(2020)How To Get Better At CS:GO – Tips & Tricks

CS:GO is a very complex game, it is not only about kills and most skilled players are not always the best ones. If you want to get better in this game you would have to do more than just play, you have to think. Here are some of the best tips on how to get better at CS:GO.

If you want to improve your CS:GO gameplay, you will have to improve your skill which consists of 5 separate aspects. Thus being your aim, movement, in-game sens, map knowledge, and CS:GO economy management. Each of those is equally important for you to improve your overall gameplay and rank-up.

Stay tuned to this article and find out all CSGO tips and tricks you can use to improve your gameplay and become better at CSGO.

Crosshair

The most important thing in CS:GO is your crosshair. You would first need to pick crosshair style, static or dynamic. We recommend you to go with the static one since 99% of pro players use static crosshair. You would also need to adjust the size and color of your crosshair, the best thing to do that is to download community map “crashz’ Crosshair Generator v3”. You can adjust your crosshair however you want on that map or you can even pick a crosshair style of some tier 1 pro players.

Sensitivity is also one of the most important factors in CS:GO. The lower sensitivity you use, the more precise you would be. You can find online sensitivities of some pro players but the best thing you can do is make your own sensitivity. There is a Youtube video called Find your perfect sensitivity, everything is explained there.

Crosshair placement

The key to having a consistent aim is your crosshair placement. This is something that can’t be learned in one day. You would have to do a lot of practising to master this technique.

Tips

• Follow walls with your aim, professional player AdreN explained that in one of his videos.
• Pre-aim at common spots or even pre-fire if you are sure that the enemy is there
• Always keep your crosshair at the head level of the enemy

The most common mistake people at all ranks are making is that they tend to either aim way too low at the enemy’s knees and legs, or too high above the enemy’s head. As a result of that, they have a slow reaction time when an enemy is peeking his head around the corner, because they have to move their crosshair much further to get to it. That is why you should always keep your crosshair at the head level and you are good to go.

Aim

Nobody is born with great aim and the only way to get better at aiming is to practice. There are many practice techniques that you can use, from killing bots to playing competitive matches and getting better with the time.

Tips

• Stand steady on the ground, don’t move while you are shooting from a rifle or an AWP
• Run & gun, if you are using an SMG with high movement speed or a pistol, you should move while shooting so the enemies would have a harder time to hit you.
• Pre-aim at every common spot on the map
• Keep your crosshair at head level

Practice

• There are many community maps made just for practising. The best one is training_aim_2. Download that map and try to get a better score each time. You would notice great progress within just a few days.
• The other way to advance is to kill bots. Download the map: fast aim reflex and try to kill 200 bots just to refresh the muscle memory, once you feel you are ready to play go to DM server.
• After killing bots join on DM servers against real players and play at least 10 minutes of DM before you join a competitive match.
• Practice shooting techniques: Tap, Burst and Spray.

Taping

The best way to practice taping is by joining a community headshot only server. This shooting technique is used on a long-range fight and you should master it.

Bursting

Bursting is a shooting technique used in a mid-range fight. You can practice it on any DM server. There are even special maps made only for burst practice.

Spraying

This is the hardest shooting technique in Counter-Strike. It is used for a short-range fight against more than one enemy. Once you master AK47 spraying you are good to go. There is a spray pattern for every weapon and you can find it online.

Teammates

The easiest way to rank up in this game is to find a team of 5 players similar to your skill level. Don’t play alone, train with them, learn new strategies and eventually, you would rank together and have fun in the meantime. There are several playstyles in CS:GO. Every team needs 2 Riflers, one AWP player, one Lurker, and one Entry fragger. You should choose which playstyle is the most suitable for you. If there is someone better with the AWP in your team you need to admit it, let him be the primary AWP. Don’t force it, I am an AWP player on my team and to be honest, it is the most boring job.

Riflers are the players who are both good with AK 47 and M4A4.

Lurker is a guy who needs to be smart, he can’t be predictable and he needs to be able to position himself where enemies don’t expect him. The main task of a Lurker is to get behind enemy lines.

Entry fragger is a utility guy who can open the thing up towards one site and lead the charge.

Team Leader is the most experienced guy on the team, he calls the shots and you should listen to him. Don’t do anything on your own. Team Leader also has to be smart and know how to calm the team when necessary.

