Playing Big: IEM CSGO
IEM has been a big part of CSGO’s rise to prominence and it has shown a lot of success in bringing the game to its peak in years.
Playing Big: IEM CSGO
The Intel Extreme Masters, commonly known as IEM, is one of the biggest pro gaming tours in the world. It is one of the most hyped events every year with a lot of intense action sure to take place in most of its games. This is the reason why players and fans all wait for this annually.
IEM is a series of international tournaments held in countries all over the world. These Electronic Sports League are sanctioned events and sponsored by Intel. While there are many other titles hosted in the past, IEM has hosted events in games such as StarCraft II and CSGO as of 2020.
Turtle Entertainment owns the league and has existed for 15 seasons and is set to come up with more tournaments in 2021. The season finals has the largest prize pool every year and takes place in Katowice, Poland. Most mid-season events are held in many cities around the globe, which includes Chicago, Shanghai and Sydney.
IEM is also the longest-running pro gaming tour in the world. In 2006, the Intel-sponsored European tournament saw a big chance to expand outside of the continent. This led to the events outside of Europe especially in the North American markets.
When it was established, IEM came up with a format of many smaller events for qualifying teams and sorted out the big number of teams in the world. Since then, IEM has boasted participants hailing from Europe, North America and Asia.
In over 15 seasons, the competition has begun with the likes of Counter-Strike, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, League of Legends and more. The Counter-Strike 1.6 tournament was considered as one of the Counter-Strike Majors from 2008 to 2012, when CSGO was released after.
IEM Seasons
Since the first IEM season in 2007, the gaming tour has seen a total of 51 tournaments for Counter-Strike and 25 of those have been played with CSGO. The first tournament played for IEM was the World Championship from March 15-18, 2007, and Team Pentagram emerged as winners over H2k-Gaming.
The second season only saw two tournaments played for IEM. The first tournament was on October 18-21, 2007 and saw Fnatic take a win over SK Gaming. This was followed by mousesports’ big win over e-STRO in the IEM II World Championship in March 2008.
After the big success in the second season, IEM has added more tournaments to get a lot of teams to join the hype. A total of eight tournaments were held, with teams such as SK Gaming, Fnatic, mousesports, e-STRO, and many more taking wins.
Fnatic came up with two wins in that stretch, taking the Global Challenge Montreal in October 2008 and the World Championship in 2009. Season four proved to be a big year for Fnatic as they have won one out of three finals they have played in. Natus Vincere emerged victorious in the World Championship and defeated Fnatic for the season-clinching title.
Season five was not that different for Fnatic as they have won the Global Challenge Shanghai and the European Championship Finals. However, they failed to reach the final for the World Championship as Natus Vincere won the title once more in a tight series against the Frag eXecutors.
Na’Vi stepped up their game in season six with two finals appearances. They won the Global Challenge in Kiev only to drop their shot at the World Championship in a loss to ESC Gaming.
CSGO and the New Era for IEM
CSGO brought many opportunities for teams and players with the new game. This proved to be the next level for both Counter-Strike and IEM as they held bigger tournaments with more audiences in tow.
The new free CSGO skins attracted many players to get up on the hype train, and it made the game better by putting personal touches for player weapons and equipment.
It was not until season X in 2015 that IEM held a tournament for CSGO. The first CSGO tournament for IEM was held in IEM X gamescom, where Team Envy defeated Team SoloMid. The former came back in the next event, IEM X San Jose but lost to Na’Vi.
See the latest odds in Roulette
Season X was concluded with Fnatic taking up a surprise win at the World Championship against Luminosity Gaming in March 2016.
Since then, more CSGO teams have emerged as contenders and have taken over most of the former teams which played in Counter-Strike tournaments. The likes of FaZe Clan, Astralis, Ninjas in Pyjamas and Team Liquid have dominated the scene from season 11 up to season 15.
The last IEM tournament played was the IEM XV Global Challenge, which saw Astralis win over Team Liquid back in December 15-20, 2020. Most of the events in season 15 were held online due to the pandemic as it hampered the live games in big arenas.
IEM CSGO in 2021
ESL Gaming claimed that the IEM Katowice 2021 will be played in-person at a studio in Europe. While a specific location is yet to be announced, there are a lot of concerns on how players are going to come up with a flight right away due to the travel restrictions.
There are also rumours that the IEM Katowice 2021 will be open to the public. However, ESL Gaming is quick to deny those and claims that an in-person audience will still be prohibited for the 2021 event. They also said that the plans will change depending on how the year pans out for CSGO.
‘The decision will be continuously evaluated in line with the latest guidance as we approach the tournament date’, ESL said in their statement. ‘With a fallback contingency plan in place to host the competition online if required’.
IEM Katowice 2021 will also serve as host to several championship-level competitions for CSGO, StarCraft II and Warcraft III: Reforged. Those who bought tickets for the 2021 event can either hold on to them in 2022 or seek a refund.
The 2021 edition of the IEM Katowice is still fragile. Should the pandemic continue to worsen with the new virus strain, then IEM might revert to online play in Europe once more. Online setting could be favourable along with the new free CSGO skins that will be available upon the next updates.
The dates remain the same for the tournament. Play-in starts on February 16-17, followed by the Group Stage on February 18-21. The playoffs will ensue on February 26-28. IEM Katowice has a $1,000,000 prize pool and will have 24 teams fight for the title.
Teams such as Heroic, Astralis, Team Vitality and Na’Vi are all set for the Group Stage along with G2 Esports, FaZe Clan, Furia Esports and Evil Geniuses. They are waiting for eight more teams coming from the play-in stage.
Fnatic, Complexity, OG, and Team Liquid will play it out in the play-in stage. Joining them is Chaos Esports Club, Tyloo, BOOM Esports Club and Renegades. They will wait for six more teams to join the fray while the other two teams will come from the Polish National Champion and European Champions Cup winners.
Team Chances in Katowice 2021
While most teams took their time to relax in the winter break, some teams have worked hard to secure their chance in the game’s biggest event.
Astralis has picked up the same pace they had to end 2020 as it continued to stomp other teams with their great roster. The team crushed the Evil Geniuses in their opening matchup for the BLAST Global Finals with a 16-8 and 16-6 map wins after losing in the first one.
Unless Astralis will have a meltdown, it is easy to say that the team has the best chance of clinching the title at the IEM Katowice 2021.
Behind Astralis, Vitality, and Na’Vi hold the second and third spot. Both finished 2020 with a pace that rivaled Astralis for the first place, but only one team has the potential to do so to start 2021. Na’Vi struggled hard in their losing matchup against Team Liquid at BLAST, and Vitality breezed their own way against Complexity.
Na’Vi continues to be inconsistent despite the team’s moves to surround star Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev with more firepower. This is very frustrating for the team’s fans as they have been on the hunt for more success.
Still, Astralis looks like they have the best chance of winning considering the fact that they have won the last two Majors. This only shows big promise for the team as they remain the heavy favourites to win IEM Katowice.
With the IEM still in play, this only means that more CSGO teams have the chance to show their impressive runs in the game. Perhaps the biggest factor that the gaming tour gives out for CSGO’s future is that it attracts more players to join the fray in the long run.
For more CSGO updates, visit Gamdom.com
Words: Paul Daniel Flores
