A couple of hours ago ESL revealed the first two team that will compete in the IEM Chicago 2019. The organizers have invited the NA side, Team Liquid and the Finnish side, ENCE. ESL has also announced that four more teams will be invited, while the remaining two will have to make their way through the playoffs.
At the IEM Chicago, we will see four teams from Europe and four teams from North America. So we can look forward to some exciting action coming our way. The competition will take place on 18th July and will end in the 21st July. The eight teams will fight for the $250,000 prize pool. The winner of the competition will take home $125,000.
A good start to 2019 for Team Liquid
Team Liquid has been a very decent team this year, they won the IEM Sydney a couple of weeks ago. The side also made a solid start to 2019 by winning the iBUYPOWER Masters IV. They won the competition by beating the No.1 ranked team in the world, Astralis. Stewie2K and company will surely love to lift another trophy this year by winning the IEM Chicago. We believe that they can do it, they will just have to find consistency. The team also won two more titles this year in the BLAST Pro Series Miami and Sao Paulo, since they were beaten in the grand finale in both of these competitions. So we really hope that the team will make it to the final in Chicago and has every right to win the title.
Time to unveil the first two teams competing at #IEM Chicago 2019.
Representing NA: It’s @TeamLiquid.
Representing EU: It’s @ENCE. #LetsGoLiquid or #EZ4ENCE? See them live at the United Center: https://t.co/6DBsmEim0z pic.twitter.com/HJ0no9j1dj— Intel® Extreme Masters (@IEM) May 23, 2019
ENCE breaking into the top ranks
This invite is another opportunity for ENCE to assert its dominance in the competitive landscape of CS: GO. The Finnish side had a fantastic start to the year since the made it to the grand finale of the Intel Extreme Masters XIII – Katowice Major 2019. The team had to settle for 2nd place since they were outplayed by Astralis 3-0. Yet the team got its redemption in the finale of the BLAST Pro Series Madrid. They beat Astralis 2-0, which included ending the 32 game win streak of the Danes on Nuke. They team is admired for having an unpredictable and aggressive strategy. They are amongst the most entertaining teams to watch and we will surely love to see Aleksi “allu” Jalli and co winning another trophy this year.
In 2018, the competition hosted 16 teams which are reduced to just eight. But don’t worry since this means that we will see high-quality games from some of the teams from NA and Europe. The organizer will reveal other invited teams in the next few days, we hope to see the likes of Astralis, FaZe and Cloud9 making their way to Chicago.
