A good sniper can turn the tide of a game. There are lots of different styles and each one helps the team in its own way. An aggressive peek that results in an entry kill can open up a site and make it a whole lot easier to win the round. With a more passive approach you can hold down a key area on the map and make sure your team is in control. In this article I ll try my best to introduce you to a few different styles and how they function within a team. In my previous guides to roles in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive I ve covered support, entry fragger and lurker.

What is an AWPer supposed to do?

Like I mentioned above, there are a lot of different styles when it comes to AWPing. Because of that it s difficult to say what a good AWPer is supposed to do. Ultimately, your goal is to win the game. In order to do so you need to understand a few things. First of all: your weapon costs $4750. That s $2050 more than an AK-47. Let s say you have full armor, an AWP, a smoke and two flashes and you re facing a guy with an AK-47 and the same equipment. If he kills you that s $6450 plus the bonus $300 he gets for the kill. Unless one of your teammates manages to salvage your AWP for the next round, it s a disaster for your team s economy.

For the AWP to be a good investment you need to either kill the other team s AWPer or two riflers. Of course that s not always the case: you can get a one-for-one trade that opens up a bombsite and wins your team the round, but you get the point. In the long run, it s crucial that you don t throw away those precious rounds when you have the one shot-one kill beast in your hands. The AWPer should always try to stay alive for as long as possible.

It s difficult to balance prioritizing survival and having an impact on the game. Therefore the AWPer needs to carefully plan their every move. Usually it s not wise to go and peek long on Dust2 without help from a teammate. Get your support player to flash you in and make sure they re there to trade the kill and pick up your weapon if you die. An AW:er should also have a backup plan. Choose the angles you peek carefully and make sure you have a way out in case you miss your shot. You should try to know your next move before you have to relocate. Like this:

If you want success with the AWP, you need to try to find advantageous peeks. Especially if you suspect that the other team can t afford proper weapons. They might try to run you down with pistols in an attempt to do some serious damage to your economy.

Another big part of being an AWPer is to know when to actually buy the AWP. A few players, like Josh JDM64 Marzano, buy the AWP almost every single time they can. Generally that s a weakness. Sometimes it s better to buy a rifle and play the long game. With experience, however, you ll learn what s right for you.

Who should be an AWPer?

You want a player who s highly accurate and who has fast reactions. Those traits will come in handy in duels against the other team s AWPer. Many games have been won or lost depending on the outcome of such a battle.

If you ve watched aggressive AWPers like Jesper JW Wecksell or Kenny KennyS Schrub go for insane peeks from positions they shouldn t play from it s easy to think that you need to be a little crazy to be a successful sniper. On the surface it may look like they don t know what they re doing, which of course isn t the case. If you re the AWPer on your team you need to be able to weigh the risk and the potential reward.

Your sniper player should be a person who can stay calm in all situations. Being an AWPer means that you re going to be under a lot of pressure at times. One hit and you get the kill and put your team in a great position. A missed shot on the other hand can lead to your team losing the round, and in the worst case force you to go for an eco the following round.

Don t be afraid to communicate your ideas. If you think that you can kill the other team s AWPer in mid if someone flashes you in, ask for the flash. Be confident and define your own fate.

Example of pro play

Here s a clip from the ESL Pro League Season 3 final between Luminosity and G2. Marcelo coldzera David displays great awareness, precision, reactions and he has a plan. He knows what he s going to do. In other words, all the qualities you want a good AWPer to have. Now that Ladislav GuardiaN Kov cs and Olof Olofmeister Kajbjer both have been struggling with wrist injuries for a while I d say that coldzera is the best player in the world. He s had some insane performances as of late and shown a level of consistency that you d only expect from a true superstar.

coldzera positions himself below the ladder next to the bomb train. From this position he s ready to assist his teammates wherever he s needed. As it turned out, Fernando fer Alvarenga got killed by Edouard SmithZz Dubourdeaux behind the green train. At this point coldzera knew that Gabriel FalleN Toledo had control over alley and that SmithZz was likely to peek as he had to pick up the bomb.

