EMS One Katowice 2014 was the second CS:GO Major and the first held in Poland. Virtus.pro, a Polish team that had to qualify, dropped one map on the way to the title and beat Ninjas in Pyjamas 2-0 in the final at the Spodek Arena. It was also the first Major with team stickers. This article covers the tournament; our Katowice 2014 stickers guide covers the capsules and why collectors chase them.
The event
ESL organised the tournament with Valve's sponsorship, and it ran from March 13 to 16, 2014, alongside ESL's Intel Extreme Masters World Championship in the same arena. The prize pool was again $250,000.
The 16 teams came in two categories, a split that also decided which sticker capsule each team went into:
- Legends: the eight playoff spots from DreamHack Winter 2013. Four had changed hands since November. The Astana Dragons players moved to HellRaisers and the VeryGames lineup to Titan, while Team Dignitas took Copenhagen Wolves' spot by signing three of its players and Team LDLC.com took Recursive eSports' spot the same way.
- Challengers: six teams from a 16-team European qualifier (3DMAX, Clan-Mystik, mousesports, Natus Vincere, Reason Gaming and Virtus.pro), plus iBUYPOWER from the United States and Vox Eminor from Australia, who were invited.
The format was unchanged from DreamHack: four groups of four played as GSL brackets of single maps, then an eight-team single-elimination playoff of best-of-three series. The map pool was Dust II, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke and Train. The winner took $100,000, the runner-up $50,000, semi-finalists $22,000, quarter-finalists $10,000 and everyone else $2,000.
Group stage
- Group A: Virtus.pro opened with a 19-16 overtime win over HellRaisers on Mirage, then beat Titan 16-7 to top the group. HellRaisers eliminated Titan 16-14 on Inferno for the second spot, so the former VeryGames players, semi-finalists in November, went home early.
- Group B: NiP beat 3DMAX 16-5 and LDLC 16-7. LDLC took the second spot with a 16-13 win over 3DMAX.
- Group C: Reason Gaming beat the defending champions, Fnatic, 16-12 on Inferno in the group's opening match. Fnatic recovered to eliminate iBUYPOWER 16-13 and then beat Reason 16-6. Dignitas won the group without dropping a map.
- Group D: LGB eSports beat Natus Vincere 16-8 and compLexity 16-11. compLexity went through with a 16-12 win over Clan-Mystik.
Playoffs
Map scores are from the winner's side.
| Round | Winner | Series | Loser | Maps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quarter-final | Ninjas in Pyjamas | 2-1 | compLexity Gaming | Dust II 12-16, Nuke 16-2, Train 16-11 |
| Quarter-final | Team Dignitas | 2-0 | HellRaisers | Dust II 16-7, Mirage 16-11 |
| Quarter-final | Virtus.pro | 2-0 | Team LDLC.com | Mirage 16-3, Inferno 16-8 |
| Quarter-final | LGB eSports | 2-1 | Fnatic | Inferno 11-16, Mirage 16-12, Train 16-14 |
| Semi-final | Ninjas in Pyjamas | 2-0 | Team Dignitas | Inferno 16-6, Nuke 16-5 |
| Semi-final | Virtus.pro | 2-1 | LGB eSports | Inferno 16-8, Mirage 17-19, Train 16-7 |
| Final | Virtus.pro | 2-0 | Ninjas in Pyjamas | Mirage 16-9, Inferno 16-10 |
Two quarter-finals stood out. Virtus.pro won the first half of Mirage 15-0 as terrorists against LDLC, according to HLTV's report and match statistics. And LGB, a Swedish team that had come through an online qualifier for DreamHack, knocked out the champions Fnatic on Train. In the semi-final LGB took Mirage from Virtus.pro in overtime, but the Poles won Train 16-7.
The final: Virtus.pro 2-0 NiP
NiP were in their second Major final in a row. Virtus.pro led 11-4 at half-time on both maps.
On Mirage the Poles attacked first and repeatedly broke NiP's defence of the B site, as HLTV's report describes. NiP closed to 7-12 in the second half, but Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski's double kills pushed Virtus.pro to 14, and they won the map 16-9.
Inferno followed the same pattern until NiP won five rounds in a row to make it 9-11. Then came the play HLTV clipped as the highlight of the final: with the bomb planted on B and only four health points left, Filip "NEO" Kubski killed two players with instant headshots and won the last duel against Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg. Virtus.pro went 12-9 up and closed the map 16-10.
| Player | Name |
|---|---|
| NEO | Filip Kubski |
| TaZ | Wiktor Wojtas |
| pashaBiceps | Jarosław Jarząbkowski |
| Snax | Janusz Pogorzelski |
| byali | Paweł Bieliński |
Liquipedia lists no coach for the lineup. The same five players had gone out in the group stage at DreamHack Winter 2013 in November, playing as Universal Soldiers. HLTV lists Jarosław "pashaBiceps" Jarząbkowski as the event's MVP.
Crowd and audience
Valve's winners' post put the crowd in the Spodek at more than 10,000. ESL's infographic after the event gave a peak of just over 252,000 concurrent viewers online, and said CS:GO hit an all-time high of almost 165,000 players on Steam that weekend.
Stickers and the souvenir package
The two sticker capsules, Legends and Challengers, went on sale a week before the event and followed the team split above. The Katowice 2014 stickers guide covers their contents, payouts and the iBUYPOWER and Titan stories, so we will not repeat them here.
The EMS One 2014 Souvenir Package worked much like DreamHack's. Valve told viewers to watch live on GOTV, or on Twitch with a linked Steam account, to be eligible for a drop. There was still one package for the whole event rather than one per map, and its contents list matches the DreamHack 2013 package: skins from the Dust II, Train, Mirage, Safehouse, Lake and Italy collections.
The stickers changed. Each Souvenir carries three: foil stickers of the two teams in its match plus a gold ESL Wolf or ESL Skull, according to Liquipedia. Those foil team stickers were never sold in capsules, so a Souvenir from the final, with Virtus.pro and NiP foils side by side, exists only because someone was watching that match.
Collecting Katowice 2014 tournament items
- Check the match. An EMS One 2014 Souvenir normally names its match. Souvenirs from iBUYPOWER and Titan games carry those teams' foil stickers, and the stickers guide explains why both names matter to collectors.
- Count the stickers. Three stickers, two team foils and a gold ESL design, is the normal layout. Inspect each one, because scrape level only goes up.
- Read the full sticker name. Katowice hosted later Majors in 2015 and 2019, so make sure the name ends in "Katowice 2014".
- Search applied stickers. The sticker filter on Buy finds guns carrying a specific Katowice 2014 sticker. For how souvenir drops changed after 2014, see our souvenir packages guide.
The next Major, ESL One Cologne 2014, introduced a souvenir package for each map. Our Cologne 2014 Major article picks up the story.
Sources
- ESL Major Series One Katowice 2014 — Liquipedia
- Virtus.pro win EMS One Katowice — HLTV.org
- Virtus.pro to EMS One semi-final — HLTV.org
- Video: Neo vs. NiP — HLTV.org
- EMS One 2014: Winners — Counter-Strike blog (Valve)
- EMS One Katowice 2014 — Counter-Strike blog (Valve)
- The record breaker: EMS One Katowice infographic — ESL
- EMS One 2014 Souvenir Package — Liquipedia
