Ok so for those of you that are new to this I will do my best to explain how the system works. The IEM Katowice 2019 Major will be using a slightly modified version of the well known Swiss System. Basically, each team will play in BO1's (Best of Ones) until they are on the verge of moving on or being eliminated. Once teams make it to either a 2-0 / 2-1 / 2-2 / 1-2 / 2-2 / 0-2 standing, they will then have to play in BO3's (Best of Three) to either advance or be eliminated.

In addition, this major will also have us picking teams for the Prelims. Basically, its the exact same thing as what was stated above, but for the teams that are yet to secure their spot in the major.

Once the prelims and group stage are over, the matches will be played in a normal bracket, meaning quarterfinals, semifinals and the finals.

In the old pick'em challenge, you would pick the winner of each individual match (which is what you do in the bracket stage of this tournament) but for the group stage, you pick seven teams you think will go through, one team that will go undefeated and one team that will be knocked out without winning a single game (just a side note there will be 2 teams that are undefeated and 2 teams that are completely wiped out).

With the winter player break recently ending, and a somewhat surprising start to the new year, the major will be a great kickoff for Counter-Strike in 2019. Like always, we see a few new faces around but lets start off with some of the big hitters:

First We Have Our 8 Legendary Teams:

-Astralis
-Team Liquid
-NAVI
-MIBR
-Complexity
-BIG
-HellRaisers
-Faze Clan

Next Up We Have Our 6 Returning Challengers:

-NIP
-Fnatic
-G2
-Vega Squadron
-Cloud 9
-Tyloo

And Lastly We Have Our 10 The Minor Challengers:

-ENCE
-NRG
-Avangar
-Renegades
-Vitality
-Furia
-Team Spirt
-Grayhound Gaming
-WinStrike
-ViCi Gaming

My Picks:

3-0 (Undefeated Team) - Avangar *** Please Read Reasoning
0-3 (Eliminated Without a Win) - ViCi

7 Remaining Teams That Will Advance:

-Fnatic

-NRG

-C9

-Vitality

-ENCE

-NIP

-G2

Now that I have shown my picks for the Prelim Stage, I thought it might be a good idea to discuss some of my reasoning on who I picked.


Avangar For 3-0:

Ok so hear me out. The team that I am going to pick for my 3-0, is not a team that I actually believe will go 3-0. The reason being, that I do not want to waste points. If I were to say pick a team like Fnatic or NRG to go 3-0, and they ended up going 3-1, I would receive no points for that pick. Instead, I would rather pick them to simply advance so that I get the points as long as they go through. So for 3-0, its best to just go with a wildcard pick. A team that has the potential to deliver a crazy upset. And for me, that pick is either, Avangar / Tyloo / Furia / Vega. I suggest you go with your gut on this one, its never an easy pick to make and to be honest, since you don't earn higher points for getting it right, there is really no incentive to throw away a good team by using them for it. (Also it is worth noting that I think Avangar has the easiest opening match up out of the teams that I suggested).

ViCi For 0-3:

Just like trying to pick a 3-0 team, the 0-3 is in no way easy either. The reason I picked ViCi is because they are, on paper, the weakest team in the prelims. They have recently lost games against Vega, Flash, Renegades, Grayhound, Winstrike and a few other lesser known teams. The only thing that they have riding for them, is that they upset North, twice, in the minor, allowing them to advance to this point, rather than North. As always, this is never an obvious choice to make, but other teams that are in this stage have proven that they can beat ViCi, and ViCi hasn't really shown anything that they are capable of (other than the North games).

The 7 Teams To Advance:

Fnatic:

Fnatic is, in my opinion, one of the strongest teams in this stage of the major. They had a decent showing at the IBP tournament in January, and managed to take maps off of Cloud 9, Complexity, and Team Liquid. Overall I am fairly confident in their current lineup and I don't think this is a team that should be worried about getting through the first stage. They have veteran players on board and should be able to battle their way through most of these teams.

NRG:

NRG is another team that, In my opinion, should be able to breeze through this stage. The lineup didn't drop a single map in the Americas Minor, taking down teams such as Furia, Envy, Bravado, Imperial, Singularity, and Intact. This team would be the rival for strongest team in the stage, with as I said, Fnatic being the other.