Marcelo managed to pick up the kill, and immediately after the shot had been fired he climbed the ladder to make it harder for G2 to trade. As he climbed Adil ScreaM Benrlitom sprayed down one of coldzera s teammates. Because of that, coldzera knew exactly where ScreaM was and as a consequence went for an aggressive peek that paid off due to his pinpoint accuracy and fast reaction time.

After that kill, G2 s Richard shox Papillon found himself in a very tricky 1-on-3 situation. He had 13 seconds to retrieve the bomb, plant it and at same time stay alive. Knowing this, coldzera just stayed put in his hiding place. shox killed both FalleN and Tacio TACO Filho. After that he had no time to go for the bomb. He had to either save his weapon or pick up the last kill. Because of coldzera s smart positioning, the only way for shox to win the round was by climbing the ladder, which is practically a suicide mission. He probably should have saved his rifle instead.

So, what did coldzera do? He killed the bomb carrier, he put his team in a 3-on-1 situation by going for the aggressive peek towards the bomb train and he survived the round with his AWP. Plays like that can change the outcome of a game. Remember that an AWPer who s still alive poses a great threat and limits the options that their enemies have.

How to practice

First off all you want to be a competent rifler even if your main job is to snipe. I d recommend that you spend some time on deathmatch servers with both the AWP and assault rifles as often as you can. Get to know your weapons.

A more specific way to practice your AWP is to study the maps. Go on an empty server and try to pre-aim all the common spots as you go around corners. Remember that your scoped in movement speed is significantly slower than when you re not scoped in. Scope just as you get around the corner, or else you ll be a whole lot easier to kill. Like this:

If you learn how to do this properly you ll have a greater chance of winning those duels.

As you might already know, you can t move and shoot accurately at the same time. What does this mean? It means you ll need to learn how to come to a halt as fast as possible. Let s say you re strafing left to get around a corner. At that point you re holding A (default keys are used in this example). If you then let go of A, you ll slide for a short distance. What you want to do instead is to let go of A, press D to counter that movement and then hold both A and D to make sure you stand absolutely still. Practice this move and in time it ll become second nature to you.

Let s get back to those deathmatch sessions. There are different ways to approach your practice, but here s what s worked for me: try to practice only one aspect of your game at a time. In one session that might be shoot as quickly as you possibly can when you see an enemy . In another session it can be whatever happens I m not going to miss my shot . A third option can be that you focus on switching to your pistol as fast as possible to try to finish off enemies every time you miss a shot with the AWP. I usually focus on one thing for ten minutes, another for ten more minutes and then I ll just play for ten. That s some good all around practice in thirty minutes.

Watch the pros play

It s always a good idea to watch better players play the game and try to learn from what they re doing. Go to HLTV.org and download a few demos. Focus on their positioning and crosshair placement. Ask yourself why is this guy doing what he s doing?

When it comes to AWP:ers there are lots of good players with various styles to watch. On the more explosive side of things you have players such as JW from fnatic and Oleksandr s1mple Kostylev. s1mple is one of those rare players with extreme talent. If he can learn how to control his emotions he s bound to become a real superstar one day.

Then you have those AWP:ers who play a more passive style and who are great at holding down angles. Tyler skadoodle Latham from Cloud9 is one. Admittedly he s fallen off a bit from his old level of play. The fourth player I ll recommend is GuardiaN. Before his wrist injury he was considered a top two player in the world and for good reason. He s just a great player overall. I d say his greatest strength is his insane map knowledge. He can peek specific spots to perfection through smokes and he probably gets more wallbang kills than any other pro player in the scene.

A bonus clip

Every now and again something special happens in pro matches. The magic moments that we all love to watch. One of those moments were when Luminosity faced off against Liquid in the semifinals of the MLG Columbus major and coldzera did this:

Valve even decided to make some permanent changes to Mirage in memory of that glorious moment. Never forget.

Photo credit: ESL/Helena Kristiansson

When I say G, you say TWO! G! TWO! G! TWO!

