A new format is introduced for this year's Intel Extreme Masters World Championship, with it all starting from two groups.
Groups have been drawn for the 8 participants who will be playing for a prize purse of $150,000 in the upcoming weeks. For the first time in an Intel Extreme Masters competition, the brackets will be composed of a double elimination tournament with a loser's bracket and winner's bracket. The tournament will not be played at CeBIT a la last year, but instead, at the memorable venue of Katowice, Poland, where Gambit Gaming shocked the world with their 4-0 victory over the Koreans of Frost and Blaze.
The Group Stage begins on March 14th and consists of one North American team, three European teams, two Chinese teams, one Southeast Asian team, and one Korean team. Semi-Finals will be played the day directly after the group stage, and the groups will played out as follows in the image below:
Source - IEM
