Fnatic earned number one seed in IEM Katowice Major

The first CS:GO Major will start in less than 24 hours and we have learned that winners from last year, Swedish roster from Fnatic has earned the number one seed in the upcoming New Challenger Stage.

Tournament organizer ESL and Counter-Strike developer Valve has introduced a brand new system to determine matchups in the Swiss Format group stage of Majors, which includes a player-selected seeding combined with a team elo rating. Don't understand what does it mean? Let me explain.

Each of the teams participating in the New Challengers Stage (new format from the last year, previously has been this stage of the event played online) were asked to rank the other 15 teams, and those scores were combined by ESL and Valve to create a 1-16 ranking to determinate the seed of each team. Long story short, from now on teams will not get easier or harder routes to the next stage of the Major like in previous years, or at least it will be players choice, not tournament organizers. 

With that being said, the team Fnatic left behind icons like Major Boston winners Cloud9, Ninjas in Pyjamas, G2 Esports or Winstrike. The complete ranking looks as follow:

• Fnatic (1.79)
• NRG Esports (2.46)
• Cloud9 (3.29)
• Ninjas in Pyjamas (3.33)
• ENCE Esports (3.91)
• Team Vitality (6.00)
• G2 Esports (6.79)
• AVANGAR (8.15)
• Vega Squadron (9.75)
• TyLoo (9.85)
• Team Spirit (10.69)
• FURIA Esports (12.00)
• Grayhound Gaming (13.57)
• Winstrike (13.62)
• ViCi Gaming (14.07)

The $1M event will start at 13:00 CET with opening match between Fnatic vs Vici Gaming.