An English crowd cheering the French would be all but unheard of in most sports. Even here in CS:GO, where Europe holds a strong sense of solidarity, it still came as quite the surprise. Nevertheless, hearing the crowd erupting into roars of delight at every ScreaM headshot, there was little doubt about where their allegiance lay. And it was hard to blame them as London witnessed one of the most exhilarating demonstrations of force France has given in years.

The ESL Pro League Finals pits the top eight teams from the North American and European scenes against one another. Limited to just four teams from each region, you d be hard-pressed to find any analyst predicting the likes of G2 to qualify over NaVi in Europe. It s no secret that French CS has been in a rut for some time now, holding fantastic talent but never quite able to realise their potential. Following the breakup of LDLC, all eyes had been on EnVyUs to carry French hopes forward, but thus far 2016 had only seen France fall further and further from the upper echelon of teams. But where EnVy may be waning, G2 finally seem ready to pick up the pace.

Group stages

The event s opening looked set to provide a tournament of upsets as Canadian team Optic Gaming overcame a sluggish Astralis and, perhaps even more surprising, Luminosity fell victim to G2 on train, historically one of their best maps. Ninjas in Pyjamas just barely survived their encounter with Team Liquid, who failed to capitalise on no less than 12 match points in an all-too-soon flashback to the MLG Colombus semifinal.

Come the weekend, only four teams remained: NiP, Fnatic, LG and G2. In what many had expected to be the highlight of the tournament, fan-favourites NiP faced off against an invigorated LG. Pushing NiP well beyond breaking point, Luminosity looked an entirely different side to the group stages, earning the first spot in the grand final. Hailing from Brazil but competing in NA, LG occupy an unusual position: they re popular in both EU and NA, but never the main fan focus. This hasn t stopped a passionate core of Brazilians from cheering their side on, however, no matter where they play. Following their victory, Luminosity s Captain, Gabriel FalleN Toledo discussed his fan-support across the globe:

It's awesome because the Brazilian fans are starting to watch Counter-Strike again. Us playing well and reaching the top made them start looking for Counter-Strike again. We know that a lot of Brazilians live outside of Brazil there are a lot of Brazilians in London and they are here watching us play. It feels amazing to see all the Brazilian guys interested in Counter-Strike [and esports] again.

In the other half, G2 faced Fnatic. Struggling from the loss of Olofmeister, Fnatic still present a formidable opponent that can never be underestimated, as G2 were soon to find out. Suffering an embarrassing 11-0 opening, Fnatic looked in utter disarray. However with the change of half, it seemed the Swedes had awoken, and following an incredible 39 kills by Flusha, they dragged themselves out of the abyss to a map one victory. Fortunately for G2, this form was far from consistent, and over the course of the next two games, the French retaliated. A confident win on Cache led to a tense decider on Train. Missing a crucial Mag-7 shot on defence, Fnatic s JW was swiftly overwhelmed, allowing G2, the unexpected qualifiers, to push far beyond expectations and reach the grand finals.

Feed the snake!

Photo credit: ESL/Scott Choucino

If there was one talking point for the weekend beyond the matches themselves, it was certainly the home crowd. Indigo at the O2 provided a surprisingly intimate venue for the finals, in a smaller-scale, dimly-lit arena. Up close and personal to the stage, the fans more than made up for numbers through sheer noise and bravado. As the largest prize pool event to be hosted in the UK so far, the developing scene brought fervor in droves. British fans celebrated in the only way they know how, creating unusual and entertaining chants of support while drinking rather too much alcohol much to the surprise and amusement of the casting team.

While the attitude within the venue remained upbeat and never swung towards aggressive, the often unrelated noise did cause some confusion for the online viewership. During the second semi-final, volume of the game and casters on the upper balcony was low enough that fans became distracted. In scenes reminiscent of a cricket game, spectators began to create a staggering tower of stacked cups across the crowd, all the while chanting feed the snake! . Fortunately, this was taken in good spirits, with attention and support returning to the game at crucial moments. At the very least, the UK has shown it can provide one of the most fiery audiences in the esports world, unlikely to be forgotten any time soon.

