Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII – World Championship

IEM Katowice 2019

2019
The Intel Extreme Masters logo
Tournament information
Sport	Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Location	Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland
Dates	February 14, 2019–March 3, 2019
Administrator(s)	Valve Corporation ESL
Venue	Spodek
Teams	24 teams
Purse	$1,000,000 USD

The Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII – World Championship, or IEM Katowice 2019, will be the world championship for the thirteenth season of the Intel Extreme Masters and the fourteenth Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship. It will be held in Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland from February 14 – March 3, 2019.^[1] Fourteen teams will qualify for the IEM Katowice Major based on their top fourteen placements from the last Major, the FACEIT Major: London 2018, while another ten teams will qualify from their respective regional qualifiers.^[2] It features a $1,000,000 USD prize pool and twenty-four professional teams from around the world as within previous Majors. It is also notably being held by ESL, whose last Major was in 2016. This will also be part of the Intel Grand Slam. The IEM Katowice Major will be the seventh consecutive major with a prize pool of $1,000,000 since Valve announced the prize pool increase from $250,000 at MLG Columbus 2016.^[3][4]

Background

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve Corporation. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. In competitive play, the game pits two teams against each other: the Terrorists and the Counter-Terrorists. Both sides are tasked with eliminating the other while also completing separate objectives. The Terrorists must either plant a bomb or kill the entire Counter-Terrorist team, while the Counter-Terrorists must either prevent the bomb from being planted by killing the entire Terrorist team or defusing the bomb. At the end of each round, players are rewarded based on their individual performance with in-game currency to spend on more powerful weapons in subsequent rounds. Winning rounds results in more money than losing, and completing objectives such as killing enemy players gives cash bonuses. However, the more consecutive rounds a team loses, the more money the losing team earns, with the loss bonus capping after five rounds; once that team wins a round, the loss round bonus resets to the minimum amount each player could earn after a round.

The current defending champion is Astralis, which won its second Major. The Swedish team Fnatic won three Majors to be the most decorated CS:GO team in history.

Format

There are four regional qualifiers – Americas, Asia, CIS, and Europe. Two teams from each qualifier move on to the New Challengers stage. Each Minor will feature eight teams. In addition, the teams that placed third in their respective Minors will have another shot at the Major as since Valve Corporation reduced the number of direct invites from sixteen to fourteen, the last two spots will be decided through a third place qualifier, in which the teams that placed third at each Minor will play until two teams remain.

The Major will feature twenty-four teams. The top eight teams from the FACEIT Major: London 2018 are known as Legends. The remaining sixteen teams are known as Challengers. The Major is split up into three stages. The first stage is the New Challengers stage, which features all the Challengers, which includes the teams that placed ninth through fourteenth at the FACEIT Major and the ten teams that came through the Minors system.; the top eight teams advance to the next stage and the bottom eight teams are sent home. The second stage is the New Legends stage. This stage features the eight Legends from the London Major and the eight teams from the New Challengers stage. Like the New Challengers stage, the New Legends stage will also have the top eight teams move on to the next stage and the bottom eight teams eliminated. However, the top six teams from the bottom eight teams are automatically invited to the next Major. The final stage is the New Champions stage. This stage features an eight team, best of three, single elimination bracket. Teams play until a winner is decided.

Regional qualifiers

Each regional qualifier, called "Minors", will feature eight teams, whether through direct invitation or through qualifiers. Each Minor also had a US$50,000 prize pool, with first place receiving US$30,000, second place taking in US$15,000, and third place raking in the last US$5,000.

Teams competing

References