How to watch Counter-Strike

Whether you're a new fan of Counter-Strike or obsessed with the game, here's a refresher on what to look out for in the coming CS2 Major.

There’s no right or wrong way to watch Counter-Strike, but the nature of a first-person shooter makes it so that the viewers are immersed in only one single point of view during the vast majority of a round while up to nine other players on the server are all moving around the map, throwing utility, setting up plays with other teammates, and engaging in duels.

Suffice it to say, the first-person point of view can make the viewing experience complicated for anyone who wants to delve into the game beyond the most superficial level — especially those who don’t play the game. For neophytes tuning into their first Major — and maybe even some veterans trying to up their analytical skills —, we’ve put together a guide with tips to help you see the game more clearly ahead of the first Counter-Strike 2 Major.

Know the lingo

One of the many ways to understand what to expect from a Counter-Strike match and what is going on when it’s live is to listen to the broadcast. Analysts bring insights before and after the match on the desk, while commentators narrate the live action round by round. To keep up with what they’re saying, it’s good to understand some of the basic vocabulary.

Language is like a living organism and Counter-Strike’s lingo is no different. It evolves based on use and anything from the addition of a weapon, new mechanic, or map can introduce new words. The basics, however, haven’t changed in decades. Here's a small glossary with some of the most common terms so anyone can start following the game even without playing it.

Terrorists (T): The attacking team.

Counter-Terrorists (CT): The defending team.

Pistol round: The first round of each half. Players only have pistols and limited utility or helmetless kevlar due to limited starting money ($800).

Utility: Grenades used to gain a strategic advantage over the opponent across the map.

Molly/incendiary grenade: A grenade that creates a fiery area on the ground damaging any player standing in it. Usually used in chokehold positions to stop players from crossing or to stop a bomb plant or defusal.

Smoke grenade: A grenade that creates a smoke screen and obstructs vision. It is usually used to protect sites from takes/retakes and can be blown up momentarily by HE grenades.

Flashbang/flash: A grenade that temporarily blinds players. Often used to force players who are holding an angle out of position when trying to gain map control or executing on a bomb site.

HE grenade/nade: HE grenades deal damage in an area around it upon explosion.

Default: A slow-paced standard strategy terrorists use at the beginning of a round to gain map control.

Drop: Giving a weapon to a teammate, often due to economic reasons, at the beginning of a round.

Entry fragger/rifler: The player leading the charge into bombsites.

Pack rifler: A terrorist rifler who moves with the core group to take map control.

Support player: A player who gets fewer resources and generally has to do the jobs stars shy away from.

Lurker: A terrorist player who normally operates separately from the group to flank the enemy, gather information, or deny rotations.

IGL: In-game leader. The player in charge of calling a team's tactics.

Anchor: A counter-terrorist player dedicated to holding a specific bombsite.

Rotator: A counter-terrorist player who moves between sites to support where needed.

Kill/frag: Killing an enemy

Assist: Damaging an enemy later killed by a teammate.

Survival: Staying alive throughout the entirety of a round.

Trade kill: Eliminating an opponent who just killed a teammate.

Opening kill: The first kill in a round.

Bait: When a player deliberately makes themselves the target to distract the enemy, allowing a teammate to make a play.

Clutch: Winning a round when significantly outnumbered or in a disadvantageous position. Particularly one against many (1vsX).

Execute: A planned assault on a bombsite using coordinated utility and player movement.

Stack: When CTs rotate several players to defend one site to the detriment of the other.

Gamble: When a team makes a decision without having information to back up their actions. E.g.: The counter-terrorists stacking all of their players on one site despite not having enough information to know which of the two the terrorists will hit.

Save: Saving a gun in a round that has turned very unfavorable after the initial trades to use it in the following round and keep a balanced economy.

Eco/Anti-eco: Rounds in which a team purchases minimal equipment to save money for future buy rounds (eco), or prepares against this situation (anti-eco).

Full buy: A round in which a team can buy all of the rifles, armor, and utility needed.

Half buy: The situation between a full buy and an eco, usually sub-machineguns (SMGs) or upgraded pistols with more utility or rifles with less utility.

Force buy: Using up almost all of the budget to buy gear even though a complete set can’t be afforded.

Hero [weapon]: A situation in which a player buys or saves a weapon from the previous round while teammates save or buy the minimum in hopes of that player making a big play. The word hero is followed by the weapon saved or bought, e.g.: Hero AK.

