Gen.G, Chaos, Just For Fun advance to semifinals of second IEM Katowice open qualifier
The first day of the second IEM Katowice 2020 open qualifier has reached its end, seeing Chaos, Gen.G, and Just For Fun ensure themselves a spot in the semifinals. Due to a timely CS:GO update releasing as matches were set to get underway, the bracket began to play out a little later than initially scheduled, leaving one quarterfinal match still on the cards.
eUnited entered the bracket as the number one seed, swiftly sweeping their way past Adaptive and Infinity following a first-round bye to earn a spot in the quarterfinals. Brazen had a similarly simple time of things against ANEW and Hypnotic, but struggled against their fellow-Advanced side ETHEREAL, who were fielding Amgalan "genghsta" Nemekhbayar as a fifth following the departure of Alec "Acrim" Holland. An eventual 16-14 win allowed Brazen passage through to the top eight, where they will meet eUnited at 5 PM EDT tomorrow to decide which team will remain in the running.
Yassine "Subroza" Taoufik's Just For Fun made another appearance in the second qualifier, this time featuring a heavily modified version of their previous roster with Tyson "TenZ" Ngo, Abdo "c4Lypso" Agha, and Jeff "RZU" Ngo in tow. The team had eliminated Gen.G and Envy from the first qualifier in narrow fashion, and they continued to claim scalps in the second as they dominated Singularity 16-3 on Train in their own quarterfinal matchup.
Chaos played out the first day of the tournament with coach Alan "Shakezullah" Hardeman stepping into the shoes of Joshua "steel" Nissan, with the team managing to work their way to the quarterfinals with ease. Their match against Finch was not so easy however, with the Advanced team managing a 10-5 half on Inferno before Chaos began to stabilize. Shakezullah and company fought all the way back to overtime, where steel made a brief appearance to help his team edge out a 19-17 victory.
Much of the remainder of the bracket proceeded as expected, with the only other notable upset seeing Danny "cxzi" Strzelczyk take down his Faint teammates on a mixteam before falling to Gen.G in their ensuing matchup.
The second day of the qualifier will kick off tomorrow at 5 PM EDT with the final quarterfinal match before proceeding to the best-of-three semifinals at 6 PM EDT. The matchups look as follows:
 eUnited |
vs. | Brazen |
| Chaos |
vs. | eUnited/Brazen |
| Gen.G |
vs. |  Just For Fun |
The victors of the semifinals will join Riot Squad and INTZ on the team list for the closed qualifier, which will take place next month.