The grand final: Luminosity Gaming vs. G2

The final match of the tournament was nothing short of phenomenal. Unexpectedly, G2 elected not to ban Overpass, a map widely considered LG s forte having lost just one of their last ten matches there. The French firebrands clearly had a point to prove however, producing a powerful comeback to take a one-map lead.

Having already defeated LG on Train during the group stages, G2 found themselves faced with a much tougher challenge in the grand finals. Despite an 11-4 lead in the first half, LG struggled to maintain control, calling a timeout at 12-all. Sensing their team s need, the Luminosity support in the crowd rose to the occasion, filling the arena with voices of support and lifting their side to the win. As each game progressed, it became clear that both sides were near-perfectly matched. Where G2 held fast on Cobblestone, LG fired back on Dust 2, winning G2 s map pick.

In its final appearance in the current map pool, Inferno hosted the most intense finale of year as each team traded round after round before Luminosity took a two-round lead at 14-12. Just as it all looked to be over, G2 countered, winning three consecutive rounds to reach 14-15 and match point. LG, however, were far from finished, decisively driving the match into overtime. At last, it seemed, G2 were exhausted, with Luminosity claiming the crown at 19-16.

The UK crowd had demanded entertainment, and they received the highest pedigree. Finishing with one of the best series of 2016 so far, the ESL pro league has shown that CS is entering one of the most volatile and exciting times of it s life. Luminosity Gaming have again established themselves as the best in the world, and G2 have finally returned French CS to life in explosive form. Electrifying the crowd, G2 s Adil ScreaM Benrlitom supplied countless highlight shots, while Richard shox Papillon produced not one but two 1v4 site retakes to keep his team in the game. French CS is back, and more exciting than ever.

Whatever your game, there s loads to watch this weekend. LoL s MSI is the highest-profile official event, but both Dota 2 and CS:GO have massive tournaments of their own and then there s a bunch happening in the house of Blizzard, another stop on the Capcom Pro Tour, and regular season play in Smite. Find all the details below.

League of Legends: Mid-Season Invitational

Catch the finale of what has been a dramatic event so far and will undoubtedly continue to be so. Our columnist Cassandra Marshall covered the main points you need to know earlier in the week. One semi-finalist will be decided today, with CLG and Flash Wolves duking it out for the remaining spot in Sunday s grand final tomorrow. Play begins at 06:30 BST/22:30 PDT (the night before) on both days, with rebroadcasts at 19:00 BST/11:00 PDT. Find the livestream on LoLesports.

Dota 2: Epicenter LAN

Epicenter has been a brilliant event so far, with over-the-top staging matched by phenomenal games. Newbee s record-smashing 29-game winning streak was brought to a halt by OG yesterday as TeamLiquid s star continues to rise. The remaining playoffs will be played over the course of the weekend, with games beginning at 09:00 BST/01:00 PDT on both Saturday and Sunday. Here s the English language stream.

CSGO: ESL Pro League Season 3 Finals

Top-tier CS:GO with a $512,000 prize pool to match. Play has been ongoing since Wednesday, with finals taking place this weekend at the O2 in London. Tune in tomorrow for semifinals between Ninjas in Pyjamas/Luminosity and G2/Fnatic, with the grand final set to take place on Sunday after a showmatch. The livestream for both days starts around 14:00 BST/06:00 PDT, with matches beginning around an hour later. Find it here.

Heroes of the Storm: Europe Summer Regional 2

The second European Summer Regional rounds up the best of the region s Heroes of the Storm teams in Tours, France. In addition to the main prize, there s a slot at next month s Summer Championship on the line. The final day begins at 10:00 BST/02:00 PDT on Saturday and you can watch on Dreamhack.tv.

Hearthstone: Europe Spring Preliminary

160 of Europe s best Hearthstone players go toe-to-toe over the course of three days, starting today. You can watch the livestream on Twitch from 13:00 BST/05:00 PDT on Saturday and Sunday, but this event also has a substantial live component. Venues around Europe are running their own viewing parties with side events for attendees: check out this post for more information.

