Apeks pulled out a dramatic 2-1 win over BIG in a do-or-die match to conclude the play-in stage of the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2024 event on Friday in Poland.
Apeks rallied for a the win over BIG in Round 2 of the play-in stage lower bracket. Cloud9 advanced with a 2-1 win over Virtus.pro, ENCE took down The MongolZ 2-1 and Rebels Gaming beat M80 2-0.
Virtus.pro, The MongolZ, BIG and M80 were eliminated from the competition.
Twenty-four teams are competing for a share of the $1 million prize pool, the first $1 million prize pool in Europe since Counter-Strike 2 launched in September. Sixteen teams are competing in the double-elimination play-in stage, and six more will join Heroic and Eternal in the group stage.
After falling 13-7 on Inferno, Apeks earned a 13-10 victory on Vertigo. The final map was Ancient, where Apeks trailed 9-3 and 12-9 but rallied to force overtime and pull out a 16-14 clinching win. Aleksandar “CacaNito” Kjulukoski of North Macedonia led Apeks with 56 kills and a plus-3 kills-to-deaths differential.
Cloud9 sandwiched a 13-5 win on Overpass and a 13-4 result on Ancient around a 13-8 loss to VP on Anubis. Denis “electroNic” Sharipov had 50 kills on a plus-10 K-D for Cloud9, and fellow Russian Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy added 43 kills on a plus-14.
ENCE beat The MongolZ 16-13 in overtime on Mirage before absorbing a 13-10 defeat on Nuke. On the final map, Anubis, ENCE sped away with a 13-5 win. Poland’s Pawel “dycha” Dycha had match highs of 57 kills and a plus-12, as all five ENCE players finished with positive K-Ds.
Rebels pulled out a 13-9 win on Nuke and a 13-7 win on Vertigo to best M80. Patryk “olimp” Wozniak led the all-Polish winners with 35 kills and a plus-11 K-D.
The group stage begins Saturday with six matches:
–FaZe Clan vs. Rebels Gaming (Group A)
–Eternal Fire vs. Team Falcons (Group A)
–Natus Vincere vs. Team Spirit (Group A)
–Complexity Gaming vs. Apeks (Group A)
–Team Vitality vs. ENCE (Group B)
–Heroic vs. G2 Esports (Group B)
PRIZE POOL
1. $400,000, 3,000 BLAST Premier points (Qualifies to IEM Cologne 2024, BLAST Premier World Final)
2. $180,000, 2,000 BLAST Premier points
3-4. $80,000, 1,200 BLAST Premier points
5-6. $40,000, 500 BLAST Premier points
7-8. $24,000, 300 BLAST Premier points
9-12. $16,000
13-16. $10,000
17-20. $4,500 — Virtus.pro, The MongolZ, BIG, M80
21-24. $2,500 — BetBoom Team, Astralis, FURIA Esports, Rooster
The event will be broadcast live on the ESL Counter-Strike Twitch and YouTube channels, with all matches also available on-demand on YouTube.
IEM Katowice will also include a $500,000 standalone Starcraft II competition, with $150,000 going to the winners. The 24-team event will again feature the IEM Expo from Feb. 8-11.
–Field Level Media
