Repost of an article I posted on Reddit about a year ago. I think it's as relevant now as it was then, and I thought to myself, what better way to introduce myself to the steemit community with my first post. Hope someone finds some value in it and I appreciate the champion who actually takes the time to read it. Link to original Reddit post is below. Cheers!
The following article is my attempt to summarize what I learned playing the game. I wrote this article back in May and its been on my desktop ever since. Seemed like a waste not to share it and so here it is. Hopefully some of the ideas and strategies prove valuable to the few of you that do decide to read the entire post. In any event, thanks for all the good times and the bad CSGO, I'm sure half the man I am today is in some part thanks to you.
Happy Thanksgiving,
gank
This isn't meant to be a CSGO manual, it's simply meant to challenge the way you and your team think about the game, providing you with a launching pad from which to start discussing and creating a system of your own. I apologize for the redundancies.
Principles:
- Start the round going for safe picks and contesting choke points in a way where the peek is to your advantage (don't over-peek or over commit to the kill, ensure your team can maintain and establish map control early around the map).
- Fall back and hold for pushes all the while developing an understanding of where their site anchors are and how they are rotating.
- Every map has two-three main choke points where someone needs to contest random pushes.
- After establishing a feel for rotations, start to challenge map control and work toward taking a site (You want to do your best to limit the opponent's information. Shy away from forcing the issue and peeking into a crossfire unless you have someone to trade with. The aim is to catch the opposing teams rotators off guard. The goal of the round should be to isolate a player, get a pick, reset and pinch a site).
- After you've gained some intel, decide what you want to do.
There are strategies for developing and forcing predictable behaviour and rotation patterns in the opposing team. The aim is to have them adapting to you, so that you are always one round ahead from a strategic point of view.
- If you make the start of every round look the same, it forces the other team to spread out and respect your map control. This is beneficial because when you finally decide to take a site, each player will be relatively isolated. They won’t know where you’re going until the last minute, and it’ll prevent a quick flank or a quick rotation giving you time to plant and set up strong post-plants and crossfires positions.
- Try your best to take fights when you know your teammates are in a position to trade. It is as much your teammate's responsibility to rotate over into a position where they can support you in a contest situation as it is for you to delay until your teammate can get into a position to support you. Remember, the other team is trying to isolate the two of you to create an opening for a retake. Do your best to delay and prevent that scenario from happening.
- During scrims, whenever you're frustrated about a particular round or scenario or you simply feel that as a team you are doing something wrong, write it down. Discuss it as a team later in an environment where everyone is open to and willing to take criticism. In the heat of the moment it might be difficult for you to express what you're feeling in a respectful manner, so save it for a time when emotion is out of the equation.
- There are exceptions to every principle and rule, especially when it comes down to x vs. x situations. However, the principles do apply generally speaking, and every fight you take, whether you win or die, should be to help put your team in a position to secure the round. Don’t expect your teammates to be able to read your mind. Communicate every decision you make until it becomes ingrained/second nature for your team.
- The sooner you buy into a system and start to read situations the same way as your team, the less need you'll have to communicate the details as you mature as a unit. If all of these principles become instinctual, you can focus on fragging/getting into the zone, and the teamwork will start to develop organically.
- Patience, communication, and consistency are key.
- Everyone has strengths and preferences on each map and it is important that your teammates feel comfortable expressing them.
Developing strategies keeping in mind that you would like to play your teammates to their individual strengths is the best way to ensure you team reaches its maximum potential. That being said, everyone should strive to become well-rounded players, because depending on how a round unfolds, you might have to pick up any role.
- Try to think about how the decisions you make throughout the course of a round impact the overall outcome of the round and act accordingly.
- It's easy to doubt yourself when there are so many variables and considerations that need to be made at a higher level of competition, but do not let it impact your ability to be decisive. Don't be indecisive during matches. Practice how you play. Be decisive, play with belief in confidence in yourself (develop a bit of an ego, but don't lose your humility) and trust your teammates.