Capcom Pro Tour: Battle Arena Melbourne 8

The latest stop on the Capcom Pro Tour brings Street Fighter V to Australia. As usual, this is an open tournament featuring pro talent: if you re only interested in seeing the very best, consider jumping in later in the event. That said, BAM8 have a healthy livestream schedule planned: pools start at 01:00 BST on Saturday/17:00 PDT on Friday and the top 32 will be streamed from 08:00 BST/00:00 PDT on Sunday. You can find the stream, and more details, here.

Smite: Spring Split Season 3

Smite s regular season continues with an evening of play in Europe on Saturday and North America on Sunday. Find the games on Twitch starting at 18:00 BST/10:00 PDT both days.

StarCraft 2: Spring Championship

Alongside Heroes of the Storm at DreamHack this weekend, StarCraft 2 is hosting its Spring Championship. 32 players from 17 different countries makes this a massive international showcase, with everyone fighting for a portion of the $150,00 prize pool. You can watch it on Twitch here, with games starting at 10:00 BST/02:00 PDT on Saturday and Sunday, and 11:00 BST/03:00 PDT on Monday.

This weekend is extremely busy, with both the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational and the many attractions of DreamHack Austin vying for your time. You'll find esports of almost every stripe ahead, with only Dota 2 taking a break in the immediate aftermath of the Manila Major qualifiers. GL HF!

League of Legends: Mid-Season Invitational 2016

MSI is the talk of the League of Legends world at the moment, and expect that to continue for the next week or so as the action rages on in Shanghai. We're currently in the middle of the group stages, which will continue throughout the weekend play starts at 06:30 BST/22:30 PDT on Saturday and at 04:30 BST/20:30 PDT on Sunday. As ever, you can find loads more information, and the livestream, at LoLesports.

CSGO: DreamHack ZOWIE Open

A cross-section of American CS:GO go to war with a grand prize of $50,000 on the line as part of the ongoing DreamHack ZOWIE Open series. This is a chance to check in on MLG Columbus surprise hit Luminosity Gaming as well as CLG, Cloud9, Liquid and more. Play starts on Saturday at 21:00 BST/13:00 PDT and you can watch the games on DreamHack's CS stream.

StarCraft II: DreamHack ZOWIE Open/WCS Spring Circuit Championship

Talented StarCraft II players compete for a share of $50,000 and, perhaps more importantly, 5000 WCS points. It opens with a massive 96-player group stage, so there are plenty of opportunities for unknown players to shine (or fail horribly.) Even so, you might want to tune in later in the day to see the highest standard of play. The games began today and continue throughout the weekend, starting at 17:45 BST/09:45 PDT on Saturday and 18:30 BST/10:30 PDT on Sunday. Here's the stream.

Hearthstone: DreamHack Grand Prix Series

Another open event at DreamHack Austin, this time with a relatively modest prize pool of $27,500. They only plan to livestream the best of the Swiss round followed by the top 8 bracket, so Sunday's probably the day to tune in expect the stream to start around 17:00 BST/09:00 PDT. You'll be able to find the stream link through dreamhack.tv.

Heroes of the Storm: NA Summer Regional

There's $100,000 on the line at the HotS Summer Regional at Dreamhack Austin, along with a spot at the Summer Global Championship in June. NA is one of the most dynamic regions for Heroes of the Storm, making this a good place to jump in if you've not tuned in before. Play began today, but you can watch the second day (including the finals) on Saturday from 17:00 BST/09:00 PDT. Find the livestream here.

Smite: Spring Split

There's another weekend of top-level European and North American Smite ahead. On Saturday, Hungry For More formed from the ashes of Titan will take on both Paradigm and Team Dignitas. They've had a spotty record so far, and will be looking to turn that around. In NA on Sunday, Enemy's new(est) roster will take on Team EnVyUs and SoaR G2A. Games start at 18:00 BST/10:00 PDT on both days, and you can watch them here.

Street Fighter V: Capcom Pro Tour NA Ranking Event

The latest stop on the Capcom Pro Tour rounds out the packed Dreamhack Austin event. There are a lot of incredible players in attendance, including Justin Wong, PR Balrog, Brenttiscool, Julio Fuentes and others. It's an open event, so if you're planning on tuning in then the best time is at 21:00 BST/13:00 on Sunday that's when the top 8 begins. Here's the livestream.

