The last IEM event of the year is set to start tomorrow, on November 16th. To help guide the viewers through this 12-team event we bring you a detailed guide with information about the groups, schedule and talent that will be present in Oakland.

Intel Extreme Masters Oakland was set to feature the top four teams from IEM New York - Natus Vincere, Liquid, SK and Virtus.pro—but the Polish team decided not to attend the event in the end—with Heroic coming in as their replacement.

Four invitations were sent out to NiP, G2, Astralis and mousesports, with the last four spots left for teams to qualify through the iBUYPOWER Masters 2016 event that was held last week.

In the end, Immortals, Cloud9, FaZe and TYLOO clinched the remaining spots in Costa Mesa, finalizing the team list for IEM Oakland.



The playoffs of IEM Oakland will be played at the Oracle Arena

The 12 teams have been split into the following two groups:

The tournament will feature the now-standard IEM format composed of a round-robin best-of-one group stage leading into round-of-six playoffs, with the best team from each group advancing directly to the semi-finals.

The first day of the tournament will be reserved for group A, the second for group B, followed by an off-day before the action moves to the Oracle Arena for the playoff action on November 19-20.

Two matches will be played at the same time in the group stage, with one being shown on the main stream (first match in the schedule table), and the second being shown on the second stream.

IEM Oakland will have the following schedule:

ESL has put together a talent lineup featuring some of the most notable hosts, analysts and commentatos in CS:GO at the moment—featuring the likes of Alex "Machine" Richardson, Matthew "Sadokist" Trivett and Anders Blume—but IEM Oakland will also be the first event on which we will see Sam "⁠DaZeD⁠" Marine in an analyst role.

The following talent will be covering the action in Oakland:

ESL will reward each win in the group stage with $1,000, with the rest of the $300,000 prize pool being distributed in the following way:

1. - $125,000

2. - $50,000

3-4. - $25,000

3-4. - $25,000

5-6. - $12,000

5-6. - $12,000

7-8. - $5,000

7-8. - $5,000

9-10. - $3,500

9-10. - $3,500

11-12. - $2,000

11-12. - $2,000

For a detailed look at all the teams attending the event and what we can expect in terms of results, stay tuned for a preview by HLTV.org's Lucas "LucasAM" Aznar Miles later today.

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.