Four Teams Qualified - IEM Katowice 2023 Day 1 Recap

Day 1 of IEM Katowice kicked off with quite a bang as all 16 teams from the Play-In stage had a go at each other at the Spodek Arena. All of the opening matches were BO1s, meaning a loss here would mean a fight for survival in the lower brackets.

Upper Bracket Round 1:

Furia, Fnatic, Team Spirit, ENCE and Cloud9 all won their opening games dominantly, not allowing the other teams to even get at double digit round wins. This means that Permitta Esports, Complexity, EG, Grayhound, MIBR, paiN Gaming and IHC Esports have all been relegated to the lower bracket. Lower Bracket matches will be played on day 2. Check the Schedule here.

Upper Bracket Round 2:

Game 1: Furia vs BIG

Both teams were quite evenly matched on Map 1: Anubis, but BIG came into form, and absolutely dominated Furia in the First halves of booths Maps 2 and 3: Mirage and Ancient, winning both maps 16-9. K1to also put up a monstrous performance on Ancient with 33 kills and a 1.99 rating. They won the series 2:1, with k1to putting up a 70 kill total and a 1.40 overall rating.

Game 2: Fnatic vs OG

Even though managed to win their opening map on Overpass, they were dominated by OG in the other two. Pulling out some amazing T side halves on both Mirage and Inferno, OG won the series 2:1. Everyone on the team had a great performance,  all of them getting 40+ kills overall. Flamez led the table with 53.

Game 3: NIP vs Team Spirit

The only game of the day that didn’t require all three maps to be settled, NIP absolutely destroyed Team Spirit on both Nuke and Mirage. First map went the way of NIP at 16:7, with Aleksib topping the table at 21 kills. Headtr1ck also put on a show as he got 10 AWP kills out of 18. Map 2 was starting to look quite even, but a poor showing from Team Spirit on their T side allowed them to only get one round. Headtr1ck again had most AWP kills at 10 out of a total 19.

Game 4: ENCE vs Cloud9

Final game of the day had ENCE take on Cloud9 in another 3 map feud. Cloud9 won ENCE’s map pick of Anubis at 16:10.Sh1ro topped the table with 25 kills, 16 of them coming from the AWP. ENCE fought back on Inferno, showing Cloud9 how to play their own map as they won 16-8. Final map of the day was Vertigo. Both teams looked quite even in the first half, as it ended 8-7 in favor of ENCE. However, Cloud9 had a much better CT half, and won 6 rounds in a row. They only managed to give up one more round, and won two more after that to win the map 16-13.

BIG, OG, NIP and Cloud9 are the first 4 teams to qualify to the Group Stages. While the other 4 teams will play in the Lower Bracket Round 2.

Image Source: ESL