What is the lurker supposed to do?

Release your inner Ethan Hunt and bring out your sneakiest plays: it s time to talk about the lurker. Compared to the roles I ve covered so far (support and entry fragger), lurker is the most distinctive in terms of what you re supposed to do and how to get it to work within a team. It would be easy to say that the lurker is the player who sneaks around the map on their own trying to backstab people. In a sense that s true, but there s so much more to it.

The lurker is supposed to wander off by themselves and either secure kills or stall the opposing team s defenders rotation over to the site where the main attack is taking place. They should also scout ahead to let the in-game leader know whether it s a good idea to go for the intended execution or not. Let s say they re in apartments on Inferno (a moment of silence for our beloved and figured-out map) and they can hear that there s a CT on short as well as one in pit after you ve taken control over banana. In this instance, they know that the rotation is going to take a while and that it s probably wise to try to take the B-site. The lurker is also in a great position to kill the CT in pit once that guy realizes that the terrorists are swarming B.

Alternatively, the lurker could go down to boiler room and try to kill the player on short in order to stay closer to B so that they can assist his team during the post-plant situation. There s a lot of decision-making involved when you lurk: decisions that can either make or break a round. Let s say the lurker decides to go for the kill in pit but the CT manages to get out safely. Then our lurker is in a bad situation and can t be of much help for their team. On the other hand, they might secure the kill and put some pressure on defenders in CT spawn, making it a lot more difficult to retake the site.

Who should be a lurker?

I d say that there are two primary qualities that a good lurker needs: creativity and good communication. A creative lurker can come up with plays that most other players wouldn t even consider. Coming up with a play involves good reads of what your opponents are likely to do as well as understanding what they may or may not expect. I d say your lurker should be a player who trusts their instincts. When I ask the lurker on my team how he came up with a certain play, he often replies with I don t know, it just felt right . Lurking is a highly intuitive endeavor. It takes time to get it right, so don t beat yourself up if you re new. The only way to develop this skill is through experience.

The other part, communication, is probably the main reason why you want a lurker on your team in the first place. Your lurker needs to be able to assess the situation and provide good information. If they can t hear nor see a CT in a position where they expect a CT to be, they should alert the rest of his team as they might be about to walk straight into a meat grinder. Remember that knowing where the defenders aren t positioned will help you figure out where they are.

Also, it doesn t hurt if your lurker is a person who watches a lot of demos in order to learn how top players generally react to certain plays. How does the B-player on Mirage generally react to a smoke strat over at the A-site? Is it possible to categorize players in different groups? The players who tend to rotate early, players who stay for too long and players who half rotate over to a more defensive position closer to the market area? If so, will that knowledge help you identify what kind of player that B-defender is in a live game? I think so. Study the game and tendencies and you ll have a better chance of making good decisions on the fly.

It s also important that your lurker is individually skilled and can hold their own in a fight, as that s what they re supposed to do most of the time.

Pro example

This round was played during the grand final of Dreamhack Masters in Malm , Sweden a few weeks ago. Christopher GeT_RiGhT Alesund from Ninjas in Pyjamas starts off the round by going off on his own towards B. He jumps down to lower tunnels and is lucky enough to find Ioann Edward Sukhariev out of position on catwalk. As Edward goes down, the rest of NiP know that there s one less CT remaining on the A-side of the map.

GeT_RiGhT proceeds by smoking off mid doors. At that point Na Vi have no idea how many players are around the mid area. As a result, they can t really start to rotate away from either site. Two flashbangs and a sneaky play through the smoke later and GeT_RiGhT picks up his second kill: Ladislav GuardiaN Kov cs.

After that kill, he waits for a second or two but no one tries to trade off the kill from the B-side of mid, suggesting that the B-player might have pushed tunnels for information. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I think that the smoke in mid served two purposes. The first one and the most obvious one is that it allowed GeT_RiGhT to go for the sneaky play with the flashes. The second one was that it, in a way, forced Na Vi to go for a peek in tunnels for information, because at that point they couldn t know where NiP was going to attack. Knowing that there was a possibility that they would peek and find that no one was there made Christopher realize that there was a chance that the B-player was going to attempt to flank him. His flawless read of the play secured his third kill of the round as he managed to pick off Egor flamie Vasilyev.

