The preview of Intel Extreme Masters Summer 2021
Ihor MatusThe general information
Another CS:GO championship in the Intel Extreme Masters series starts very soon. IEM Summer 2021 will be hosted on June 3-13 and its overall prize pool will amount to $250,000. 16 participants who begin their road in the group stage will work on the distribution of the prizes. The winner will earn the main reward of $100,000.
By the way, the first matches will be held in a bo1 format, while the rest of the group stage matches will be carried out in a bo3 series. Regarding the playoffs, the teams will play bo3 matches and the grand final will be hosted in a bo5 series.
Group A includes the following teams: Gambit Esports, Sprout, Team Vitality, Complexity Gaming, Astralis, FPX Esports, Extra Salt, and G2 Esports. Group B includes Heroic, Imperial Esports, Evil Geniuses, Team Spirit, NiP, OG, Fnatic, and Virtus.pro.
We will choose the most interesting participants in our opinion, talk about each of them, and reveal if they are able to claim victory, and if they are, we will tell you why.
Gambit Esports
Gambit Esports is, in fact and by definition, the best team in the world now. The team is almost in the same situation as Astralis was 5 years ago when they decided to conquer the whole CS:GO scene on their own and win tournaments, leaving no chances to their opponents. Only in May, Gambit managed to perform at two big championships and placed 1st at one of them and 2nd at another one. The team lost to Natus Vincere in the final battle at DreamHack Masters Spring 2021 and held the 2nd place at the tournament but the RMR championship EPIC League CIS 2021 was over with a victory for Gambit Esports. This allowed the team not only to prove itself against the lost participants of the event and earn a money prize but to earn rating points, which should be enough to receive a direct invitation to PGL Major Stockholm 2021, the first Major CS:GO tournament with the prize pool of $2,000,000.
Now, Gambit is undoubtedly the strongest team in the world and even Natus Vincere with Heroic changed their 2nd and 3rd positions in the world rate but Gambit is still on the top and the team has almost the maximum number of rating points. The esportsmen have proved once and once again that they are definitely one of the best, so we have no doubts that Gambit will make it to the playoffs and probably to the grand final.
Team Vitality
The French team previously shined brighter than stars and demonstrated a nice play at a row of big international tournaments. This time has passed and when viewers see the name Vitality, they understand that the team will probably not advance to the final stage. ZywOo with his teammates can’t enter the top ten CS:GO rosters in the world by HLTV. Mathieu Herbaut placed 3th-7th, 7th-8th, 9th-16th, and 13th-16th at the last events. There is no reason why Vitality will be able to prevail at IEM Summer 2021. However, they will probably proceed to the final stage of the event. There are a few teams, which will lose to Vitality in their matches, in Group A and there are three invitations to the playoffs for the top eight.
It will be interesting to follow the actions by Vitality, however, we can’t hope for them a lot.
Astralis
Astralis has demonstrated bad results at the last championships. They held the 5th-6th place at ESL Pro League Season 13, the 9th-16th place at BLAST Premier Spring Showdown 2021, the 5th-6th at DreamHack Masters 2021, and the team was not able to reach higher than the 3rd-6th place at Flashpoint Season 3. Now, the Danes will have to fight with FPX Esports and the other teams in Group A, which will play against gla1ve and his teammates in the next rounds. On the Internet, there are discussions about the moment when Xyp9X will finally leave the main roster and provide his slot to the talented newcomers. Andreas Højsleth, according to a part of the audience, should have retired a long time ago because his peak shape has gone. Despite all his achievements and results in the Danish club, Xyp9x should go, according to viewers. Probably, if Astralis performs at this tournament in a bad way this time, Xyp9X will stop playing for Astralis.
NiP
We decided to go from Astralis to NiP due to the reason that one of the ex-players of the Danish club, Nicolai ‘device’ Reedtz has recently moved there. The Dane has got into a scandal with Anonymo Esports recently. If you do not remember, we will remind you: the Poles from Anonymo Esports had to replay the third map with the Europeans because they had bad conditions for the game. The Polish team had to agree and replayed that map and NiP, in its turn, prevailed in that match. After that, the team proved that it made it for a reason because Ninjas in Pyjamas made it to the grand final in the end and placed second at Flashpoint Season 3. This result is pretty good, considering the recent arrival of device and this tournament being a debut one for him. We should not forget that it was a rating tournament and NiP earned the reward of 1,500 RMR points for the second place.
The management of NiP decided to make a replacement in its CS:GO rosters. The management swapped Erik ‘ztr’ Gustafsson and Linus ‘LNZ’ Holtäng. Now, the first one will play in the youth squad after he helped the team to achieve some success, and LNZ will hold tri’s slot and will be a temporary player of the main roster of NiP. This line-up can’t be called the final one because the management has stated that it wants to experiment with its players. This championship will answer the question about the relevance of this experiment and also will make it clear if ztr was that bad that the team was going to fire him.
OG
OG became the champions of Spring Sweet Spring #2 only yesterday, so we have questions regarding the further performance by valde and his teammates. The team earned $40,000 and now, it can lose its motivation. Besides, due to three played matches in the playoffs of Spring Sweet Spring #2, OG may be tired and they can lose the first match, which will be held in a bo1 format.
Heroic
The team Heroic is one of the strongest, despite the results of the Danes leaving much more to be desired sometimes. According to the statement of the captain of Gambit Esports, the CIS team is not the strongest in the world because Heroic is on the same level. On one hand, this phrase can be a sign of respect, referring to the Danes, however, these two teams definitely can compete with each other and fight for the title of the best team in the world.
In our opinion, Heroic is one of those teams, which achievements will be interesting to follow in every match.
Evil Geniuses
One thought that is rolling around in the head when we look at the name of the team — “Come back is real?”. And in fact, EG stopped being the team, which could be called one of the strongest in the North American region a long time ago. With the arrival of COVID-19 in our life, the North American CS:GO became way weaker and Evil Geniuses is a nice confirmation. The team does not enter the top 30 teams in the world. It holds the 38th place. Secondly, the last championship with the participation of EG was an absolute confusion for the fans of the American club. The rating cs_summit 8 was over for EG quickly, maybe too quickly. We would even say that the quickest. The team was the first participant to finish its road at the event. Evil Geniuses held the last 7th-8th place in the standings at cs_summit 8.
But what if “come back is still real”?
The organization of the tournament
One of the most interesting and not that standard questions, which we ask before this tournament, is “How will the tournament be organized?”. This rating season has become a pretty meme and absurd. There was total anarchy at RMR tournaments. NiP did not want to stop the match, in which they had lags, at Flashpoint Season 3, after which they had to participate in rematches. There were its own interesting moments at EPIC CIS League Spring 2021. The organizers could say that the match for the 5th place between NAVI and Entropiq should be played or they could say that the teams refused and there will be no match. Later, it appeared that the participation was mandatory and if someone misses it, it will not earn the rating RMR points, which motivated the teams to fight at the championship.
Now, we have another CS:GO tournament ahead, Intel Extreme Masters 2021. It can be hosted not in the best way too. We are more optimistic about IEM Summer 2021 rather than pessimistic, however, we can’t be sure about its success. The upcoming championship will answer lots of our questions.