FaZe Clan recovered from a one-game deficit to claim 2-1 victory over Complexity Gaming to win the 2023 Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Sydney event in Australia on Sunday.
The final of the first-ever competitive Counter-Strike (CS2) tournament was contested by two teams who were not expected to get to this stage of the competition by leading online bookmakers.
The top online betting sites in Australia rated FaZe as 9.00 shots before the prestigious tournament got underway, while Complexity were priced at odds of 41.00.
Team Vitality (3.35), ENCE (3.55) and G2 eSports (3.55) were fancied to win the event, but they were ultimately overshadowed in a thrilling tournament.
FaZe and Complexity upset the bookies’ predictions to contest the final at the end of what proved to be a hugely successful eSports debut for CS2 in Sydney.
The Aware Super Theatre welcomed more than 20,000 fans during the week-long event, while a peak viewership of more than 463,000 concurrent viewers kept the live streaming servers extremely busy.
The tournament started with a group stage, with the 16 teams divided into two groups of eight. MOUZ and BetBoom Team took the top two spots in Group A, while G2 eSports and ENCE filled the same positions in Group B.
FaZe Clan defeated Natus Vincere to progress from the lower bracket in the play-offs, while Complexity saw off the challenge of Monte to claim the final spot.
MOUZ, G2 eSports, FaZe Clan and Complexity eventually made it to the last four, and the latter two teams got the job done courtesy of 2-0 victories in their respective semi-finals.
The first game of the Grand Final was extremely tense, with Complexity eventually sealing a 13-11 win. However, FaZe recovered to win the second game by the same scoreline before sealing the deal with a 19-16 double-overtime victory in the deciding match.
FaZe Clan’s Havard ‘rain’ Nygaard said: “It feels amazing to be the first CS2 champions. I want to say thank you to all our fans here and around the world. This was hands down the best crowd I’ve ever played in front of.
“It feels great – we’ve spent so much time practicing CS2 together before this,” added Robin ‘ropz’ Kool. “The first loss against GamerLegion hurt, but we stuck with it and managed to come back.
“It’s been a turbulent year for us, but I’ve been playing as much as possible, and CS2 gave us the motivational boost to improve our performance and work harder for this IEM.”
IEM Sydney 2023 Prize Pool & Results
The victory secured a whopping $100,000 payday for FaZe Clan and automatic qualification for IEM Katowice 2024. The prize pool and results are as follows:
1. FaZe Clan – $100,000 & IEM Katowice 2024 entry.
2. Complexity Gaming – $42,000.
3-4. G2 eSports, MOUZ – $20,000.
5-6. ENCE, BetBoom Team – $10,000.
7-8. GamerLegion, Monte – $6,000.
9-12. Natus Vincere, Apeks, Cloud9, Fnatic, $5,000.
13-16. Team Vitality, VERTEX, Lynn Vision, Grayhound Gaming – $4,000.
Intel Launches 14th Gen Desktop Processor
Before the final started, fans were treated to an entertaining encounter between Team Australia and Team UK in the Caches IV Showmatch Powered by Intel and Acer Predator.
Australia eventually triumphed 13-7 to claim their fourth consecutive victory in the event. The match was also an opportunity for Intel to showcase its new Core 14th Generation Desktop Processor.
This latest-generation family of six processors delivers up to 24 cores, 32 threads and up to 6 GHz of frequency right out of the box.
The top-end processor is the i9-14900K – described by Intel as ‘the world’s fastest desktop processor with 6 GHz speeds’. This will deliver up to a 23% gaming performance uplift compared to rival processors.
The new Intel Core i7-14700K also offers improved performance, with 20 cores and 28 threads making this a more efficient processor than previous generations.
The processors were initially launched on October 17 and received rave reviews from the gamers involved in the Sydney event.