After that his job was pretty much done. He decided to stay in lower tunnels and make sure the last CT couldn t push mid doors. This time he missed the fact that Daniil Zeus Teslenko pushed short in an attempt to save his armor and CZ75-Auto. It s easy to see what an impact his lurk play had on the round. Not only did he kill three players, he also made sure that the defending players couldn t know where the main push was going to take place.

How to practice lurking

If you ve decided that you want to be the lurker on your team there s a lot of work to be done. The main area that I think you should focus on is your gamesense. Watch a lot of demos from your own games to find out how players on your level react to the things you do. How do the players on a certain site generally react to a flashbang thrown in a certain spot at a certain time. If you notice a pattern you should try to figure out what triggered the response.

The best way to learn these things is to play a lot of games. Preferably against other pre-made teams, so that you know that they will communicate. It s even more important that you focus and try to figure out how a specific opponent plays during the actual game and how you can use that knowledge to your advantage. If your team goes for an A-push and you throw your flashbangs and a smoke towards B, how long did it take for the B-players to get to A? Is it possible for you to play in a certain way to trick them into doing what you want them to do?

Because of the nature of your role, you should spend a lot of time on deathmatch servers. It s crucial that you get good at winning those aim duels. It s like that old Bruce Lee quote that s been cited almost too many times: I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times . If you spend more time working on the basics of the game than your opponent, you give yourself a greater chance to come out on top of any given situation.

When you play games for practice purposes you should try to mix things up as much as possible so that, over time, you build a solid repertoire of plays that you can use in different situations. However, it s important to remember that when you play matches you can lure your opponents into a false sense of security by going for the same exact play every single round. Usually those plays involve a smoke and two flashes. It s important that you re able to stay alive once they know what you re up to. After a few rounds they might think that they ve figured you out and when you throw your utility grenades they know that you re alone. All of a sudden you show up with your entire team and the CTs haven t started to rotate in time. GeT_RiGhT might not have been the player who came up with that style of play, but he sure was the one to make it famous. He s able to pull it off on a professional level because of his raw individual skill. Like I said, put a lot of time into practicing the basics.

Watch the pros play

As with all roles in CS:GO it s important that you watch the pros play if you want to improve. First of all, you should try to answer the most basic of questions: what exactly is this player doing? By keeping that question in mind you ll look for the information that s actually useful rather than to just notice the big kills and wish that you could pull off stuff like that.

Once you ve answered that question your next one should be: why are they doing what they re doing? Here s where it gets tricky. Look at what their teammates are doing and how the lurker s plays help them. Lurkers rarely just lurk for the sake of lurking.

So, who should you watch? One obvious choice is GeT_RiGhT, the best lurker in the history of CS:GO and Counter-Strike in general. Every CS player can learn things from him.

The next guy I recommend you to watch is Spencer Hiko Martin from Team Liquid. At the moment he s the strat caller for his team, so if you watch recent games you ll notice that he plays more of a support role than before. Take a look at a few demos from before the MLG Columbus Major and you ll find some useful stuff. His style is a lot more passive than GeT_RiGhT s, but he s really good at finding kills. Especially towards the end of rounds.

You can find both recent and older demos over at HLTV.org. Click Events and under Past events you ll find a link to their massive and awesome archive. There you can select specific events you want to watch and you ll have access to an almost infinite number of demos.

Study hard. Play harder. Get to where you want to be.

Cheating in CS:GO is its own small sub-industry, a hard-to-kill parasite riding on the skin one of the PC s most popular games. Some ne'er-do-wells get off avoiding the notice of the VAC system for as long as possible. Others leverage cheating as a profitable enterprise, offering premium programs and services. Some professionals have even used cheats during competition (with disastrous, career-ending consequences). For Valve, combating the risk of hacking is an endless war. Just last week, Valve s elimination of a popular Team Fortress 2 cheat nabbed nearly 170 pro TF2 players. And last year, it dealt over 1 million bans to suspected accounts; with ownership counts likely exceeding 20 million, CS:GO likely represents a significant chunk of that figure.