Train with your team

You should train together, learn news smokes and flashes for site takes and retakes. Don’t play too many maps, pick 3 for start and after you master them, you can advance to others.

Defending site

The most common strategy is to send 2 A, 2 B and 1 Mid. If you are defending a spot and your teammate dies, don’t go in a solo retake. Instead, retreat, wait for the rest of your team to gather up and then retake the site together. You would have a greater chance in a 4 vs 5 retakes than 3 vs 5 anyway.

Attacking site

• Don’t attack without flashes and smokes.
• You should be organized, every player should look only at one spot and trust the teammates to do the rest. Don’t go in with 5 guys looking at the same spot! This is the most common mistake low-rank player are doing.
• If you spot a stack on the site, don’t be hungry for kills, you can always rotate to another site and take the round.
• Trade, this is the most important thing. Never go alone. You should go in groups, so if one dies the other one can trade him so it would still be 4 vs 4.

Map knowledge

• You should know every single spot on the map. You can’t give info like: “one to your right”, you need to know the exact name of the location on the map.
• If you play AWP, you need to know AWP positions on the map and how fast can enemies reach that position. If they are faster than you, don’t peek!!! If you want to peek anyway, have one of your teammates flash the enemy AWP and peek after that flash.
• By playing the map you would learn common spots on that map, try to pre-aim and pre-fire as much as you can to the most common spots where the enemies can be. Do not prefire every single angle, but pre-aim every angle.
•  Learn new smokes and flashes for each map, don’t just waste utility.

Know Your Enemy

You should be able to predict enemy moves. For that, you would need the perfect economy knowledge as well as the “game sens”. Enemies at lower ranks are pretty predictable. They always play the same spots and after just a few rounds, you would be able to pre-fire that spots with no problem. High-rank players are hard to predict, they have much more strategies, fake attacks and they know how to use utility. If there is only 1 flash on B, don’t rotate!!! People tend to leave the site open if there is even a chance that the enemies are at another site. Never rotate until you see the C4 on the map.

Economy

The economy is a completely separate aspect of the game. You should know when to go eco, when to force and when to just do a half-buy. The next chapter of this article will be completely dedicated to economy.

Different Ways to Earn Money in CS:GO Competitive Match

To fully understand CS:GO economy system, you need to know how the economy in CS:GO works and how to earn money in this game. In a single competitive match, there are only 2 ways to earn money. You will be awarded after each kill and after each round (whether it is a won or lost round).

Here are the basics of CS:GO economy:
Kills

Round win

• Elimination $3250
• Bomb explosion or defusal $3500 ( individual gets $300 for plant or defuse)

There is a bonus count if you are losing rounds:

Your count starts with 1.
Scenarios:
Lose a round +1
Win a round -1

At the beginning of each half, the loss counter starts at 1. That means if you lose a pistol round, you will be awarded with $1900. However, if you win a pistol round, your counter will be set to 0. Therefore, if you lose the next round you will get only $1400.

You need to track your economy to know how much money you would get next round, so you can know what to buy. It is simple. As already mentioned, your starting bonus count is 1. After losing a pistol round you would get $1900 because your bonus count would be 1. If you win a pistol round and lose a round after that you would get only $1400 because your bonus count would be 0. There is no maximal count, you can lose 10 rounds in a row, but you would still get $3400 because that is the maximal bonus. However, after winning a round your count would be 9 and you would still get $3400 because you still have bonus count round greater than 4.

This is important, so if you are losing 5 rounds in a row, you would get even more money than the enemy for winning a round.

Economy tips

• After you win a pistol round, buy SMGs to boost your economy. You would get $600 for every kill against unarmed opponents ($300 with P-90).
• On the other side, if you lose a pistol round just go 1 round eco and you are good to go.

CS:GO Economy Management

For all of this to make sense, we need to look at some scenarios. If you ever watched a professional CS:GO match, you probably saw that each individual in a team has similar equipment bought. That’s called CS:GO economy management. It is important that a whole team has a similar amount of money in their balance. Therefore, if you have enough money to buy everything, it is not always smart to do so.

There are 4 types of buys in CS:GO, full-buy, half-buy, full-eco, and anti-eco.

Full Buy

If a whole team has enough money to buy kevlar, rifle and grenades, that means you can do a full-buy and buy everything you need. This is a type of buy you should always aim for.

