Just after the end of the first CS:GO Major of 2022, another big tournament took place to make happy CS:GO betting followers. IEM XVII Dallas found its champion with the participation of 16 teams. Cloud9, one of the biggest organizations in North America, reached the championship with its new roster and won the $100,000 award.
Intel Extreme Masters is a big deal in CS:GO history. Over the years, it has brought competition to the fans with various tournaments. IEM XVII Dallas is one of the serial tournaments organized by the organizer within the calendar of 2022. The event, with a total prize pool of $250,000, started with the group stage.
Group Stage
The group stage started with the participation of 16 teams. These are ESL’s partner teams, top of the World Rankings, and teams that have made it through the qualifiers. Although some teams did not participate in the tournament because it was right after the major, big teams such as the last champion FaZe Clan, Astralis and Team Vitality took part in the fight.
16 teams were divided into two, each group containing 8 teams. The opening matches in the group stage were played as best-of-one, while the other matches were played as best-of-three, which is esports betting fans love most in the double-elimination format. In addition, the teams that finished first in their groups qualified to start the playoffs from the semi-finals, while the teams that finished second and third in their groups were content with the quarter-finals.
At the end of the matches, ENCE, FaZe Clan and G2 Esports from Group A, and BIG, FURIA Esports and Cloud9 from Group B managed to make it to the playoffs.
Playoffs
Like all matches, the playoffs were played offline in front of a large number of fans. Contrary to the usual, matches at this stage were played as single-elimination brackets. Except for the final match, all matches were best-of-three.
The Qualification Phase kicked off with the FURIA vs G2 Esports match. The series went to the third map after the close ending maps and finally FURIA managed to win 2-1. Right after that, FaZe Clan, the last Major champion, faced Cloud9. C9, with a big surprise, defeated FaZe, who could not get rid of its fatigue yet, by 2-1 and eliminated them from the tournament.
When it came to the semi-finals, the matches were a bit more one-sided. First, ENCE beat FURIA 2-0 with two easy matches and advanced to the grand finals. On the other hand, Cloud9 managed to beat BIG 2-1 after the big victory and became the opponent of ENCE in the grand final.
Grand Final
The Grand Final took place as five matches. And everyone thought this series would be a close series. However, it did not turn out as expected. Cloud9, which took the stage as the host, almost crushed its European rival thanks to the great support it received from the fans. The final series went to Mirage, Overpass and Ancient, respectively. In all maps, it was Cloud9 who achieved the victory overwhelmingly. The most valuable player of the event was Ax1Le that showed a great performance throughout the tournament. The young player completed the organization with a 1.33 Impact Rating.
