The two North American teams to be invited to the tournament will take on the likes of Astralis and SK Gaming.
IEM announced their first North American teams to join the fight in Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Oakland, Cloud9 and Team Liquid. The two teams were the fifth and sixth teams announced for the tournament, respectively.
Cloud9 most recently finished in the 3rd-4th range for the Esports Championship Series (ECS) Season 3 last weekend, where the team fell to FaZe Clan in a 0:2 semi-final. Before that, they bested Immortals 2:1 to take home the championship trophy at the Americas Minor Championship 2017 in Kraków. They also bested their IEM Oakland competitors SK Gaming in the Subaru Invitational 2017 Grand Final, shutting out SK in a best-of-three.
In contrast, Team Liquid has had a rough past few months, with the team being unable to advance from the Group Stages of the ECS most recently. They did, however, finish in the 3rd-4th range in the ESL Pro League.
Both teams will be taking on some of the best talent that EU has to offer, including G2 Esports, Astralis and the aforementioned SK Gaming and FaZe Clan. SK most recently dominated the ECS tournament to take grand prize, while G2 most recently became the grand champions of ESL Pro League Season 5. FaZe Clan famously took down the white-hot Astralis in a 2:1 upset at the StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 3 last Aprilbut Astralis definitely isn’t down for the count; they are fresh off of their $250,000 win in the Clash for Cash show-match, where they bested Virtus.Pro 2:1.
IEM Oakland takes place November 18-19 in the Oracle Arena. The teams will be competing to take home a slice of the $300,000 prize pool.
Images courtesy of ESL