Half Buy

Half-buy consists of kevlar + pistol (or SMG in some scenarios). For example, let’s imagine you play on a T side. For a full-buy, you will need $1000 for kevlar + helmet, $2700 for AK-47 and an additional $1000 for grenades. That’s $4700 in total. Let’s imagine you have $3000 on your balance and you just lost 3 rounds in a row, so your bonus counter is at 3. In a worst-case scenario, if you lose the next round, you will still get $2900 which will be $5900 in total. We already know that you need only $4700 for a full buy so it will be wise to invest in this round too. You can invest up to $1200. That’s enough to buy a kevlar plus a pistol of your choice..

Full Eco

Full eco rounds are rounds where you invest $0. If you have some money to spare, you can get P250 or a Deagle.

Imagine the previous scenario but instead of $3000, you have only $1000. That means you can’t spend a single dime if you want to have a full-buy next round. You have to sacrifice some rounds in order to get back in the match.

Anti Eco

Now that you understand how the economy in CS:GO works, it is easier to predict the current enemy team balance. If you are certain that the enemy team has to go full-eco, it is smart to buy SMGs or Shotguns to boost your economy. SMGs are highly effective against unarmed enemies and they have a big earning potential.

Don’t Rage

• Don’t easily get frustrated, you would just lose concentration.
• Try to focus on staying alive as long as you can, the longer you stay alive, the more opportunities you would have.
• There is always someone better than you, get used to it!!!
• If someone is better than you, don’t automatically assume that he has a cheat, try to learn something from him

Gaming Equipment

Yes, it is true, your equipment can have a great impact on your gameplay. Every piece of equipment matters and better equipment does not necessarily mean better gameplay but it will most definitely help you.

Mouse and Mousepad

You need a mouse that fits perfectly into your hand. Further, your mouse has to be reliable and precise. You need to be as precise as you can. That is why you can’t use some $5 mouse and expect it to work as a professional gaming mouse. As for the mousepad, it does not really matter as long as it is big. The most important thing about mousepad is its size. Low sensitivity means more precision but it also means more mouse movements and more space to do it. To find out more about this topic, read our article about Best Gaming Mice for CSGO.

Keyboard

Movement is also a very important aspect of this game. In CSGO, you practically move with your keyboard. Although it seems completely irrelevant, a good keyboard can really make a difference. There are some keyboards that are just better than regular ones. Your keyboard has to have Anti-ghosting so you can press more buttons at once. If you want to know more about Anti-ghosting and CSGO Keyboards, make sure to read our article about Best Keyboards in CSGO.

Headset

 I think it is pretty obvious, isn’t it? You need to use every piece of information you can gather in-game. After visual information, the sound is the second most important one. That is why you will want to have great headphones so you can hear your enemies and never get surprised. I used to play this game without any headset and it was a mistake.

Trust me when I tell you, your gameplay will improve significantly right after you start using any headset. Of course, if you want to hear better you will have to spend more money do to so. To demonstrate it, I will share my personal experience with you. I used to play with Roccat XTD 5.1 and I was able to hear absolutely everything.

Even my teammates occasionally used to accuse me of cheating because I heard some things I was not supposed to. Well, if the game allows it, we are supposed to hear it, aren’t we?  I am currently using Hyper X Cloud 2 and I can hear absolutely everything. I think it is enough to say that s1mple is currently using the same headset. Get yourself a gaming headset and see for yourself. I personally recommend Hyper X but any gaming headset should do the trick.

Monitor

Another important thing is a gaming monitor. I suggest you use the 24-inch monitor as it is proven to be the best size for this game. Further, your refresh rate and response time also have a great impact. If you use 60 Hz monitor, your game is a bit of laggy. If you never played on a 144Hz or 240Hz monitor you won’t be able to notice that. However,  once you try to play on at least 144Hz, you won’t be able to go back. Better monitor means more FPS (that you can see) and better response time.  If you want to find more information about this topic, check our article Best Gaming Monitor for CSGO.

Watch Pro scene

Learn from professionals. Let the professionals show you how to do it. Watch pro matches on Twitch and interesting video compilations on Youtube. You would always learn something new and you would be better and better every single day. There are also some Youtube channels with CSGO tips and tricks so make sure to check them out.

The best way to enjoy the professional CSGO scene is to always throw a couple of dollars on some matches. CSGO betting is becoming more and more popular. Feel free to read through the best CSGO betting sites and take your pick.