G2 Esports beat Heroic 3-1 in the best-of-five grand final Sunday to claim the title at the Intel Extreme Masters event in Katowice, Poland.
In a matchup of the two best teams in the tournament, each of whom had won their respective groups in the previous stage to clinch byes into the semifinals, G2 stayed undefeated in order to win the $400,000 first prize and an automatic berth into the $1 million IEM Cologne event this summer.
Heroic settled for a second prize of $180,000.
G2 took a 2-0 lead with a pair of narrow wins, 16-12 on Nuke and 16-13 on Mirage. Heroic got on the board with a 16-11 victory on Inferno, but G2 clinched title by taking Ancient 16-7.
Nemanja “huNter-” Kovac of Bosnia and Herzegovina had a game-high 82 kills and a plus-18 kills-to-deaths differential to pace G2. Australia’s Justin “jks” Savage was close behind with 80 kills while matching his teammate’s plus-18.
Casper “cadiaN” Moller of Denmark led Heroic with 75 kills and a plus-7, the team’s only player with a positive K-D.
The $1 million Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament began Feb. 1 with the 16-team, double-elimination play-in stage to determine the final eight spots in the group stage. First-round play-in matches consisted of a single map, while all other play-in matches were best-of-three.
Group play ran from Saturday through Tuesday, with two eight-team groups competing in a double-elimination format of best-of-three matches. The two group winners, G2 and Heroic, advanced to the semifinals of the single-elimination playoffs. The runners-up in each group, Natus Vincere and Team Vitality, went to the playoff quarterfinals as high seeds, and the third-place teams, Team Liquid and Outsiders, made the quarterfinals as low seeds.
Intel Extreme Masters Katowice prize pool:
1. $400,000, berth in IEM Cologne — G2 Esports
2. $180,000 — Heroic
3-4. $80,000 — Team Liquid, Natus Vincere
5-6. $40,000 — Team Vitality, Outsiders
7-8. $24,000 — FaZe Clan, Complexity Gaming
9-12. $16,000 — IHC Esports, Team Spirit, Fnatic, OG
13-16. $10,000 — Cloud9, BIG, MOUZ, Ninjas in Pyjamas
17-20. $4,500 — ENCE, Sprout, MIBR, FURIA Esports
21-24. $2,500 — Permitta Esports, Evil Geniuses, Grayhound Gaming, paiN Gaming
–Field Level Media