Heroic and Natus Vincere won Sunday’s Group A and Group B upper-bracket finals, respectively, to clinch byes to the semifinals in the Playoff stage at IEM Katowice 2022 in Katowice, Poland.
They will be joined in the playoffs by Virtus.Pro, FaZe Clan, Gambit Esports and G2 Esports following Sunday’s results. The top three teams from Groups A and B reached the single-elimination Playoff bracket, with the best-of-five grand final set for Feb. 27.
The Group Stage was the second of three stages of the $1 million event. Following the Play-In stage, which concluded Wednesday, the top eight teams from that stage joined eight previously qualified teams in the Group Stage, a double-elimination bracket where all matches were best-of-three.
Heroic defeated Virtus.pro 2-0 in the Group A upper-bracket final, winning 16-5 on Mirage and 16-10 on Vertigo. Rasmus “sjuush” Beck led the all-Danish squad with 39 kills and Casper “cadiaN” Moller posted a game-high plus-13 kills-to-deaths differential on 35 kills.
Virtus.pro settled for second in the group, and Gambit took third by beating Ninjas in Pyjamas 2-0 in the lower-bracket final. Gambit took Ancient 16-10 and Vertigo 16-12, with Russia’s Sergey ‘Ax1Le’ Rykhtorov leading with 50 kills and a plus-20 and Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov adding 49 kills with a plus-28.
NaVi bounced back from a close loss on its first map to beat FaZe Clan 2-1 in the Group B upper-bracket final. FaZe started with a 16-13 win on Overpass, but NaVi answered with a 16-12 victory on Dust II and toughed out a 22-19 overtime win on Mirage.
Ukraine’s Aleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev carried NaVi with 84 kills and a plus-26 differential. Latvia’s Helvijs ‘broky’ Saukants posted game highs of 87 and a plus-29 to lead FaZe.
To decide third place in Group B, G2 outlasted Astralis 2-1 in the lower-bracket final. Astralis drew first blood with a 16-12 win on Ancient before G2 breezed through the rest of the match, winning 16-5 on Dust II and 16-1 on Inferno. Nikola “NiKo” Kovac of Bosnia and Herzegovina guided G2 with 72 kills and a whopping plus-32 differential, whil France’s Audric “JACKZ” Jug put up 58 kills with a plus-25.
The match was finalized earlier in the day when Astralis beat Fnatic 2-1 and G2 topped FURIA Esports by the same score in the second round of the Group B lower bracket. Fnatic, FURIA, NiP and Astralis were eliminated from the tournament Sunday.
The Playoff Stage begins Friday with two quarterfinal matches:
FaZe Clan vs. Gambit Esports
Virtus.pro vs. G2 Esports
IEM Katowice 2022 prize pool:
1. TBD — $400,000
2. TBD — $180,000
3-4. TBD — $80,000
5-6. TBD — $40,000
7-8. Ninjas in Pyjamas, Astralis — $24,000
9-12. MOUZ, Team Vitality, Fnatic, FURIA Esports — $16,000
13-16. OG, Copenhagen Flames, Team Liquid, ENCE — $10,000
17-20. BIG, GODSENT, Movistar Riders, Entropiq — $4,500
21-24. Wisla Krakow, Sprout, Renegades, MIBR — $2,500
–Field Level Media