IEM Beijing NA: Is This Chaos Victory Really That Meaningful?

With their IEM Beijing victory, the Chaos boys have secured quite an important North American trophy. Granted, FURIA weren’t present, but they still managed to surpass Liquid and Evil Geniuses. That in itself is already quite an achievement, but how much does this really say about North American CS?

Chaos mounted an impressive upset in the Semi Finals over EG and had to face Triumph in the Grand Finals. Apart from one map loss, they played out out a solid match and secured the trophy on an overall 3-1 score.

It was striking to see Nathan “leaf” Orf absent from the top of the scoreboard. He was actually the weakest fragger on the Chaos camp, which is totally atypical for this young star player. But the good news is that his team doesn’t depend on his output. In his place, Anthony “vanity” Malaspina stepped up and secured a 1.30 rating for the Grand Finals. Jonathan “JonJi” Carey, Erick “Xeppaa” Bach, and Edgar “MarKE” Maldonado all put up a great show throughout this last match. So one key to victory was brilliant individual performance.

Much more important, however, is that IEM Beijing NA took place right in the middle of the travel plans of Liquid and EG. Evil Geniuses had already been to Europe and had planned to leave their continent again for the upcoming events. Even though EG now had to scrap these plans due to travel restrictions, they didn’t know this during IEM. As the two top teams went up against Chaos and Triumph, their mind was already in the midst of preparing for their Europe trips. They surely haven’t been focused on IEM as much and their opponents used this to their advantage. But now, Liquid and EG know what’s happening here. It stands to question whether anything like this can possibly happen again.

So this tournament victory is nothing more than an set of special circumstances. The underdogs won’t be able to regularly repeat this performance against top teams. This holds especially true for Chaos and Triumph. Now, EG and Liquid won’t make the mistake of underestimating them again.

THE REAL TEST IS YET TO COME

While the domestic competition is obviously important to Chaos, they will soon have to face up to the European elite. Their placement during IEM Beijing has granted them a slot at the upcoming IEM Global Challenge. The tournament will take place in December and forces the boys to head over to Europe. There, they won’t just have to compete against FURIA and Evil Geniuses, but also Heroic, Vitality, Astralis, Complexity, and Natus Vincere. Even though the tournament will only take place online, this is the most stacked playing field that Chaos have ever faced.

But before they can even depart from their continent, the regional competitions are back. During DreamHack Masters Winter, they will only face smaller teams. This will give them a chance to add another trophy to their collection. But obviously, they’re not interested in showing dominance over Mythic or the New England Whalers – they want to face Liquid or EG again. The same holds true for these top teams. After all they have to redeem themselves for what happened at IEM. So Chaos have definitely made an impressive leap forward, but EG and company could quickly stop them in their tracks again.