IEM Katowice 2020: what made us happy with the tournament?

Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2020 started on February 24th and will end on March 1st. Over the past 4 days, he managed to surprise us both in a good and in a bad sense. In this article we will talk about the main points that we encountered while watching the championship.

Virtus.pro is not in shape

On December 16, a historic moment came for the five Kazakh players playing under the AVANGAR tag. They decided to sign a contract with Virtus.pro . All would be fine, but right after the e-sportsmen went under the wing of VP, the good results they show from time to time disappeared somewhere. Virtus.pro took part in four LAN tournaments. At EPICENTER 2019, they took 7th-8th place out of 8 possible, becoming 1 participant who left the event. "The guys were excited - the fans kept saying - next time they will perform better." At DreamHack Open Leipzig 2020, VP again took 7-8th place, although the list of participants was much scarcer than at the last LAN-event. "Not warmed up - the fans thought - there will still be!" But here came the ICE Challenge 2020 and Virtus.pro took 5-6 place out of 8 possible. Already not 7-8 place and that’s good! However, IEM Katowice 2020 once again showed that there are serious problems in the ranks of VP. Once in Group B, VP first faced Team Liquid , and after that they were knocked out of the championship by MAD Lions, who got in good shape. This time, the Kazakhs broke their anti-record under the VP tag and took 13-16th place, becoming on a par with such participants as Cloud9, Renegades and TYLOO.

The team coach honestly admitted that the management is already considering possible solutions to the problem and if the results do not change, then the roster will definitely undergo changes.

There is safety in numbers

ZywOo has a reputation for being an incredible shooter and has been named the best player of 2019 by HLTV. Despite this, Team Vitality proves time after time that the success of a team cannot be built solely on its individual abilities. Winning EPICENTER 2019 by beating the mousesports in the finals is cool, but what about 2020? 7th-9th place on the BLAST Premier Spring Series 2020 Regular Season and 9th-12th place on the IEM Katowice 2020 are not at all the achievements that the best CS: GO player in the world deserves in 2019.

The end of the mousesports era?

We all remember how in late October, mouz began their victorious march? On the 31st of Ropz with his teammates took 2nd place in the European qualification at EPICENTER 2019 and away we go. First they submitted to the CS: GO Asia Championships 2019 with a prize pool of $ 500,000, after which they won the ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals, again winning a quarter of a million dollars. Arriving at cs_summit 5, which was not a priority for the team, mousesports left their mark on the history of eSports . In the grand final, Rejin was present on the first map as a mouz coach, and when it became known that Karrigan, the team captain could not finish the meeting, it was quickly decided to replace the Dane with his fellow countryman-mentor. On the second map, mousesports were defeated with a score of 16-1 and G2 already felt the taste of victory. Despite this, mouz won in the hard fight on the last map with a score of 16-14 and Rejin became the first person to win the tournament grand finals as a coach and player of the team at the same time. After such a triumphant end to cs_summit 5, the Europeans went to EPICENTER 2019 to win. By a cruel joke of fate, the tournament, which was a priority for Ropz and its allies, from the end of October, was the only championship in which they could not win at the end of 2019.

The beginning of 2020 was also successful for mouz and the team, speaking in the ICE Challenge 2020, won first place and earned $ 125,000. Many expected mousesports at IEM Katowice 2020 a similar result and a beautiful game from Europeans, since all the prerequisites led to the fact that the team will perform well. As a result, mousesports could only beat TYLOO and could not cope with the power of G2 Esports and MAD Lions, as a result of which they took 7th-8th place in the event. Mousesports fans who came to Poland to watch their idols probably lost the opportunity to see the players in the playoffs before they even left the tournament - the government forbade ESL to hold the final stage with the reception of spectators. Now a logical question looms over mouz: the end of an era or a one-time bad result?

FaZe Clan and Evil Geniuses , where are you going so early?

Some spectators during the tournament expected to see these groups in the list of participants in the final stage, but were disappointed with what happened. In the last and very hot and difficult fight with Natus Vincere FaZe Clan, they were defeated in the match for the playoffs. Evil Geniuses took off in the second round of the lower bracket after the match against 100 Thieves . As a result, the above-mentioned teams took 7-8 and 9-12 places in the standings, respectively. Are we surprised at this? Not really. Would we be very surprised if FaZe and EG reached the playoffs? The answer is similar.

The new era of G2 Esports ?

It's no secret that G2 as a team as a whole and individual players individually are very dependent on the moral mood of the team for a particular match and tournament. If the atmosphere in the team is good, then the e-sportsmen will perform well, if it is bad, then, accordingly, it will be bad. Judging by the fact that they took second place at cs_summit 5 G2, and at the Champions Cup Finals 2019 and BLAST Premier Spring Series 2020 Regular Season they became winners at all, then things are going uphill. The French have already secured top 4 at IEM Katowice 2020, defeating 100 Thieves , mousesports and Team Liquid in the group stage. Given the fact that in the match for reaching the grand final the team will meet with 100 Thieves, the Australians who have already beaten, or Fnatic, not the most formidable, but, nevertheless, serious opponent, we dare to assume that G2 is still will reach the grand finals. Their performance makes us think that the likelihood of seeing kennyS raising the goblet again is high.

NAVI DAVI

The transition of Perfecto to the ranks of Natus Vincere and the transfer of s1mple to the role of the main sniper is definitely one of the best decisions that has been made by the club's management over the past few months, and possibly even years. As we can see, in a fairly short period of time, the roster was able to break out into higher positions. The secret of success, according to Alexander 's1mple' Kostylev, is precisely in the atmosphere in the team and, oddly enough, in the age of the players. When the 28-year-old GuardiaN and the 32-year-old Zeus were in the Born to Win squad, it was extremely difficult to achieve such results, which means that these words definitely have a sense and some truth. The current age of all CS: GO roster players is 20-22.

100 Thieves, what are you doing? Go on!

100 Thieves did not come to the championship as a favorite, but this did not prevent the Australians from achieving good results. In Group B, they were defeated in the fight against G2 and, having descended to the bottom bracket, knocked out TYLOO, Evil Geniuses and mousesports from the championship. If we say that the results of the last two matches were a surprise to the audience, then this will be a strong understatement. Will the 100 Thieves be able to beat Fnatic, reach the semifinals, take a rematch at G2 and compete in the grand finals with Astralis / Team Liquid / Natus Vincere? Find out soon!

S for stability

Team Liquid perform quite stably for a long time. They may not have the best results over and over again, but if you pay attention to all their performances over the past year, you can see the regularity of regular exits to the playoffs and grand finals. At IEM Katowice 2020 Liquid already reached the top 6 and the team provided a minimum cash reward of $ 15,000, but this is not the result that the Americans want to achieve. They have stated many times that they are still hungry for victories, which means that today we can expect their triumph over Natus Vincere, their principal opponent. If they win tomorrow, they will have to contend with their personal Danish kryptonite grade, Astralis. The eternal confrontation between Astralis and Team Liquid is like an e-sports el-classic, like the FC Barcelona and Real Madrid wrestling in football, as a separate art form that we can see tomorrow (if Liquid beat NAVI, of course).

The Swedes from Fnatic easily fall under the concept of "stability." Over the past 4 months, the team took part in 6 LAN tournaments and entered the top 4 five times, won the silver medal three times, won 1 time and only 7th place took 1 time. Is this not a reason to assume that Fnatic will reach the semifinals, having defeated 100 Thieves?