Despite taking place quite a few away from New Jersey, Intel Extreme Masters Dallas 2024 might have convinced some of your friends to make a trip to Texas these days. That’s because the $250,000 Counter-Strike 2 event brings together 16 of the world’s best teams.
CS2 is played by more than 20 million people around the world, many of whom are American. The company that created the game, Valve Corporation, is located in Seattle and is valued at around $8 billion. If you play any Steam games, you’re probably familiar with it because it also owns the Steam platform.
IEM Dallas 2024 Dates And Format
IEM Dallas takes place between May 27 – June 2 and can be watched online, on ESL’s Twitch channel. Because it takes place in the US, the matches are played each day at reasonable hours, especially for the Summer season.
The format of the competition is very simple and offers numerous opportunities to bet on top-quality CS2 matches. The 16 teams start in two groups of eight. Every match is best-of-three, apart from the opening ones. The group format is double-elimination, which means that if a team loses a match, they don’t get eliminated right away.
Three teams out of each group advance to the playoffs, where the format is single-elimination. The group winners go directly to the semifinals, while the 2nd and 3rd place teams go to quarterfinals.
Prize Pool Distribution
The tournament’s prize pool will be divided among the participants in the following way:
- 1st place: $100,000
- 2nd place: $42,000
- 3rd – 4th place: $20,000
- 5th – 6th place: $10,000
- 7th – 8th place: $6,000
- 9th – 12th place: $5,000
- 13th – 16th place: $4,000
As you can see, there is very little difference between the 16th place and the 7th place, so the big battles are likely to take place only in the playoffs. However, because the number of famous competitors is very high, IEM Dallas 2024 is worth watching from start to finish.
Teams And Favorites
Here are the 16 teams that compete in the tournament:
Group A
- MOUZ
- 9z Team
- Monte
- Team Vitality
- Team Liquid
- Complexity
- Team Falcons
- G2 Esports
The favorites in this group are MOUZ, Vitality, and G2. But Liquid, Complexity, and Falcons have the potential to cause upsets and steal their playoffs spots.
MOUZ is currently the number-one team in CS2. At IEM Chengdu 2024, they finished 2nd. But immediately after that tournament, they won two S-tier trophies. One at ESL Pro League S19 and the other at BetBoom Dacha Belgrade 2024. Combined, these two tournaments offered $1.25 million in prize money, so we’re talking about prestigious competitions.
Vitality should also be regarded as a top favorite because one of their players, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, is the best in the world, and also because of their results in 2023 and 2024. In the last two Majors, Vitality finished 1st and 3rd – 4th respectively. More recently, at ESL Pro league S19, they played in the Grand Final.
G2’s roster includes two of the world’s top 5 CS2 players, and the team’s results in 2024 have been good. This isn’t a competitor that is likely to win the tournament, but qualifying for the playoffs shouldn’t be a huge problem. Unless, of course, Liquid, Complexity, or Falcons play better than usual.
Group B
- Natus Vincere
- BIG
- FaZe Clan
- M80
- FlyQuest
- Team Spirit
- HEROIC
- pro
In this group of IEM Dallas, FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere, and Team Spirit have a big advantage over the other competitors. Not only their rosters but also their results have been superior in 2024.
In Na’Vi’s case, the fact that they will almost certainly need to play against Spirit in the upper bracket semifinals is very problematic. Historically, they haven’t done very well against this opponent, and Spirit now has two formidable players: Dmitriy “sh1ro” Sokolov and Danil “donk” Kryshkovets.
For FaZe Clan, this should be an easy tournament until the playoffs. M80, their first opponent, is much weaker than them. In the second round, they will face either HEROIC or Virtus.pro, who are also far behind them in skills and tactics.
What should be fun to watch in this group is the clash between the top teams. Spirit will probably win overall because donk is unstoppable at the moment. But FaZe will surely give them a run for their money.
