StarCraft esports are seemingly nonstop. While there are plenty of pros, they seem to be everywhere, constantly competing in as many tournaments as possible. The latest of those tournaments is the European Server Qualifier for the upcoming IEM Katowice 2020.
Of course, this tournament was a qualifier for another, in the same way that athletes have to compete just to qualify to compete for the Olympics. With this qualifier tournament, three players qualify to move onto the big leagues with IEM Katowice 2020, which will be taking place from February 24th through March 1st.
But this isn’t “just a qualifier” – there are 160 players competing, and only three of them move on. And these aren’t minor players, either, with names like Neeb, Kelazhur, SpeCial, and even Scarlett, of whom has the distinction of being the woman with the highest prize earnings in esports.
The tournament ends with three different brackets, with players being placed based on their wins and losses. Upon being knocked out of the tournament, players enter the loser’s bracket, where the winner then has a chance to claim victory and earn qualification as well.
This is how Cure managed to be qualified after losing to Serral in the winner’s bracket’s finals, landing him in a match against fellow Terran main uThermal. Cure found victory in a 2-0 sweep, moving on against another Terran main, SpeCial, and defeating him in 3-1. After this victory, Cure had officially qualified for IEM Katowice, and is the only Terran to have done so.
Serral went through the knockout rounds with a few close calls, beating Vanya 2-1 before sweeping Neeb 2-0. Afterwards, Serral defeated Cure in a close 3-2 matchup, earning himself victory in the winner’s bracket and qualification.
Our third qualified player is Elazer, who had a run made up of quite a few Zerg-Zerg matchups. Playing against Denver was a 2-0 sweep that saw him moving against Scarlett, managing to eke out a 3-1 against the Canadian player. Once against SpeCial, Elazer found a 3-2 victory as Serral had, joining his fellow Zerg main destined for Katowice.
This victory sees them moving directly to the Group Stage of Katowice in just a bit more than a month. No Protoss players were able to find qualification in this bracket qualifier. However, these three players will be joining plenty of others, where Protoss mains Zest and Stats are awaiting. Currently, the roster for Katowice is made up of Cure, Elazer, Serral, Zest, Maru, Reynor, Stats, TY, and Solar, with more to come. It seems that Katowice is going to be about as competitive as tournaments can get.