Cloud 9:

Another Major, another Cloud 9 lineup. C9 has had quite an interesting start to the 2019 CS season. At the IBP Masters, they showed strength against teams like Fnatic and Astralis but fell short overall. However, shortly after IBP, the Eleague Invitational took place, and although C9 placed 2nd, they showed tremendous improvements. They 2-0'd the Faze and BIG and then lost to Faze 2-1 in the Finals. For such a new roster, it is quite amazing that they were able to accomplish this.

Vitality:

Results, results, results. Vitality has been on an absolute tear for the last few months. The team has been taking down names such as HellRaisers, Optic, VP, AGO, North, and Valiance. The raw firepower on this team makes it a scary one. If one French Team is to make it into the legends stage this major, lets just say I don't think it will be G2.

ENCE

So now we are starting to get into dangerous territory. ENCE is my last stable pick for this stage. They played well during the EU Minor, beating teams such as LDLC, Heroic, ex-Space Soldiers, Windigo, Valiance, and North. During the ESEA MDL season, they also beat a lot of lesser known teams with the exception of beating AGO. I think this is a risky pick but still more on the safe side.

NIP:

NIP hasn't played a match since December 15th of last year. It's hard to see where they sit in the mists of all these teams that have for the most part been quite active over the last month. Looking into December, they took loss after loss with the only exception being a 15-15 tie against Faze. However, even though they were losing all these games, they were playing much higher skilled opponents than what most of the teams in this stage usually face. For example, they have been playing against C9, Faze, Astralis, MIBR, NAVI, etc... And even though they lost these matches, they happened to all be decently close games. I think if NIP had a good boot camp, they will be successful in this stage of the major.

G2:

I'll be honest, this last spot was originally going to be Furia, but after the IEM Sydney Closed Qualifiers, I am rather impressed by G2. They didn't do great, but they were able to beat Optic, 3DMAX and put up a scrappy fight against BIG. I think Furia is a good team, and they are a pretty strong dark horse for this stage, but I also think that G2 has a strong advantage in experience alone.

Don't Have The Graphics This Time But Here Are All The Results:

Day Four:

NIP 2-1 Vega Squadron

G2 2-1 Fnatic

C9 2-1 Furia


Day Five:

NIP 2-1 ViCi

G2 2-1 Tyloo

C9 2-0 Winstrike

After an exciting week of Counter-Strike, we have concluded the Challengers Stage of the IEM Katowice Major. All in all, my picks did fairly well, considering the absolute blunder during the day one opening matches.

If you haven't been following along, here were the standings of the stage:





With that being said, we got 6 correct picks out of the possible 9 in this stage. The 3 wrong picks being my 3-0 (AVANGAR), my 0-3 (ViCi), and one of my 7 advancing teams (that being Fnatic).

With this major's Pick'Em Challenge being a bit different from the ones prior, all you needed was 5 correct picks to get a point for this stage, any extra picks are essentially not worth anything more than bragging rights. Hope everyone is doing well in their picks so far and I look forward to updating you soon with the next stage.

My Picks:

3-0 (Undefeated Team) - ENCE
0-3 (Eliminated Without a Win) - Complexity

7 Remaining Teams That Will Advance:

-Astralis

-Team Liquid

-NRG

-MIBR

-G2

-BIG

-Faze

Now that I have shown my picks for the Legends Stage, I thought it might be a good idea to discuss some of my reasoning on who I picked.

ENCE For 3-0:

Starting to feel like a broken record when it comes to my 3-0 / 0-3 picks. ENCE is not the team I think of when I see 3-0. However, following my strategy from the previous stage, I will not be picking a team that I really believe will go 3-0 simply because I want to get points for them no matter what. For example, I would normally say Astralis or Team Liquid are your best bets for 3-0, but worse case scenario, if either of them goes 3-1, your points for them are gone. ENCE has their first game against Renegades, and just in the last stage, ENCE lost to them 2-0. This is a seriously risky pick. In the series they played, ENCE lost on Nuke 7:16 and on Mirage 14:16. I think that in a B01 scenario, ENCE has a great chance to strike back at Renegades, and in my opinion have a decent shot at making it through this stage considering they are in the middle of the seeding. This is the biggest hail marry play I've made during the pick'ems, and fully understand if you don't want to follow it. My other recommendations for 3-0 are Astralis / Liquid / BIG / Renegades.

Complexity For 0-3:

Listen, I love Jordan and the rest of the boys on COL, but statistics don't lie. COL is the weakest team in this stage of the major. They have had quite some poor results in the past and really lack in raw firepower. The last time we doubted them, they ended up getting Legend Status at the FaceIt London Major, so I am not trying to say they are completely out of it, but I would be very surprised to see them pick up a map, especially considering that they play Astralis in the first match.

