HEROIC rallied for a 2-1 victory over Team Liquid on Wednesday as the play-in bracket for the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice event got underway in Poland.
Sixteen teams are competing in the double-elimination play-in bracket, chasing eight spots in the group stage of the $1 million Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament. All play-in matches are best-of-three.
Eight teams — G2 Esports, Team Spirit, The MongolZ, Team Vitality, FaZe Clan, MOUZ, Natus Vincere and Team Falcons — already are through to the group stage based on their global standing early this month.
Group play will see the 16 teams split into two double-elimination brackets, with all matches best-of-three. The two group-phase winners will advance directly to the semifinals, the two group-phase runners-up will move to the quarterfinals as high seeds, and the two third-place teams will make the quarterfinals as low seeds.
The playoff will be single elimination, with best-of-three matches for the quarterfinals and semifinals ahead of a best-of-five grand final on Feb. 9. The champion will earn $400,000.
On Wednesday in the upper-bracket opening round, Team Liquid opened with a 13-9 win on Anubis, but HEROIC came back to claim Nuke 13-11 and Dust II 13-8.
Belarus’ Andrey “tN1R” Tatarinovich and Turkey’s Yasin “xfl0ud” Koc each registered 49 kills for HEROIC. tN1R produced a team-best plus-2 kill-death differential. Poland’s Roland “ultimate” Tomkowiak logged 48 kills and a match-high plus-12 K-D differential for Liquid.
The day’s other seven matches all resulted in 2-0 sweeps: Eternal Fire over Complexity, 3DMax over FlyQuest, MIBR over Astralis, paiN Gaming over Virtus.pro, GamerLegion over SAW, Wildcard over BIG and FURIA Esports over Imperial Female.
The Thursday schedule:
–Upper-bracket Round 2: HEROIC vs. Eternal Fire
–Upper-bracket Round 2: 3DMax vs. MIBR
–Upper-bracket Round 2: paiN Gaming vs. GamerLegion
–Lower-bracket Round 1: FlyQuest vs. Astralis
–Lower-bracket Round 1: Virtus.pro vs. SAW
–Lower-bracket Round 1: BIG vs. Imperial Female
The last upper-bracket Round 2 match (Wildcard vs. FURIA Esports) and the last lower-bracket Round 1 match (Team Liquid vs. Complexity) are scheduled for Friday.
Intel Extreme Masters Katowice prize pool
1. $400,000
2. $180,000
3-4. $80,000
5-6. $40,000
7-8. $24,000
9-12. $16,000
13-16. $10,000
17-20. $4,500
21-24. $2,500
–Field Level Media
