Team Spirit and MOUZ recorded sweeps in their respective upper-bracket finals matches and punched their tickets to the playoff semifinals at the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2024 event on Tuesday in Poland.
Also on Tuesday, Team Falcons swept Natus Vincere in the Group A lower-bracket final, while G2 Esports claimed a pair of wins to navigate their way through Group B’s lower bracket.
Twenty-four teams began the tournament competing for a share of the first $1 million prize pool in Europe since Counter-Strike 2 launched in September. Sixteen were still standing to begin 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.
On Tuesday, Team Spirit posted a 2-0 win over FaZe Clan in their Group A upper-bracket final, courtesy of a 13-10 victory on Mirage and a 13-5 triumph on Nuke.
Russian Danil “donk” Kryshkovets had 48 kills and a plus-24 kills-to-deaths differential for Spirit, who will play the winner of the quarterfinal match between ENCE and Team Falcons.
Slovakian David “frozen” Cernansky had 33 kills and a plus-3 differential for FaZe Clan, who will face G2 Esports in the other quarterfinal match on Friday.
MOUZ cruised to a 2-0 win in their Group B upper-bracket final after posting a 13-5 victory on Vertigo and a 13-3 triumph on Ancient.
Adam “torzsi” Torzsas of Hungary recorded 28 kills and a plus-13 differential for MOUZ, while Poland’s Kamil “siuhy” Szkaradek had 28 and a plus-10, respectively.
Poland’s Pawel “dycha” Dycha collected 21 kills for ENCE.
Team Falcons toppled Natus Vincere by securing a 13-11 win on Ancient and a 13-4 victory on Mirage. Spaniard Alvaro “SunPayus” Garcia had 35 kills and a plus-15 K-D for Falcons.
G2 Esports seized a 2-1 win over Monte in the lower-bracket semifinal and a 2-0 victory over Heroic in the final.
Against Monte, G2 sandwiched a 13-4 win on Nuke and a 13-6 victory on Anubis around a 13-8 setback on Vertigo before having an easier time of it versus Heroic. They notched a 13-9 triumph on Vertigo and a 13-8 win on Nuke.
G2’s Nikola “NiKo” Kovac of Bosnia and Herzegovina had 40 kills and a plus-14 K-D against Heroic.
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 — 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
