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Esports Results: Intel Extreme Masters World Championship 2015

Season 9 of the Intel Extreme Masters has come to an end after a weekend of upsets and outplays at the 2015 World Championship in Katowice, Poland. The Intel Extreme Masters featured both League of Legends and Starcraft 2, but other Esports were on show in Katowice too with both Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Hearthstone featuring their finals at the event.

The League of Legends side of the competition combined teams from 5 of the major regions and featured big names like Team Solo Mid, SK Gaming and GE Tigers. The Korean team GE Tigers were hot favourites to take out the tournament and started their IEM campaign strongly by thrashing American team Cloud 9 in their early Best of 1. It was not to be however when they were beaten by Chinese team World Elite — who are currently last in their region — 2 – 1 in the semi finals. American team Team Solo Mid blew through their side of the bracket to meet World Elite in the Final after having beaten them convincingly in their group stage game. They continued that dominance with a 3 – 0 sweep in the Final, winning them their first major international tournament and cementing their place as one of the worlds top teams.

iem tsm

The Starcraft 2 side of the tournament was also shown to be anyone’s game when hot favourite Zerg player Life was knocked out in the Round of 16 by Terran player INnoVation. From there on out the winner was anyone’s guess as top players INnoVation, Maru and herO all fell in the Round of 8. The semi-finals saw the new crowd favourite Zerg player Dark taking on the Protoss of Trap and the Terrans of BByong taking on the Protoss of Zest. Despite strong performances from all players earlier in the tournament both Protoss players won their games 3 – 1 and would meet in the final. Zest trampled Trap in the Best of 7 final, taking him out 4 – 1 and claiming the title of IEM World Champion.

iem zest

Alongside the Intel Extreme Masters was the finals for this season of ESL One. The Counter Strike: Global Offensive finals proved to be a big draw-card over the weekend, with some big teams meeting in Katowice to determine who was the worlds best. Among them was Australian team Vox Eminor who performed admirably but didn’t manage to make it out of the group stage. Until now no team had ever managed to win two ESL One finals, but that was certain to change when the 4 teams to reach the semis had all claimed a title previously. The final was to be a battle of the Swedes when both Fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas defeated their opponents 2 – 0 in the semis finals for their shot at history.
Over 1 million people tuned in to watch the finals series and they didn’t disappoint. The finals were tight with the teams taking one map each to sending the finals to a deciding map. It was to be Inferno, a map on which Fnatic are known to be the best in world. They showed why too when they took a huge early lead against Ninjas in Pyjamas in what had been a close series. Despite rallying late and getting their round score to 13, Ninjas in Pyjamas couldn’t close the deficit and Fnatic won the final map 16 – 13 and the series 2 – 1.

esl one fnatic

If you want to watch any replays of the games at IEM Katowice you can check out the IEM site here for League of Legends and Starcraft 2 and the ESL One site here for Counter Strike: Global Offensive.


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About the author

Hamish Lindsay

Avid reader and general geek, justifying the time I spend playing games by writing about them. I try not to discriminate by genre, but I remember story more than gameplay. I’ve been playing League for longer than Akali and I’m still Silver. Fallout 3 and MGS3 may be the pinnacle of gaming.