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The Legendary tournament of IEM Katowice is coming up towards the middle of February, who will have a shot at taking home the lion share of the one million dollar prize pool?
Due to the ongoing pandemic the event will be played online. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be international teams attending, as Liquid and Furia are currently in Europe to compete at the highest level possible.
Before heading into the main tournament, ESL have opted to have a separate play-in beforehand. The prize pool here of course being limited, yet all attending will at least earn some money for their troubles. The top eight teams will go on and play in the main event. This play-in will be played in a double elimination format, meaning that there is a chance for upsets with the best-of-one matches being played in the first round, which can be overturned by more consistency in the long run. With some big names standing by to qualify, it will be quite the pre-tournament.
Competing for qualification
BIG, Liquid, Virtus Pro and OG are all playing here first as top 10 teams, two of which were invited and the others qualified themselves. Most people would imagine these four teams to make it into the main tournament, yet it will be hard looking at the best-of-one first round and the other teams attending. It will be a very international event with TeamOne and MIBR playing with almost full Brazilian rosters and Renegades taking the Oceanian pride with them to show what the Aussies can do.
Astralis, Vitality and Natus Vincere could not be absent with such a big prize pool and such a big title at stake. With the consistency sometimes lacking with these teams it is worth mentioning that Astralis is currently experiencing a bad time. With them dropping out early in the groups of BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2021, there might be some struggles on the horizon. Their main problem was taking on NiP, which is a qualifier at the Play-in, and might come to haunt them later on in this tournament as well.
Played like shit on inferno, lost us the game ggwp @BIGCLANgg
Natus Vincere seems to be the best performing of the bunch however, as they have of course won the BLAST Premier Global Final 2020. This current form might mean that, if they perform to our expectations, they are able to rise in the world rankings and start a dominant time for CIS CounterStrike.
Of course you might be wondering about Vitality then, the other top team attending. Well we don’t really know what we can expect from them at this point as they haven’t really shown up after their good end of year run in 2020. They did make it to the top three at BLAST Premier Global Final 2020 but their performance really seems to be directly linked with how the team can actually back up their star player Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut. Maybe they have seen the weakness in Astralis and know how to act upon that but there is a chance they’ll be just shy of a final once more.
Will Liquid surprise?
Team Liquid can qualify through the Play-In and actually do well at the main event. With their new addition in the form of Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo and some really good results recently, especially against the likes of Astralis, they have a fair shot at doing well here too. They will have some tactics leaking out in the pre-tournament however, making it possible for other teams to read into what they are bringing and counter-strategies can be made.
One team often overlooked of course also has to battle its way through the qualifier. BIG is the number four of the world and has been getting similar placements as their world rank in recent events. With them beating Astralis recently, there might be a change of pace though. The team is quite established and the players have been competing alongside each other for a long time now. With constant growth, starting back in 2020, the team has shown that a mainly German roster can still perform at the top of the world and they are longing to take back the number one spot in the world, which they held for eight weeks last year.
