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The Counter-Strike 2 season is going to officially start to heat up as the IEM KATOWICE 2024 is currently taking place. This is one of the biggest international events every year where this game is played, and it should be extremely competitive yet again.
There has been some major movement among teams in this sport, and this will be the first real test for those new teams to show off their skills. The 2023 winner of this event was G2 ESports, and there is a loaded group of teams ready to compete for the title this time around.
CS2 is still a relatively new game as it was just introduced last year, and that will force teams to attack the game in different ways. Bragging right are on the line in this event, but the winning team will also walk away with $1 million and the right to compete at IEM COLOGNE and the BLAST Premiere World Final.
This is a bracketed event, and betting odds and lines are set for every team set to compete. Betting on the action in the early stages of the tournament will come with the most value, but those betting lines will remain open throughout the event.
Great Ways to Watch
It is extremely easy to follow along with the action at the IEM KATOWICE as it will be streamed on both YouTube and Twitch. All of the matches will be available, including those that are taking place in the loser’s portion of the bracket.
This tournament is not open to anyone as just 16 teams were able to qualify for the play-in portion of the tournament. Those teams have been placed into the bracket, and this will be a double-elimination style tournament.
Teams won’t have time to get settled in during the opening round as there will be just one match to determine who moves on. From there, teams will compete in a best-of-three format, and that should allow the better team to move on.
The group stage will feature the top eight advancing teams, and there will be some invited teams joining the party as well. This is where things will really start to get interesting as teams will be trying to get into the six-team final stage.
All of the action will wrap up on February 12th, and this event is one that is going to produce plenty of drama along the way. Tickets to the grand final have been tough to come by, and they are expected to be completely sold out by the time the match begins.
CS2 Replacing Valorant in An Event
There was a Valorant LAN tournament set to take place in the middle of March, but that will now be a CS2 tournament out of necessity. The organizers of that tournament announced in early January that there were no teams signed up, causing a shift in the overall format of the event.
It’s unclear why no esports players signed up to compete in Valorant, but there should be some new interest now that the game has changed. The original goal was to have 32 teams competing while playing Valorant, and there is hope to get to that number now that CS2 will be offered.
This is not the first time that a Valorant tournament has been organized, and the group has never had trouble getting teams in the past. The top CS2 teams are not expected to sign up to compete, but there will be some interest depending on the potential payout.
It’s clear that CS2 is played at a much higher level than Valorant and that could add to the excitement.