13th-15th march
http://en.intelextrememasters.com/se...dchampionship/
With the groups released and only 10 days left, it's time to get some IEM KATOWICE HYPE in here!
For those that don't know, IEM is a ESL tournament of LoL / Starcraft 2 / CS:GO. Qualifier tournaments are held throughout the year in Shenzen, San Jose, Taipei, Toronto and Cologne. The LoL winner teams of those play at the World Championship in Katowice + the top placed team of each League after half of the split. The teams are:
- Team WE (Intel Extreme Masters Shenzhen)
- Cloud 9 (Intel Extreme Masters San Jose)
- Gambit Gaming (Intel Extreme Masters Cologne)
- yoe Flash Wolves (Intel Extreme Masters Taipei)
- GE Tigers (first place LCK team)
- CJ Entus (second place LCK team)
- SK Gaming (first place EU LCS)
- TSM (first place NA LCS)
Groups:
Spoiler: show
Commentators etc.
Spoiler: show
Personally, I think this is an awesome combination with the only sore point being WE. They're currently a bottom tier LPL team, playing better only recently. Unfortunately LPL wasn't willing to reschedule to allow EDG to play at Katowice. yoe Flash Wolves are dominating the LMS together with the Taipei Assassins, both only had a single loss so far. Their match vs SK should be awesome. Of course the real question is, will the GE Tigers even lose a single game? They haven't lost a match in LCK yet and only the Jin Airs and SKT were able to win a game vs them.
Well no matter what happens, Katowice always delivers. The xPeke backdoor, GMB defeating CJ and Diamond showing them what he thinks of their trashtalk, the akward interviews/ceremony/dancing and last but not least, my favourite EU casters Joe Miller and Leigh "Deman" Smith. Also there's no crowd like Katowice, only the All-Stars event comes close in HYPE!