu subsequently qualified Corsairs and Dark Templars as his favorite units.

Along with Corsair and Shuttle harass, Bisu's multitasking and Zealot timing rushes are considered standard for his matches against Zerg players. During the 2011 Shinhan Winners League match against Zerg player Peace, in particular, Bisu dispatched Zealots to Peace's two bases at different locations while eliminating Overlords with his Corsairs; after this split Bisu focused his Zealots on eliminating Peace's Drones while micromanaging his Corsairs to evade opponent's Scourges, making it seem as if four different persons were playing for Protoss.

While hotkeying, Bisu usually sets F2 for the main Nexus, F3 for Gateways and F4 for the natural expansion.

Tournaments