- Scrims and matches rarely go perfect, but trust the process. Aim and the RNG is something that you and your team cannot control. You can focus on honing those types of play and mastering the mechanics of the game on your own time, but during scrims focus on understanding how to be decisive in different situations in a way that helps put your teammates in a position to make a play with the overall aim of winning the round.
- It’s important to understand how every round you won and every round you lost unfolded as a result of positioning and timing. In the early stages of developing chemistry with your team focus less on the frag and instead on how a pick effected rotations and how it helped open up areas of the map.
- At a high level, everyone can aim, it’s more about picking the right fights, map control, and putting your teammates in a position to win the round.
- Every team, whether a legit team, or a pug develops predictable patterns of behaviour, whether it be go to strats, defaults, or ways of going about creating opening round picks. Do your best to keep tabs of these things so that you can gain the advantage in one-on-one exchanges. Adapt and adjust accordingly and do your best to be unpredictable by giving your opponent different looks and setups.
Nades:
- Perfect throwing pop flashes for the people around you on the map. It’s easy to turn from flashes that you throw for yourself. If a pop flash is thrown for your teammates however, its far more effective. Understand the nature of a pop flash. A perfect pop flash doesn’t bounce, doesn’t make a sound, it pops as soon as it turns a corner and the people it is intended to blind shouldn't have time to react and turn. Too many people throw half ass pop flashes, don’t be that guy. A good pop flash can really make the difference between a mediocre and high level player.
- One way smokes. Learn them all. Use them for safe picks sparingly, and learn to pre-fire all of them as a CT.
- Use mollys on eco rounds and do your best to have a teammate nearby with a rifle out when you’re throwing them to clear corners, overpowered angles, pushing a chokepoint nades, or to counter an counter-exec or impromptu play intended to slow down your map control or site take.
- Learn to always anticipate peeks and counter nades, especially in matches. A lot of mediocre teams waste utility early on in rounds, keep track of what’s been used and where. It can make the difference between a successful execute and poor one.
Tips:
- Assume your teammates don’t have all the info. If you get caught off guard by a random push its your responsibility. Don’t relax during matches.
- Do your best to isolate players when you deciding to commit to a gun fight. Executing into a crossfire with players who have all their utility is asking to be aced.
- Try to take fights in post plant positions where your teammates are in a position to take the fight as well. Try to peek opponents as they push forward, not as they hold angles, and try to take fights when you know your teammates can engage them as well.
- Seamless transitions in-between strats mid round is something every team should work toward. This goes hand in hand with efficient round time management.
- Take advantage of spot peeks. You don’t always need to peek for the frag, peek for info, it may even be more important than going for the frag for the overall development of the round. If you can discover how teams are setting up and what they are anticipating, you develop a solid understanding of how to counter them throughout a match.
- Understand how teams will react to you and your team collecting info. Some may be baiting you into identifying what appears to be a weakness but is in reality a strength. They may be doing it deliberately. Some may jet for the other site anticipating you identifying a weakness, so understand who you are playing against and act accordingly.
- Master the 2-3 bullet burst and fall back. Do your best to stay mobile, getting caught static is a recipe for disaster.
- When you find out where you’re playing on a map, find out how exactly your teammates around you like being supported. What kinds of flashes they like being thrown and what kinds of flashes they like to throw.
Movement and thinking about when to take fights:
Your mindset and your goal for each round:
- You want to play every round as if it’s your last. Focus on what your team can do and control, not on what the other teams is doing (to a certain extent). You want to collect info and understand what the other team is doing even before they do it by understanding their economy situation. The aim should be to 16-0 every team, play to survive and take fights where the odds of you winning the fight are greater than 50/50. Don’t commit to a kill unless your teammate is there to commit with you. Go for those 2-3 bullet bursts and be able to fall back to a safe position, overpowered angle, or crossfire.
- Make team’s waste their utility and earn map control. Force them to always be on the defensive, and punish them for any aggression or attempts at collecting information. You want them playing scared so that you can execute, push them into corners, have them taking fights on strange off angles so that they can't fall back and at worst are simply traded out by one of your teammates.
