Electronic Sports League Major Series One Katowice 2014, known as EMS One Katowice 2014 for short, was the second that was held from March 13–16, 2014 at the Spodek Arena in Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. It was organized by Electronic Sports League and sponsored by the game's developers Valve. The tournament had a total prize pool of US$250,000. Virtus.pro was the winner of the event after beating Ninjas in Pyjamas in the finals. EMS One Katowice was livestreamed on Twitch had a peak of over 250,000 concurrent viewers.
Format
The top 8 teams of the qualified as Legends. 2 teams were directly invited to participate in the tournament, while the remaining 6 teams qualified through an online qualifier that consisted of sixteen teams. Teams will be split up into four groups. All group matches are best of a. The highest seed will play the lowest seed in each group and the second and third seeds will play against each other. The winner of those two matches will play to determine which team moves on to the Playoffs; the loser of that match will play another match against the winner of the two losing teams. The loser of the lower match is eliminated from the tournament. The last two teams will play each other and the winner of that match moves on to the playoffs. The playoffs bracket consists of eight teams, two from each group. All of these matches are a best of three, single elimination format. Teams advance in the bracket until a winner is decided.
Map Pool
There were five maps to choose from. In the group stage, each team bans two maps so that one remains. In the playoffs, each team bans one map and chooses one map; the remaining map would be the decider map of the series.
Main Qualifier
Only teams from Europe were invited to play in the qualifier, including one team from the Nordic region, one team from France, one from the United Kingdom, one from Germany, two from the CIS region, and two from Poland; all these teams played in their respective qualifiers to qualify for the main qualifier. In addition, two European qualifiers were held and a four teams from each qualifier advanced to the main qualifier. The main qualifier was a 16 team, best of three, double elimination bracket. A total of six teams moved on to the major. Team iBUYPOWER from the United States and Vox Eminor from Australia did not have to play in any qualifier and were invited to play in the major. The four teams that are not shown in the loser's bracket but were eliminated in the round one of loser's bracket were GreyFaceNoSpace, hudzGs TEAM, oFF Balance Gaming, and partyastronauts.
