ESL has released the four invited teams to the North American closed qualifier for IEM Chicago as well as the initial matchups of the double-elimination bracket. On Tuesday, the open stage of the qualifier came to a close with Vision, BlackOut, TeamOne, and Ange's Big Toe advancing to the eight-team closed qualifier. Cloud9, Bravado, Swole Patrol, and eUnited have now joined the aforementioned quartet as the invited teams to the closed part, which is set to take place on August 23-25.  Only one spot at IEM Chicago, which will run on November 6-11, is up for grabs in North America, where a best-of-three, double-elimination bracket and a best-of-five grand final will determine the winner. The upper bracket quarter-final matchups look as follows:
  eUnited #32 Skyler 'Relyks' WeaverWill 'dazzLe' LoafmanMichael 'dapr' Gulino Kaleb 'moose' JayneBrandon 'Ace' Winn  Swole Patrol #46 Braxton 'swag' PierceRyan 'freakazoid' Abadir Edgar 'MarKE' MaldonadoJordan 'Zellsis' MontemurroAustin 'Cooper' Abadir   Bravado #74 Dimitri 'Detrony' HadjipaschaliRuan 'ELUSIVE' van WykAran 'Sonic' GroesbeekRhys 'Fadey' ArmstrongJohnny 'JT' Theodosiou  Vision #75 Andy 'vSa' XuJake 'kaboose' McDonaldAlex 'aproto' ProtopapasRicky 'floppy' KemeryGabe 'Spongey' Greiner   TeamOne #38 Pedro 'Maluk3' CamposJean-Michel 'mch' D'Oliveira Nicolas 'NikoM' MiozziVictor 'iDk' TorracaAlencar 'trk' Rossato  Cloud9 #19  Martin 'STYKO' StykTyler 'Skadoodle' LathamWilliam 'RUSH' WierzbaTimothy 'autimatic' Ta Maikil 'Golden' Selim  Ange's Big Toe #169 Adam 'Ange' MilianBrandon 'fluxvx' Banda'senx' Chris 'Slash' PetersenAmine 'dopamine' Hamzic  BlackOut #56 Sebastian 'seb' BuckiConnor 'CONNOR93' GloverCollin 'wrath' McSweeganChad 'Oderus' MillerJonathan 'Jonji' Carey |
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