IEM Katowice 2020: tournament preview

CS2 / News / 22 February 2020 — 12:40

The tournament will start on February 24!

After a short break, our team returns to the big stage of the Counter-Strike scene! From February 24th to March 1st, Natus Vincere will take part in IEM Katowice 2020, and let's see what we should expect from it.

What you need to know about the tournament:

The choice of the venue fell for the "Spodek-Arena", which opened in 1971 in the center of Katowice “Spodek” means “saucer” - the main building of this sports facility resembles a huge flying saucer. The arena seats 11,500 spectators.

The groups will use the GSL system, with 16 teams split into 2 groups of 8. All group stage matches will be best of 3.

As for the playoffs, the 3 best teams from each group will go to the final part of the tournament: the winners will immediately go to the semi-finals, and the second and third places will begin their journey from the quarter-finals. Games will be held in the usual format for everyone - single elimination, best of 3. The exception will be the grand final, where the team needs to take three maps to conquer the tournament. The prize pool is $ 500,000.

In addition, IEM Katowice is part of the Intel Grand Slam, where teams fight for $1,000,000. This amount will be received by the six-time champion of the Masters' tournaments (10 attempts after the first victory) or the four-time winner of the Masters' competitions (in this case it is necessary to win one particularly big tournament, for example, a Major.).

In the third IGS draw, the leader was not determined - five teams have one victory each. However, mousesports has the highest number of attempts to complete this quest (9), and Liquid has the lowest (5).

Group stage opponents

According to the results of the seeding, NAVI was put in group A along with Astralis, Cloud9, NiP, Vitality, Renegades, fnatic and the FaZe Clan, which will be the first opponent of the Born to Win in the tournament.

Group A

QUARTER FINALS
SEMIFINALS
WINNERS' FINALS
TO THE SEMIS

Natus Vincere

FaZe Clan

Renegades

fnatic

Vitality

NiP

Astralis

Cloud9

TBD

FIRST ROUND
SECOND ROUND
THIRD ROUND
TO THE QUARTERFINALS

TBD

As for our five, the last LAN tournament for Astralis, NiP, Vitality and FaZe Clan was the qualifying stage of the BLAST Spring Series. Of the presented teams only FaZe Clan, which took first place in Group A, managed to move further in the championship. Astralis and Vitality played in the same group as NAVI and were the main contenders for the next stage, but could not meet the expectations of fans. As for NiP, the Swedes in the decisive match lost to Liquid and went to Showdown.

For fnatic, this will be the first tournament in 2020. The last competition for the Swedish team was the ESL Pro League S10 Finals, where the guys took second place. This Swedish team currently ranks fourth in the HLTV ranking.

The rival of the Swedes will be the well-known Australian organization Renegades, which last year sold their CS lineup to 100Thieves, and after some time, acquired former players of Grauhound. Australians took part in the IEM Katowice 2020 closed qualification and successfully passed it. In addition, Renegades took second place at DH Leipzig 2020.

The final representative of Group A is Cloud9, one of North America's most popular esports organizations. After an unsuccessful experiment with daps and the team he had assembled, the C9 decided to acquire a complete lineup of Sonic. This team successfully passed two closed qualifications - DH Leipzig and IEM Katowice. However, at the first championship Cloud9 game was far from perfect and the team eventually took places 5-6.

We hope that our guys, after a little rest, will continue to please us with their game. We hope that the Natus Vincere will compete for the champion title in Katowice and take the first point in the third season of Intel Grand Slam! #navination