The 7 Teams To Advance:

Astralis:

Not much to say here. If you don't have Astralis going through then you must have some serious insider information. They are easily the strongest team in the major, this doesn't make them invincible (they recently lost to Liquid at the IBP Tournament), but I can't see a world that they don't make top 8. *Also Rest In Peace to dupreeh's father who recently passed away <3 Nothing but love and respect for him and his family.

Team Liquid:

Same story as Astralis, not much to discuss about Liquid. They are an absolute powerhouse going into the major. They have looked incredibly strong and my only question mark for them was the addition of Stewie, and since he joined, they managed to conquer their demons and defeat Astralis, so I would say things are looking very good for them.

NRG:

NRG have been on an absolute tear for the past few weeks. They have yet to drop a single series since starting their journey to get to the major. I will say that I am a little concerned for them, simply because they are a young roster and they do tend to rely on star performances from time to time. If all 5 players turn up on the server, they are definitely a force to be reckoned with.

MIBR:

The sleeping Giant. Not much is known about what MIBR has been up to since they picked up Taco and Felps. The legendary roster has been boot camping for some time now and according to some of the players, it has been going very well and they are excited to get back to playing on the stage. I have very high hopes for this lineup, I think we have a great chance to see some of the glory days of LG relived in this major.

G2:

Well, what can we say about G2. Almost nobody expected them to make it this far into the major. I even said myself that if one French team would shine this event it wasn't going to be them. And I am happy that they proved me wrong. I did pick both them and Vitality to make it through the challengers stage (which they both did), and I am once again putting my trust in the Frenchmen. KennyS and Shox have looked great so far this major. I really love what they have been showing, especially their Dust 2. I think that this is a risky pick overall, we have seen what they look like on their good days and bad days so far. For me, it was either between picking them or Vitality and as much as I like both teams, G2 has impressed me more overall. I will not be picking Vitality to go through but I would not be surprised if they do end up making it.

BIG:

BIG is a team that I originally had going 3-0 in this stage. They looked pretty good recently and I really enjoy watching xantares playing with the German squad. I think Gob B is one of the worlds best IGL's and the rest of the team (Nex, Tabsen, and Tizian) are also all amazing individual players. I am looking forward to watching this team play.

Faze:

Faze is in such a weird spot right now. With Adren just recently being added to the roster, Faze has had some odd starts to the year. They lost to Ghost during the IBP tournament which was a really weak sign to me. However, they turned things around in the next event (ELEAGUE Invitational). They beat Complexity, BIG, and C9 to win the event. All in all, they have a tremendous amount of raw firepower on this lineup and its hard to say they won't make top 8.


**** A Lot Of People Have Asked Me About NAVI - it seems like there has been a lot of rumors going around lately regarding their lineup. I don't know if any of it is 100% true but from what I have heard, S1mple unfollowed Zeus from some social media accounts and they have been having some beef between them. Zeus said in an interview something along the lines of them getting top 8 would be a really good goal. There have also been some rumors that they aren't boot camping. All in all, I think Zeus will be retiring after this major, and I am very worried about them as a team making it through this stage. There seems to be a severe lack of motivation and honestly, S1mple and electronic have been hard carrying this team for so long already, it really is time for a major roster change, I don't think S1mple will be hanging around much longer if there isn't one.

**** Also for the record, I love C9 and I am very happy with how their roster has been performing with not much time to prep and adjust. Leaving them out of my picks was extremely hard being a the huge NA fan that I am, but I just didn't see enough from them yet, will be rooting for them regardless but picking them just didn't make sense statistically.

Hey everyone! So unfortunately I can no longer get the diamond coin for this major. I made some serious mistakes on the second stage, so sorry for anyone who followed me in my picks 100% on that one.

At this point, I am already pretty much guaranteed a gold coin since the new system is kinda weird. So basically what this means is I am going to be picking the teams that are some what safe bets for the next stage but I am also going to be simply rooting for the teams I want to see succeed.

There is a high chance that we see Astralis and Liquid going far in the finals. I think the MIBR - Renegades match is going to be super close, same as the NAVI - FAZE game (but FAZE has been looking off).

I would suggest going with your gut picks on this one, if you can still get Diamond, Astralis is the safest bet to make it all the way. I would also suggest looking into each game a bit more carefully if you are still a contender for diamond, this is a very stacked final 8.