Team Falcons and FaZe Clan advanced to the semifinals of the playoff stage with victories Friday at the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2024 event in Poland.
Four teams are left standing after Falcons got past ENCE 2-1 and FaZe swept G2 Esports 2-0 in the quarterfinals. Falcons will meet Team Spirit and FaZe will battle MOUZ in Saturday’s semifinals.
Falcons opened Friday’s match with a 13-5 rout on Mirage, but ENCE answered with a 13-9 win on Overpass. It was a close final map on Nuke, but Falcons held off ENCE’s rally to prevail 13-11.
Pavle “Maden” Boskovic of Montenegro and Mohammad “BOROS” Malhas of Jordan each posted 55 kills with matching plus-9 kills-to-deaths differentials for Falcons. ENCE’s Olek “hades” Miskiewicz of Poland led all players with 62 kills and a plus-26 K-D.
FaZe opened with a 13-9 triumph on Inferno before polishing off its sweep of G2 by winning 13-6 on Ancient.
Latvia’s Helvijs “broky” Saukants starred for FaZe, collecting 43 kills on a plus-23. Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov of Russia had a team-high 30 kills for G2.
Twenty-four teams began the tournament, competing for shares of the first $1 million prize pool in Europe since Counter-Strike 2 launched in September. Sixteen advanced to the group stage, which featured two double-elimination groups of eight. Six teams, the top three from each group, reached the playoffs. All matches are best-of-three until Sunday’s grand final, which is best-of-five.
The tournament continues with Saturday’s semifinal matches:
–Team Spirit vs. Team Falcons
–MOUZ vs. FaZe Clan
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 — ENCE, G2 Esports
7-8. $24,000, 300 BLAST Premier points — Natus Vincere, Heroic
9-12. $16,000 — Complexity Gaming, Eternal Fire, GamerLegion, Monte
13-16. $10,000 — Rebels Gaming, Apeks, Team Vitality, Cloud9
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