- If you're not isolating players on takes, you’re leaving too much to RNG.
- Figure out every ratty/scummy/snake way to win the 1 on 1 aim battles, master the jiggle peek, master jiggle peeking silently, master the spot peek, and learn how to master peeking awpers.
Disrupt opponents executions. Don’t let them execute cleanly, do everything u can to disrupt their timing, tossing smokes into their executes, using utility to create openings, exploiting one way smokes, navigating smokes to move into unpredictable angles, or closing off overpowered angles and choke points so that your teammates can isolate opponents and pinch sites more easily.
- As a CT, you want to preserve your utility until you know the other team is committing.
- As a T, you want the CT's to waste their utility so they can’t counter your executes.
- On a fake, think about if it were you seeing the fake, you want to create/cast doubt in your opponents mind, think about how you can cut off information and disrupt an opponent from making descriptive and accurate calls to their teammates.
- When you get all of these ideas out of the way, and it becomes second nature, you can play off each other effortlessly and focus more on hitting shots and less on all the many intangibles/variables. You want to simplify the game enough so that you can move and aim forcefully and assertively anywhere you decide to go.
- The more prepared you are, and more you are able to understand how your teammates are playing and reading a situation, the more able you will be to compliment your teammates and secure rounds.
- Always understand who is taking the lead and whose needs the support. The two guys closest to a choke point can take lead and the 2 guys behind support with well placed utility.
Constructive Criticism:
Strategies:
The first 5-7 rounds of a map is really feeling out what the other team is doing, by that point in a match, the pace of the game is established and u generally have a good idea of how the other team plays, or at least you should.
Start the round holding for pushes, anticipating flash pushes and holding so that u can counter or push them back, next decide where you want to go isolating a player for the opening pick and try. Reset after initial trades, think about rotations, fall back and setup for your final execute.
- Think about each round in stages. Mediocre teams will have one stage. Decent teams will have multiple.
- Great teams will have the ability to fake stages and have an endless amount of strategies to employ. The strategies will be as varied as the teammates on your team and their different playing styles and tendencies.
Your team should at the very least master 2-3 strats for every map indicative of your teams play style doing your best to put everyone in positions they feel comfortable and in roles they can act with decisiveness in.
Every great leader will have a system, but every teammate has a different approach and understanding of how to look at and read each round and the game as a whole. It can be a good thing because you want to have different paces and styles at your disposal, but don't let it get in the way of being decisive. Someone on the team needs to have final say and that should be clear from the start.
- Understanding how to aggress into a choke point and delaying and holding rotators and getting information is important.
- Understand how to play with timings throughout the course of a match. You could be running the same strat in multiple rounds, but switching up the timing at different stages can make your strategy more unpredictable.
- Everyone should be working toward a strat throughout the course of the round, but having the freedom to adjust and adapt on the fly, play with timings, mess with players in 1 on 1s, and becoming unpredictable is also important. You don’t want to be predictable. Learn to master the area designated to you on a map.
- Anticipate peeks at any time. If you get caught off guard, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
- If you have an issue with a decision someone has made, write it down, and express it during practice.
- Don’t attack the person, attack the decision/behaviour, and don’t be disrespectful, it'll only hurt your team chemistry.
- Use flashes and smokes to move through choke points into positions where you feel comfortable taking fights.
- Understand how moving into certain positions opens up angles for your teammates who are at neighboring choke points.
You want to make fights as easy as possible for one another. Double and triple peeks into angles, *but don’t overextend or commit too far, unless you have good reason to do so. If it’s early in the round, fall back, reset, let one-two guys fake and/or commit. The others can fall back and exploit rotations at other areas of the map.
Don’t be greedy, think about the round not the frag.
- Force people into uncomfortable gun fights (They should be backpedaling, turned, spamming, having to reset aim, pinched. Don’t take a 1v1 unless you’re doing it to put your teammates in a better position, and make sure they know you are taking that 1v1 so they know how to adapt to it.
