HEROIC comes back for opening win at IEM Katowice

HEROIC rallied for a 2-1 victory over Team Liquid on Wednesday as the play-in bracket for the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice event got underway in Poland.

Sixteen teams are competing in the double-elimination play-in bracket, chasing eight spots in the group stage of the $1 million Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament. All play-in matches are best-of-three.

Eight teams -- G2 Esports, Team Spirit, The MongolZ, Team Vitality, FaZe Clan, MOUZ, Natus Vincere and Team Falcons -- already are through to the group stage based on their global standing early this month.

Group play will see the 16 teams split into two double-elimination brackets, with all matches best-of-three. The two group-phase winners will advance directly to the semifinals, the two group-phase runners-up will move to the quarterfinals as high seeds, and the two third-place teams will make the quarterfinals as low seeds.

The playoff will be single elimination, with best-of-three matches for the quarterfinals and semifinals ahead of a best-of-five grand final on Feb. 9. The champion will earn $400,000.

On Wednesday in the upper-bracket opening round, Team Liquid opened with a 13-9 win on Anubis, but HEROIC came back to claim Nuke 13-11 and Dust II 13-8.

Belarus' Andrey "tN1R" Tatarinovich and Turkey's Yasin "xfl0ud" Koc each registered 49 kills for HEROIC. tN1R produced a team-best plus-2 kill-death differential. Poland's Roland "ultimate" Tomkowiak logged 48 kills and a match-high plus-12 K-D differential for Liquid.

The day's other seven matches all resulted in 2-0 sweeps: Eternal Fire over Complexity, 3DMax over FlyQuest, MIBR over Astralis, paiN Gaming over Virtus.pro, GamerLegion over SAW, Wildcard over BIG and FURIA Esports over Imperial Female.

The Thursday schedule:

--Upper-bracket Round 2: HEROIC vs. Eternal Fire

--Upper-bracket Round 2: 3DMax vs. MIBR

--Upper-bracket Round 2: paiN Gaming vs. GamerLegion

--Lower-bracket Round 1: FlyQuest vs. Astralis

--Lower-bracket Round 1: Virtus.pro vs. SAW

--Lower-bracket Round 1: BIG vs. Imperial Female

The last upper-bracket Round 2 match (Wildcard vs. FURIA Esports) and the last lower-bracket Round 1 match (Team Liquid vs. Complexity) are scheduled for Friday.

Intel Extreme Masters Katowice prize pool

1. $400,000

2. $180,000

3-4. $80,000

5-6. $40,000

7-8. $24,000

9-12. $16,000

13-16. $10,000

17-20. $4,500

21-24. $2,500

--Field Level Media