Already on Wednesday, play-offs to IEM Katowice 2023 will start, which will select the last participants of this year’s edition of the Katowice tournament. Soon after, the main phase of the competition will start and the heart of the world of esports will be beating in Spodek until mid-February. It’s only the beginning of the season and it’s hard to say who has the best chance of winning the title. Still, there are some strong candidates.
IEM Katowice 2023 favorites
FaZe Clan will come to Katowice as the defending champion. Last year, the squad lifted the cup in quite unexpected circumstances. FaZe have had to change starting players twice due to coronavirus cases. Justin “jks” Savage turned out to be an invaluable substitute, who then occasionally appeared in the colors of FaZe, adding his brick to the success. It was the win in Katowice that marked the beginning of a great period of formation. FaZe Clan went on to win the ESL Pro League, Antwerp Major and IEM Cologne. The first half of 2022 belonged to him. But then came the period of decline in form and it cannot be said that the defending champion feels confident before the start of the competition.
The more so that the “X” factor in the person of “jks” already plays for another team. G2 Esports feels great after winning the BLAST Premier World Final 2022. The “Samurai” showed themselves well in the first matches of the new season, and they are going to Katowice with the intention of another title. For now, Savage is just a minor character in the team, but in such a big tournament his calculations and experience will be invaluable.
You can’t delete Heroic, which still remains the leader of the world ranking. The Danes would like to prove to everyone that they can afford to stay on top for longer. They finished the previous season with the Pinnacle Cup title and the fall victory at BLAST Premier. Always something, although it is still a relatively modest output.
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The wind in the sails also catches Vitality. “Pszczółki”, like G2, won all their matches in 2023. A good prognosis for a demanding test, which will undoubtedly be IEM Katowice. Among the slightly behind-the-scenes participants, with whom one can also have higher hopes, the Outsiders and Team Liquid should be mentioned. Both teams play quite unevenly, but in the second half of 2022 they had their strong moments – Outsiders won IEM Rio, and Liquid reached the finals won by G2 BLAST Premier World.
Several cards can also reveal the mentioned play-offs. Bands such as FURIA, Cloud9 and fnatic will play there. It seems that each of them should easily get to the main phase of the struggle. After all, the leg can always turn up, and the play-in part will also be an ideal opportunity to observe and draw the first conclusions regarding the disposal of several top teams.
It is also worth remembering about representatives of Poland. Two “freelancers” will play in the play-offs – Maciej “F1KU” Miklas from OG and Paweł “dycha” Dycha with his ENCE. The direct representative of the hosts will be Permitta Esports, which was secured by winning the autumn ESL Polish Championships. A difficult task ahead of her – since 2018, no fully Polish squad has made it to the right part of the IEM Katowice struggle.
The IEM Katowice 2023 play-offs will take place from February 1 to February 3. The main round of competition will start on February 4 and will end with the grand finale in Spodek on February 12. The prize pool of the tournament is $1 million.
Source: Sport.PL
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