IEM Katowice is a three day tournament starting with two days of round robin play as teams vying for a place into the championship brackets. Day one had a lot of strong play with team Curse coming off their successful gamble to get back into Season 3 during the LCS last week. While this is Gambit Gaming's (GG) first tournament since they left M5 and were sponsored by Gambit, people were interested in seeing how this powerhouse from Season 2 would make there debut. But the real shining light in this group is Azubu Blaze, this #2 ranked Korean team has always shown strong in tournaments and they have been practicing non-stop in recent months. The lesser known Polish team, MeetYourkMakers, had quite a crowd turnout for them (due to the even being in Poland) but unfortunately did not show well against these strong teams from around the world.
At the end of the day Azubu Blaze went 3-0, while the rest of the group ended up going 1-2. The second ranked team also goes on to the championship bracket, and because of this tie the rule of shortest game play kicked into effect and Gambit Gaming was able to squeak into the next stage. The fans seems to be pretty upset that Curse didn't get to move on since they had beaten GG and thought to be a stronger team (at least by them), but Curse's captain Saint Vicious wasn't put down by this loss posting: "I feel confident if we had jacky and boot camped the days before we can take on anyone". Playing without there strong mid NyJacky, due to visa issues, definitely had an impact on there play. Overall these games were impressive but all of these teams will have more opportunities to get into the IEM World Championship over the coming months.
Part two of the round robin starts in just under two hours with SK vs Azubu Frost, and with some more big names about to play today will be another day of great League play, and I'll update you all tomorrow.
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