Earlier this year, CS:GO player AndroidL was inspired to take matters into his own hands. In late January, AndroidL created and dispersed a pair of free hack programs on a popular cheat forum. Unbeknownst to their downloaders, the programs were time bombs. They d function normally for a set period of time before permanently skewing the user s view angle to an abnormal tilt and enabling a constant bunnyhop script huge, obvious red flags that would immediately trigger a VAC ban. Although clever, the first few hack releases earned modest attention roughly 1,000 downloads apiece, according to AndroidL s Reddit post.

CS:GO has a cheating problem, AndroidL explained to me over multiple private messages. I don t think Valve is doing enough to prevent cheating; it doesn t speak publicly about VAC (for obvious reasons) or cheating in general. For such a competitive game with such an active and thriving community, Valve fails to at least acknowledge cheating is an issue in CS:GO which is appalling. Due to their failure to communicate, we aren't sure if Valve are actually attempting to combat cheaters or not. It's impossible to play a game of CS:GO today without suspecting someone on the enemy team of cheating.

AndroidL s hack took a more direct approach. It dispensed with timers and prompted a ban the moment a user would load the hack and enter a match by continuously topping off health, ammo, and armor values. Yet despite the almost instant effect, it achieved greater success, accumulating over 3,500 downloads.

Contributing to the hack s propagation was a simple testing method: I set the launch options of CS:GO to +sv_lan 1 -insecure which disables VAC (but consequently prevents me from joining any VAC enabled servers), AndroidL wrote. This means I can test the hacks without getting banned. I just played an offline game with bots where I was able to confirm the features such as editing my view angles along with health and ammo numbers.

Once the hack s usability was confirmed, AndroidL uploaded it onto the cheat forum through a VPN to stay anonymous. The forum account was only days old with no reputation, which would typically undermine the legitimacy of the hack. But to promote the hack, AndroidL went for a straightforward solution: I had a few of my friends post messages such as great, the hack worked! and so on until the comments overflowed onto a second page. Most hackers don t check the second page of posts; they ll only read the first few comments and then download the hack. As publicly released programs tend to last only a few days before detection by VAC, dummy nods of approval was enough to push the scheme in front of as many eyes as possible while it lasted.

And it worked. The hack s impact was magnified by its sheer efficiency; a cheater couldn t react fast enough between launching CS:GO and meeting VAC s awaiting hammer seconds later. As bans started snowballing, users flooded the host forum with warnings and grievances of their sudden downfall. AndroidL feigned innocence by coming up with excuses as to why it wasn't my hack banning people to encourage others to download it.

Members of the CS:GO community could already participate in culling the cheater population through Valve s Overwatch initiative for a few years now, but AndroidL s accomplishments demonstrate how one can more surgically hamper hackers with only modest extra effort. The victory could very well be temporary at best devoted cheaters can simply create a fresh Steam account and spend the $15/ 11 on another CS:GO copy but from AndroidL s perspective, the self-demise of those who sought an ostensibly easy access to a hack was worth it.

I think Overwatch is a very good idea, AndroidL wrote. It's another filter cheaters have to go through, but the only reason Overwatch exists is because VAC lacks the capabilities to detect all cheaters. Although I believe VAC is a good safeguard against cheaters, I don t believe it is a strong enough safeguard. There is little to no effort involved for a hack developer to bypass VAC it is a decent system to keep away the masses of people using public cheats, but other than that VAC is essentially futile.

I do have a plan with similar tactics and I probably will do this again sometime, AndroidL continued. It would be great if I could cooperate with Valve to get a larger number of cheaters banned. Taking cheating into our own hands seems to be the only solution right now, and I encourage others that have the skills to do this to create similar fake hacks. Furthermore, I want to put off those thinking about cheating. This wasn t the first fake hack, and it definitely won t be the last.