- Think of 2-3 man units moving together with each player having a precise understanding of what their role is for their teammates and the overall goal of the round.
- Being able to fake every strategy, making it look like what you’ve done in the past, and using it to make the other team move into predictable behaviour will help you control the outcome of a match.
- Study all of the creative ways guys open rounds and picks and ingrain them into your gameplay during your own time. When spectating pro players, some things you should look for is where top teams take fights, where there teammates are in relation to them when they decide to do so, how teams react, and what top teams do to use the information they've uncovered to commit to fights and takes at various junctures of the round.
- 3 things every good player should understand and try to master: 1) Understand what opening picks do to teams when all of their players are spread out across the map and exploit the rotations by lurking and aggressing into chokepoints. 2) Understand how to survive and delay after you've engaged the opponent, and 3) Understand how to put pressure on areas of the map without giving up a frag.
- I’m a fan of lulling teams into a false sense of security with defaults, establishing a few basic takes and then playing with the timings and your opponent’s understanding of what your established takes are.
- The higher level plays come after you’ve established a fundamental understanding of your basic default and takes. Once you master the basic defaults and executes you can create countless alternatives to them by making small adjustments.
- I have always been a fan of executing, waiting, and pinching slowly. Let your opponents make mistakes, make them peek uncomfortable angles and do your best to peek from angles where you can take 2-3 bullets bursts and fall to safety.
- Smokes and flashes should be not only be used to get into bomb sites, but to get into positions where you can anchor, more specifically, the overpowered angles inside the chokepoints themselves. This will make it easier for your teammates to push forward without fear of being shot in the side or back of the head.
Strategies every team can develop:
Try to have an understanding of the basic roles for each of the following strats, i.e. who supports, anchors, and holds and who pushes):
- All A
- All B
- All mid to A
- All mid to B
- A/Mid split
- B/Mid Split
- A fake with B take
- B fake with A Take
- A Fake, B fake, A Take
- B fake, A fake, B take
- Partial A and B take feeling out your opponents position across the map by holding at chokepoints and spot peeking. You commit to a site after you’ve engaged your opponent and understand which site you have the advantage.
- Slow take where you make it look like a split to one site, but set it up for a split to the other
- Quick A fake with the Mid to B
- Quick B fake with a Mid to A
- Using a combination of any of the above mentioned strategies to launch fakes over the course of a round, finally committing with a single strategy within the last 30 seconds or so.
Moving seamlessly between each of these strats 2 to even 3 times within a round from the initial default is where you want to be able to get with your team.
You can start the round looking for information, decide what you want to do based on how the other team rotates and really exploit it.
Run your default, get people pushed up into positions close to choke points.
Throw a fake or an execute and if you get an opponent to rotate and you’ve created a weakness.
For example: You can use a mid to b to open a pick up at A, as soon as you get information, players need to get a feel for the open areas on the map and transition into a take that improves your probability of winning the round. Setting up a default and holding till a designated time in the round, which can vary round to round, is a good way to start.
Doing your first execute/take with the goal of looking and/or creating an opening pick, then resetting after taking notes of rotations and positioning can help you develop an idea of what you can exploit not only during that round but future round as well. After you have collected your info, you should be deciding where you want to fake, split, and commit during the remainder of the round. Furthermore, starting the round by establishing map control at a choke point and selling a convincing fake can provide your teammates with an opening elsewhere on the map. You see it all the time at pro events in the later rounds of match, think of it as a sacrifice bunt play.
You can also run a default, work some map control, hold at chokepoints, get one or two players to fake at a site and fade slowly, two can commit to the opposite site playing to survive and delay, while a third shows bomb and sprints for the opposite site. The two players who initially faked can start to move as they sense confusion in the opposing teams rotation executing and committing to a site based on the info they have collected and as soon as they feel they can isolate a player and take site with minimal resistance.
The aim of the round is to mess with rotations and positioning, isolate players, get picks, reset, and execute.
