TYLOO qualify for IEM Winter

The Chinese team has become the first to qualify for the event in December.

TYLOO won the IEM Winter Asia Qualifier with a grand final victory over NKT to secure a spot at the ESL event that will take place on December 2-12.

IEM Winter could be the first time the Chinese team travel to Europe to play an event since ESL Pro League Season 11 in April 2020, when they still had Seon-Ho "⁠xeta⁠" Son and WingHei "⁠Freeman⁠" Cheung on the squad, unless they can qualify for the Major in November through the upcoming IEM Fall, where they and ViCi will fight for the Asian berth on October 5-10.

TYLOO initially had to make it through the open qualifier gauntlet in order to claim their spot at IEM Winter, after which they then went on a clean run in the closed qualifier to punch their ticket to the main event without suffering a loss.

YuLun "⁠Summer⁠" Cai and company played their first closed qualifier match against their Wings Up countrymen, which they took cleanly 2-0, before playing back-to-back matches against Anthony "⁠ImpressioN⁠" Lim and his NKT teammates in the upper bracket final and the grand final.

The first of the two matches was a real barn burner that went to overtime in the decider map, but when NKT made it back from the consolidation final to the grand final it was TYLOO who adjusted best out of the two teams, as they took the series — which had the same veto as the upper bracket final — cleanly with a 2-0 victory without excessive struggle on either map, going 16-8 on both Vertigo and Overpass.

Summer, who had an excellent showing on Overpass in the grand final and topped the board in the qualifying game with a 1.76 rating, was also the top-rated player overall in the qualifier with a 1.36 rating, followed by YuanZhang "⁠Attacker⁠" Sheng (1.25) and HaoWen "⁠somebody⁠" Xu (1.16) in the top three.

Four more teams from qualifiers will join TYLOO at IEM Winter, with three of the qualifying teams coming from Europe and one from North America, while the other 11 teams will receive invites from ESL.