This story was originally published by Dead Spin
Jordan Woodruff
Team Vitality used a triple-overtime win on their third map to take the lead for good en route to a 3-1 victory over Natus Vincere in the grand final of the Intel Extreme Masters Cologne event on Sunday in Germany.
Vitality did not drop a match the entire tournament, winning Group B before sailing through the playoff stage. They won not only a $400,000 first prize and 3,000 BLAST Premier points, but also qualification into the BLAST Premier World Final and IEM Katowice 2025.
Sunday’s grand final was close the entire way. Vitality posted a 16-14 overtime win on Nuke for the first blow. Natus Vincere countered with a 13-10 result on Dust II.
On the third map, Mirage, Vitality lost a 5-1 lead and the teams traded it back and forth until Vitality tied it 12-12 to force overtime. NaVi scored four straight points at one point to move ahead 19-18, but Vitality fought back and won the marathon map 22-20.
Vitality then closed it out with a 13-9 victory on Inferno.
Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut of France starred for Vitality as usual, recording 100 kills with a plus-22 kills-to-deaths differential. Teammate Lotan “Spinx” Giladi of Israel added 88 kills with a plus-13 K-D. NaVi was paced by Mihai “iM” Ivan of Romania (85 kills, plus-5).
Sixteen teams competed in the double-elimination play-in stage of the $1 million Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament. Eight teams advanced to the group stage to join eight teams that qualified directly for group play.
The group stage featured two double-elimination groups of eight. The group winners moved directly to the playoff semifinals, the group runners-up advanced to the playoff quarterfinals as high seeds and the third-place teams advanced to the playoff quarterfinals as low seeds.
The single-elimination playoffs ran Friday through Sunday. All tournament matches were best-of-three until the best-of-five grand final.
Intel Extreme Masters Cologne prize pool, with money and BLAST Premier points:
1. $400,000, 3,000 points — Team Vitality
2. $180,000, 2,000 points — Natus Vincere
3-4. $80,000, 1,200 points — MOUZ, SAW
5-6. $40,000, 500 points — G2 Esports, FaZe Clan
7-8. $24,000, 300 points — paiN Gaming, Team Liquid
9-12. $16,000, no points — The MongolZ, Astralis, Team Falcons, Complexity Gaming
13-16. $10,000, no points — 9z Team, Team Spirit, Virtus.pro, FURIA Esports
17-20. $4,500, no points — BIG, HEROIC, MIBR, Eternal Fire
21-24. $2,500, no points — ALTERNATE aTTaX, 3DMAX, Imperial Esports, FlyQuest
–Field Level Media