When teams start to respect you, you can do the straight up rushes, but you really have to get a feel for the team you’re playing to do so. Some players don’t understand the mechanics of the game so you can out frag them, but that won’t be the case at the higher level of the game. CS is in many ways like a Chess game and the same type of strategy applies.
Slow map control with a rifle supporting and an awper leading can be a really strong play. Opening up the map, and putting your awper in a position where he/she can anchor can win you the round easily.
Map control, double exec, wait it out, two players commit, two players take the other site, and one lurks.
Once your team understands these principles and they occur instinctively, you can all just focus on fragging.
Work towards executing in stages, don’t expect the other team not to counter, expect them to contest your aggression and counters nades and adjust accordingly.
The players who can apply these principles when strats and rounds go haywire are the most valuable to their teams. CS is an art and a science, and getting people on the same page, and buying into a system or approach to the game can put you in a better positiion to win rounds and matches.
Keep opponents guessing, make them adapt to you, and don’t forget to develop an intimate understanding of how the economy works in the game. Understanding your opponents money means you understand their utility and that can really help you predict/read what kind of strategy they might employ for the round. You want to be in a position where the other team is adapting to you as opposed to you adapting to them. If you are, you will always be a round ahead.
Miscellaneous strats:
Pistol:
Ct – exploit the long range advantage, don’t get overrun by jumping glocks, and try to play from a position where you can anchor and get cover, fall into a crossfire, or fall so that you can retake with a teammate. You can start the round with a quick peek and fall back into a long range crossfire. Don’t get isolated, if u do, play for the 2 taps, and play to survive/delay until the rotation comes to support.
T pistol – Play with timings, burst your way through chokepoints, force opponents to rotate and adjust, and overwhelm opponents who are out of position, or you feel can be traded easily. Avoid committing into long range crossfires. Bunny hopping and spamming your glock while jumping are pretty good ways to distract cts that are set up in good positions and create openings for your teammates to either trade you out or pickup a clean pick.
ECOS –
T side - Spreading out and working picks with 2 deags and 3 tecs. The deags work the long range, and the tecs play close angles ready to push sites at a moment’s notice. Try to get at least 2 smokes, and don’t forget to manage your money. If someone can afford a scout, let them lead and tag up players so that the pistols can clean-up and take map control.
Ct side - Use info from the other team to stack sites, or move around in units collecting information while going for picks. Understand however that when the other team sees your stack, they will use that information to rotate and adjust, so be ready to adjust and rotate accordingly as well. Baiting opponents into pushing into stacks can also be beneficial, and so can buying smokes to counter mollys.
Gun rounds:
- Establishing map control like a default but then falling into a stack or a crossfire. Understanding who on your team will be the first guy to engage, and understanding how to help him with a flash in case he is going to be overwhelmed by a rush.
- Don’t forget to try and make the other team waste their utility. Pay attention to what has been used so that when it comes time to commit/execute you have the advantage and won’t have to deal with a lot of counters.
- Using utility to launch a guy into a choke point so he is in a good position to quick flank if u are going to execute and commit to the opposite site can also be beneficial.
- Faking a site with utility and letting one or two guys commit who do their best to hold rotators and get information can help open up areas of the map for the other three players.
- On an execute understanding who will be pushing and who will be anchoring can really help solidify site control and guarantee a successful take.
- Understanding when your teammates clear specific angles it gives you the luxury to move up into map control that’ll give you a better advantage to secure the round, pinch a site, or pinch/isolate a player.
- Understanding if your executes have been going well, running a default, throwing some simple utility and holding can win you the round. Teams will try to disrupt your default and set ups for executes, so anticipate counters, and set up counter crossfires and holds accordingly.
- Doing a few things every round that establish map control, teaching the other team a routine, and making them waste utility to earn every little bit of map control can really turn the match in your favour.
- Master shoulder peeking awpers, using flashes and smokes to temporarily push them out of the angle they like to hold, and using that time to push and close the gap/distance so that you can increase the probability of winning a fight with an awper at a closer angle.
