Il-Mook “Handsomeguy” Kang staked his claim as a contender for next month’s Hearthstone World Championship, claiming back-to-back regional championship wins.
The Korean, who has been in the final of every Asia-Pacific regional championship final this year, won his second APAC title on Sunday with a comfortable win over Hong Kong’s “Yulsic”.
Handsomeguy took the final 4-1 after defeating Japan’s “GundamFlame” by the same scoreline in the semi-finals.
The Korean’s performance in all three championships is a feat unrivaled in Hearthstone esports. Due to APAC’s different qualification rules, however, Handsomeguy qualified for each championship automatically due to having the most Hearthstone Championship Tour points each season—a rule which is not applied to the Europe or Americas regions. Many of those points came from his performances in each season’s championship. Handsomeguy, however, has showed his strength in reaching the final two of the tournament on every occasion.
With Handsomeguy already having booked his ticket to the $1 million World Championship by winning the Spring Championship, defeated finalist Yulsic will now join the APAC cohort at Blizzcon next month. The pair will be joined by Winter Champion Sanghyeon “DDaHyoNi” Baek of Cloud9, and the winner of next weekend’s Last Call Invitational.
The first Last Call Invitational, for Europe, will take place this Saturday. By next weekend, we will know the full 16-player lineup for the first ever seven-figure Hearthstone tournament.