Plant: The action of planting the bomb by the terrorists after they have taken control of a site.

Post-plant: Situation after the bomb is planted in which roles are reversed; the terrorists are now defending the site and the CTs are attacking it.

Defuse: Counter-terrorist action of disarming the bomb.

Ninja defuse: When a bomb is defused inside a smoke or after sneaking past the remaining terrorists and onto the bomb site.

MR12: Short for ‘maximum rounds 12,’ the maximum amount of rounds played in a half.

Overtime: A new set of rounds, typically three per half, after there is a tie in regulation time. Teams start with enough money for a full buy.

Spawn: The area of the map where terrorists and counter-terrorists start each round.

Early/mid/late round: Phases of the round are categorized by what is happening during each phase. The early round is the beginning, when teams are taking control of the contested parts of the map and setting up their strategies, the mid-round is categorized by terrorists making on-the-fly calls and CTs rotating their defenses, usually after first contact, and the late round is the climax and resolution.

Meta: A standard way of approaching the game or a particular facet of it using the most optimal or dominant strategies.

Rating: A statistical metric combining kills, death, damage, and more into one easy-to-read number to roughly determine a player's output in the server.

ADR: Average damage per round.

KAST: Percentage based on the number of rounds a player got a kill, assist, survival, or trade.

A game of information

Counter-Strike is an invasion game, meaning there is an offense and a defense and one must invade the other’s territory to score a point. Here the Ts are the invaders and the CTs the defenders. However, unlike many invasion games such as football, basketball, or hockey, not everything is visible to everyone and the two teams start each round with a fog of war. To clear that fog of war, teams will try to gather information.

Five counter-terrorists have to defend two bomb sites, while five terrorists have to attack them. Some sites are harder to enter than others, and depending on the map and site, they will be defended differently. Since CTs are spread thin in their defenses, Ts will want to know where the weaknesses lie in order to exploit them. CTs will want to know what the Ts are up to to not be caught off-guard with players in low-impact positions.

Seeking out this information throughout the round is, therefore, one of the most important objectives for both terrorists and counter-terrorists, particularly in the early stages of a round.

How can the Ts carry out their plans?

- Taking as much area of the map as possible (map control) to make it difficult for CTs to obtain information.

- Killing at least one CT to destabilize the balance between both bombsites and forcing complicated decision-making.

- Trying to obtain information to know where the CTs are playing. E.g.: Throwing utility in a certain bombsite and waiting to see if it forces a rotation.

How can the CTs defend both bombsites better?

- Fighting Ts for map control early in the map and not sitting back in their bomb sites.

- If they suffer a casualty, making the hard decision to obtain information and concentrating players in an area of the map where the Ts are expected to attack.

- Giving as few clues as possible about what they are doing and where they are holding. E.g.: Being careful not to make footsteps when running, not over-rotating as the Ts might be tricking them, not reloading or scoping behind a smoke or wall, or not throwing utility in vain.

Fundamentals of the in-game economy

Players earn money each round through various in-game actions, such as winning or losing a round, planting the bomb, defusing the bomb, and achieving kills. Even the type of weapon used is important.

Objective rewards

Kill rewards

* Weapons that do not give the same amount of compensation as the rest of weapons in their class.

This in-game currency is used to purchase weapons, grenades, armor and, in the case of the CTs, defuse kits. It also introduces a strategic element: deciding whether to buy equipment or save money — known as an eco round — to ensure a full buy in future rounds. Having a good in-game economy, therefore, becomes of paramount importance, as the ability to buy the best kit will play a large part in how rounds play out. Making these strategic choices is especially critical after a loss in the pistol round or during matches that are closely fought.

Think about the following situation: A player survives while four teammates have died. Therefore, they are alone against five CTs. During rounds in which defeat seems likely, players might opt to hide in order to save their weapon for the next round rather than gamble them in a situation where pulling off a clutch seems improbable. This tactic aids in maintaining the team's economy throughout the half.

One could think that all is lost after a bad start, but to keep games competitive Counter-Strike has a loss bonus: An economic compensation mechanism designed to prevent teams from falling too far behind. When a team loses consecutive rounds, they receive an increasingly larger loss bonus, providing more and more money for each successive round lost. This prevents matches from becoming one-sided purely due to economic disadvantage. The loss bonus works on a slider, too. Winning a round won't send the loss counter back to zero, and will instead just discount one of the previous losses.

