The group stage of IEM Katowice kicked off on Saturday, with G2 and Natus Vincere producing performances that suggest we could see a rematch of last year’s Grand Final.

Sunday sees the introduction of more hopefuls, including Heroic, Complexity, Outsiders and Fnatic, with the former having title aspirations following a strong 2022 campaign.

Outsiders, who won the most recent Major, are another side with strong trophy claims.

We will have another six matches on Sunday and you can find previews of the opening two matches below.

The odds would suggest this will be a walkover for Heroic and although it is easy to subscribe to that way of thinking, there are chinks in the Danish armour.

They ended last year with a disappointing finish at BLAST Premier World Final, finishing just 7-8th after defeats to OG and Natus Vincere. Given their prior tournament was a win at Premier Fall Final, it highlighted inconsistencies in their play.

That was further exacerbated by a muddling showing at BLAST Premier Spring Groups, where they lost to both Evil Geniuses and Vitality in a far from perfect run. Victories over Astralis, Evil Geniuses and BIG are not overly convincing and Complexity have an upset in them.

They bounced back from a defeat to BIG in the play-in to beat Permitta and ENCE, the latter having been touted a tournament dark horse prior to their early exit. The North American squad needs to prove they can build on that, but there is plenty of hope they can do so.

Håkon 'hallzerk' Fjærli and Michael 'Grim' Wince have found form at the perfect time, with the former putting in a mighty performance against ENCE to qualify for this stage. Both Johnny 'JT' Theodosiou and Ricky 'floppy' Kemery underperformed that day, which shows you that Complexity does have depth.

For Heroic, they need a strong performance from Martin 'stavn' Lund, who bounced back from a poor performance against Vitality with a dominant one in their win against BIG. He is a catalyst for the Danes, who tend to play with their hearts on their sleeves, especially their in-game leader Casper 'cadiaN' Møller.

If those two can get fired up, that would ultimately spell trouble for Complexity. There are few teams in the world that can compete with Heroic when their individuals are all firing, and Complexity is not one of those.

The odds suggest as much, but as previously mentioned, individual performances are likely to make the difference in this match. Although a 2-0 success for Heroic is likely to be popular, Complexity are not pushovers and this is a series that could easily go the distance at 11/8. 

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It has not been plain sailing for Outsiders since their shock IEM Rio Major win and the Russian squad will be looking to make a statement in their Katowice opener.

After going on a six-game winning streak to win in Brazil, Outsiders were unable to carry that strong form to the BLAST Premier World Final in Abu Dhabi, where they suffered defeats to Liquid and G2 to be eliminated in last place.

That was a far cry from the team that looked so dominant in Brazil, carried forward by the likes of Dzhami 'Jame' Ali and Evgenii 'FL1T' Lebedev. Their defeat to G2 included a 16-1 defeat on Mirage, an unacceptable scoreline for a team such as Outsiders.

This match represents a new start for the squad, who welcome Aleksandr ‘KaiR0N-’ Anashkin to the fold after the departure of David ‘n0rb3r7’ Danielyan. He was a standout performer for Aurora and is an exciting proposition.

Fnatic have benefitted from Fredrik 'roeJ' Jørgensen’s renaissance at recent tournaments and he helped the squad to make it through the play-in to qualify for IEM Katowice. They barely broke a sweat in their recent match against MIBR and in their last ten matches, they have suffered just a pair of defeats.

On their day, Fnatic are a side who have no issues defeating the best, but consistency has not always been their strong suit against top-quality opposition.

The sides did meet on a pair of occasions at the Rio Major, however, and it was Outsiders who came away with a pair of dominant victories. That was with a different roster, but provided KaiR0N- hits the ground running, they arguably have more firepower now.

Outsiders are the right favourites at 8/15 and there could be some juice in their price to win the series in two. They are 7/4 to win the match 2-0 and with previous meetings giving us plenty of context, Outsiders can be heavily favoured.

bet365 News Team

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