Astralis and Cloud9 one loss away from elimination at Katowice Play-in

Heroic and Eternal Fire ended the first day of action at IEM Katowice triumphantly as the two teams became the first to secure a spot in the main tournament.

The Turkish roster from Eternal Fire continued their impressive start to 2024 with two victories on Day 1. A 13-1 thrashing of BetBoom was followed up by a clean 2-0 victory against the Polish roster from Rebels.

Heroic also delivered a superb performance against two of the better teams in the Play-in tournament. First off, they defeated their arch-rivals Astralis in a very close 13-11 win on Mirage. Next off was a rematch against BIG, who had knocked them out of BLAST Spring Groups a couple of days earlier. This time however Heroic managed to swing the match in their favor led on by a high-flying Nico 'nicoodoz' Tamjidi, who dominated BIG on Nuke to give Heroic a good start to the match. The match was settled on Anubis, where Heroic completely shut down BIG’s Terrorist side in the second half to win the match.

Elsewhere both FURIA and Cloud9 disappointed greatly with losses against TheMongolz and Rebels. For FURIA this was the third time that they lost against TheMongolz at a Play-in tournament.

Team Spirit delivered the most convincing performance of the day with a 13-0 annihilation of Apeks. 17-year-old Danil "donk" Kryshkovets went 18-5 in K-D score on Ancient, while Dmitriy "sh1ro" Sokolov only died two times during the 13 rounds. The Russian AWP’er went 13-2 in K-D.

Results of Day 1 of IEM Katowice Play-in:

Heroic – Astralis 13-11
Eternal Fire – BetBoom 13-1
ENCE – BIG 9-13
Cloud9 – Rebels 10-13
Spirit – Apeks 13-0
GamerLegion – M80 13-10
FURIA – TheMongolz 14-16
Rooster – Virtus.pro 4-13
Heroic – BIG 2-1
Eternal Fire – Rebels 2-0

Day 2 schedule: (CET)

13.30: Spirit – TheMongolz
13.30: GamerLegion – Virtus.pro
16.30: BetBoom – Cloud9
16.30: M80 – Rooster
19.30: Astralis – ENCE
19.30: Apeks - FURIA