Intel Extreme Masters Season XVII – Cologne was a blast. Lots of great matches were played, and the finals were indeed the icing on this cake. CS.MONEY Blog compiled interesting facts, stats, and trivia about this tournament and the venue.
Blast From The Past
Since 2014, Cologne has been the host city for ESL’s large CS:GO tournaments. Before the pandemic, they were branded as ESL One. However, in 2020 ESL canceled the event, and in 2021 it is back but as part of the Intel Extreme Masters tour.
SK Gaming and Virtus.pro played not a CS:GO, but an actual football match in Cologne five years ago. Both tags were not presented at IEM Cologne 2022, but almost the entire SK-2017 squad could be seen in action: TACO and coldzera played for 00Nation and placed 9th-12th, Imperial Esports with Fallen and fer finished 13th-16th.
IEM Cologne 2022 welcomed thirteen crowned players. Six won tournaments in this German city twice: s1mple and electronic in 2018 and 2021. Fallen, fer, coldzera, and TACO became back-to-back champions in 2016 and 2017. This year twistzz has joined the two-time champions’ club (2019, 2022).
Stats Corner
B1t’s record-breaking hs% is a common thing nowadays. However, before the playoffs, he was only second to Twistzz. But the Ukrainian got the final laugh, 61.6% against 61.5%. What a close margin!
There were a total of ten aces, two of them happening during the same map. Frozen and REZ annihilated their enemies with only a three rounds gap.
Despite the recent nerf, professional players still trust M4A1-S: more than a quarter of all kills were made with this gun. Only the good old AK is more prevalent (33,89%).
Inferno is the only map where attack prevails (53,8% of all rounds won). On other maps, T-side has a 42% win rate peak. Time for a balance patch?
Since the Cologne tournament lost its major status, its grand finals have been played in the Bo5 format. It is worth noting that the 2022 finals were the first that required all five possible maps to determine a champion. There’s been a clean sweep twice, and in 2018 and 2019, the final score was 3:1. Congratulations to the FaZe Clan, and thanks to them as well as every other team for their spectacular CS!
