A brief look at the Group Stages of IEM Katowice 2022.
The group competition has come to a close with six teams going into Playoffs of the IEM Katowice tournament. As expected from such a big event, the fight to the next stage has been fierce. We had two groups in the competition with a double-elimination format. Top eight teams from the Play-Ins were a part of the groups along with the ones who directly qualified for the event. Let’s have a look at what happened in each group of IEM Katowice.
Group A
Upper Bracket
The group started with Team Vitality asserting their dominance on MOUZ with a 2-1 victory. Heroic started with a 2-1 win against OG and Virtus.pro got a 2-0 victory against CPH Flames. Ninjas in Pyjamas had tough opponents in the form of Gambit, but they managed to get a 2-1 win.
To everyone’s surprise, Heroic crushed Vitality two games to nil in the second round. Virtus.pro also got the upper hand against NiP in a 2-1 victory.
The third round saw Heroic pull another strong performance against VP with a 2-0 stomp. The first match on Mirage was brutal for VP as they struggled to get rounds and lost 16-5. Although VP’s performance in the second match on Vertigo was a lot better, it was not enough to beat Heroic, who won 16-10.
Both Heroic and VP were the teams who made it to the Playoffs.
Lower Bracket
In the first round, MOUZ went against OG in the Lower Bracket and won with a 2-0 scoreline. CPH Flames lost 2-1 against Gambit Esports.
We saw NiP win 2-0 against MOUZ in the start of the second round. Whereas, Gambit Esports dominated Team Vitality with a 2-0 score.
The third and last round had Gambit written all over it. The Russian team won 2-0 against NiP and qualified for the Playoffs. Gambit had a 16-10 scoreline on Ancient and a 16-12 win on Vertigo.
Group B
Upper Bracket
In the first round of Group B, Natus Vincere came on top against ENCE with a 2-1 score. FURIA Esports defeated an under performing Astralis side 2-0. FaZe Clan won 2-1 against Liquid and Fnatic also had the same score against G2 Esports.
The second round started with NAVI beating FURIA 2-0. FaZe also got the better of Fnatic with a 2-1 score.
NAVI won the last round 2-1 against FaZe as both teams qualified for the Playoffs. The first match on Overpass was a close one with FaZe winning by three rounds. The second match on Dust II was a 16-12 win for NAVI and so was the last match on Mirage. It went to overtime in a close game, but NAVI edged it with a score of 22-19.
Lower Bracket
Astralis won 2-1 against ENCE in the first round. On the other hand, G2 stomped Team Liquid 2-0.
We saw Astralis beat Fnatic 2-1 and G2 win 2-1 against FURIA in the second round.
Astralis’ run came to an end after G2 won 2-1 against them in the last round. Astralis won the first match on Ancient with a 16-12 score line. However, G2 came back strong in the second match on Dust II and won by a huge margin of 11 rounds. The third match on Inferno was also similar to the second game, with G2 winning 16-1.
Stay tuned to ESTNN for more coverage on the IEM Katowice 2022 tournament.