- When challenging an awper who is anchoring an angle, the first guy can do his best to bunny hop and bait the shot, the next two players can strafe wide anticipating a repeek from the awper at an off angle, but also anticipating and potentially trading out a peek from a support rifle who is nearby attempting to stop a take and prevent the awper from being overrun. Trade out either of these frags and you put your team in a position to secure the site and win the round.
Here’s a basic system you can use for any map, once you have established your economy:
Gun Round 1: Default, hold pushes, work map control, get into a position for a basic split, execute and commit
Gun Round 2: Default, hold pushes, work into a split with a lurker, lurker should be trying to provide info so that you can commit without a lot of casualties.
Gun Round 3: Default, hold, then group together, allow one to lead, 2 rifles to support, and 2 rifles with flashes to work slow into choke points, once you get the initial pick, execute, but decide whether you want to commit, whether u want 2 players to commit, and 3 players to fall. If you’ve got a lurker on the other side of the map, falling back and taking the other site is a safe option, if you don’t, it may be best to commit, especially if you know the other team pushes through, or you know they are respecting your default and spreading out.
Gun Round 4: Awp/Rifle combo move as a unit around the map working picks, while 3 others spread out and anchor, get pick fall, reset, work towards a pinch.
Gun Round 5: Fake the quick mid/b split, leave a lurker and go mid a.
Gun Round 6: Fake the quick mid/b, hold, fake mid a, go back to mid/b with a lurker a
*** Understand how they are rotating and how you need to split up the rotators to create an opening. You do not want to force your way through a crossfire, Split them up, and commit when you know a guy is by himself.
*** If you feel you’re in a 1 on 1 and you’re confident you can win the exchange, take the fight, but be ready to justify your actions based on what has happened in the round and what has happened at that area of the map throughout the course of the scrim/match.
*** Every player should have a plethora of fancy pop flashes, solo executes, and ways of working each choke point at each part of the map in their arsenal. In the x vs. x situations those kinds creative plays are the kinds of plays that can win you a round, a map, or at the very least put an opposing player on tilt. Take notes from professional players who play the crafty and creative entry fragger type roles on their respective teams.
Gun Round 7: Run default, establish map control everywhere, and make sure the other team is spread out and respecting you. Find out where a guy tends to take the long range angle. Let an awp or two slow pick and clear every part of that choke point, have two guys on standby with flashes ready to pop flash so they can peek and clear things easily. Pay attention to how the opposing player responds to your flashes, Does he spam a shot right away? Does he hold for a second then spam? Whatever he does, exploit it. That is your opening. Get that pick and decide what u want to do with the map control you have established based on how the opposing team is setup. Slow lurking up in anticipation of pop flash peeks is a really good way to guarantee another big frag especially if the other team is shorthanded and desperate need of information. Doing this effectively requires a lot of communication. But it is one of the toughest things to stop.
Gun Round 8: Do the same as gun round 7 round but push your player into a choke point so that they can lurk/work toward a split, or fake as your team is ready to execute on the opposite side of the map.
Gun Round 9: 1-3-1, Work mid control, with people putting pressure on both sides of the map, where you will commit will be dictated by how map control unfolds throughout the course of the round.
Gun Round 10: 1-3-1, faking a split, then falling back into a split at the opposite site.
**** Develop multiple ways of taking mid control on every map and really play with your opponents access to information.
Gun Round 11:Take mid control (1-3-1), make sure your opponents are cognizant of your presence mid, leave one to lurk and flank late, and go back and either commit to A or B.
All of the aforementioned strats can be changed slightly by adjusting timing, and/or breaking up these strats into stages. The Default, the map control, the executes, fakes, straight commits can all be played with. You can skip stages, switch the order of stages. For example, start the round with a fast execute, and reverting into a default, starting round with a fake and execute on one side of the map and turning it into a rush and commit on to the other, and/or committing with 2 players at one site, and lurking/map control at the other. The possibilities are countless.
