IEM Katowice 2019: Day 1 Summarized

IEM Katowice 2019 is one of the two Valve funded majors in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. With $1m at stake, every team wants to show their best and qualify for the next stage. With the new peer seeding format and BO3s to advance to the next stage, this tournament is already touted to be the best major is CS: GO history by the greats of the game.

This will be the best major

— Gabriel Toledo (@FalleNCS) February 13, 2019

The tournament is divided into 3 main parts.

1. New Challengers Stage (13th Feb - 17th Feb)
2. New Legends Stage (20th Feb - 24th Feb)
3. New Champions Stage (28th Feb - 3rd March)

Wednesday marked the beginning of the New Challengers stage. Six returning champions, along with minor winners and runners up from each region (AS, Americas, EU, CIS, and minor PlayIn) will compete in this tournament with the eventual goal of qualifying for the New Legends stage. Only eight of the total 16 teams will advance to the next stage.

The hype for this major in the community was very high but the day started on an anti-climatic note. The start of the matches was delayed by approximately an hour due to technical difficulties arisen due to an update pushed by Valve 12 hours before the start.

Coming to the matches, the first round was rather a shock for everyone as the lowest seeded team, ViCi Gaming defeated the highest seeded legendary organization Fnatic 16-9 on Overpass. All results of round 1 are as follows:

1. Fnatic 9-16 ViCi Gaming
2. Renegades 16-8 Avangar
3. Cloud9 16-11 Grayhound
4. Tyloo 16-8 Vitality
5. ENCE 16-10 Team Spirit
6. G2 Esports 16-14 Vega Squadron
7. Furia 6-16 NiP Gaming
8. Winstrike 9-16 NRG Esports

The first round was action packed with a total of 5 aces. One of the best being an ace clutch by Cloud9's Zellsis on his major debut.

First round at a major. First ace at a major. First clutch at a major. @Zellsis #IEM https://t.co/JCaCtOvQYi pic.twitter.com/qs5POlas4r

— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) February 13, 2019

Round 2 only elevated the level of play and in the end, left us with some shocking results. It all started with the Frenchmen of Vitality. Things were looking bleak at the end of the first half of Nuke as Vitality were 13-2 down against the young squad of Grayhound Gaming. But the NBK led side made a comeback on the CT side and proved to everyone that experience weighs its worth in gold. Vitality eventually won the match 19-17 in overtime.

Fnatic again disappointed its fans as the 3-time major winning organization failed to overcome Winstrike on Train. The boys in yellow and black will play their elimination BO3 against grayhound today to survive.

Furthermore, Cloud9 took on Tyloo in their 2nd round matchup. Much to everyone's surprise, the Chinese-Indonesian side thrashed the Boston major champions 16-3 on Overpass with Xccurate top fragging. All results of round 1 are as follows:

1. Vega Squadron 16-14 Team Spirit
2. Vitality 19-17 Grayhound
3. Fnatic 11-16 Winstrike
4. Avangar 16-14 Furia
5. Cloud9 3-16 Tyloo
6. ENCE 16-6 G2 Esports
7. NRG Esports 16-6 ViCi Gaming
8. NiP Gaming 13-16 Renegades

With some amazing matchups coming up, day 2 can only get better. Can Fnatic avoid elimination? Will it be EZ4ENCE and a clean 3-0? Can NRG break the curse and qualify for the next stage? Find out more tomorrow.