ESL has decided to forgo the standard group stage and playoffs system and use the Swiss system to determine which eight teams advance from the offline qualifier to the Cologne Major, the organization announced Wednesday.

In the Swiss system, after one round of seeded matchups, teams will be divided into two sections based on their win rate, and then play a second round of matches against teams with the same record as them. This format continues until eight teams have three losses, at which point they are eliminated, or three wins, at which point they qualify for the major.

For example, should TyLoo and FaZe Clan win their first round matchups, they will both be in the same second round group, as they would both have 1-0 records. Should they play each other and TyLoo wins, then TyLoo would be placed in a group where they could only play against teams with 2-0 records in Round 3, and FaZe would be placed in a group where they could only play against 1-1 teams in Round 3.

The first round matchups are as follows:

G2 Esports vs. TyLoo

FaZe Clan vs. Team Dignitas

Gambit Esports vs. OpTic Gaming

mousesports vs. Binary Dragons

Team EnVyUs vs. Tempo Storm

Cloud9 vs. Team Empire

FlipSid3 Tacitcs vs. Renegades

Splyce vs. HellRaisers

First round seeding was determined by placement at the Columbus Major, and placements at the Cologne Regional Minor Championships. Any ties will be broken first by comparing win-loss ratios, then by comparing the win rates of the teams they played against, then the result of any game they placed against each other, and finally their initial seeding.

The ESL Cologne Major offline qualifiers run from June 9-12 in Katowice, Poland.

Daniel Rosen is a news editor for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.