Understanding and mastering the in-game economy is essential for success as it influences team strategy, individual player decisions, and the overall flow of the game. Teams that manage their economy effectively have a strategic advantage, enabling them to buy better equipment more consistently and forcing their opponents into unfavorable economic situations.

(Don't) follow the bomb

The bomb is a central element that can give clues as to what the play being made. If a terrorist is carrying the bomb towards a site, there are chances an execute is being planned. If the CTs see the bomb, it could provoke a rotation. But most of Counter-Strike happens away from it. After all, a round can even be won by just eliminating the opposition without the bomb being planted.

The bomb itself is a droppable item — any T player can carry it and plant it. As soon as the round begins, if the Ts have it all planned and are quickly going to enter one of the bombsites, it doesn't really matter what they do with the bomb as long as someone carries it.

On many occasions, however, an attacking play isn’t as straightforward and the bomb is left near the T spawn, in a hidden area that is of easy access for the Ts when they rotate through the map. This happens because on default rounds it is often unknown how the round will develop and what site will be attacked. Watching the way players move without the bomb is as important as the bomb’s movement, but following the bomb once it is in action will give clues as to how the round will develop.

Know your utility

Utility items like smoke grenades, flashbangs, HE grenades, Molotov cocktails/incendiary grenades, and decoy grenades play important roles during the round. These grenades enable teams to gain an advantage in different ways: obstructing vision, disorienting opponents, inflicting damage, controlling map areas, and creating different strategies. Mastery of utility usage is essential to professional Counter-Strike and what separates a mix of individually talented players fending for themselves from the well-oiled machines that win the most prestigious events.

An execute in Counter-Strike refers to a coordinated attack plan where Ts, with the synchronized usage of utility, will intend to gain control of a bombsite. The goal is to efficiently overtake a site with minimal resistance and establish a strong post-plant defense. CTs, on the other hand, will use their utility to counter an execute (utility thrown in this situation can be referred to as counter-utility), posing obstacles to try and keep the Ts at bay.

Utility is not always indicative of a coming gunfight, however, and can also be used to throw off opposition. For instance, Ts can throw utility on a site, force a rotation from the CTs, and then hit the weakened site on the other side of the map. This is called a fake.

Offensive standards and defensive setups

During broadcasts, you will hear talent use the words standard or default at the beginning of most rounds, referring to the Ts initial layout on the map — often with a group gaining control of contested areas and lurkers holding the edges of the map —, and setups for the CTs, which is the way the defense is set up to handle a particular situation.

A setup is a CT formation that aims to prevent the Ts from taking bomb site control and consequently planting the bomb. We can find: default setups (balanced bombsites), stacks (positioning more players than usual on a single bombsite), or aggressive setups (engaging with the Ts before they can execute their strategy; usually done in key contested areas).

A key element of CT setups is creating crossfires, which pins attacking players between the crosshairs of two or more defenders holding different angles, rendering them unable to properly trade players. If the Ts have executed properly, crossfires will be denied with the use of utility.

Player roles

There are many ways to build a Counter-Strike team, but there is a general formula.

You’ll need an AWPer, the primary sniper and often the team’s star player. The one-shot-kill sniper rifle costs $4,750, nearly $2,000 more than a typical assault rifle, and that gives a tangible risk-reward to purchasing the weapon.

There are aggressive AWPers, who follow the logic that the most powerful weapon should be in and amongst the hottest parts of the fighting, but in the modern era, increasingly, most AWPers are fairly passive. Players like Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov and Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali like long-range angles, emphasize their own life above all else, and will happily concede a round they see as lost, saving their AWP for the next round.

On to the riflers. First up we’ll discuss T side roles. Generally, teams operate in a three-man pack that takes map control together. This is usually an aggressive rifler, sometimes called a space taker or entry fragger, along with the team’s in-game leader and the AWPer. On a map like Mirage, these three players are usually found in Middle in the early round.

Then there are two lurkers. These players act like anchors, keeping map control so that the pack can rotate around to the other bombsite safely. Within that general role, there are the more aggressive lurkers; lone wolves who like to find opening picks and disrupt the CTs’ rotations. The traditional lurker, however, is a passive one; best embodied in the modern day by players like Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool or Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato.

On the CT side, there is also a division between riflers. Classic three-lane maps like Mirage offer a default structure that most maps follow: Two anchors, two rotators, and one floating AWPer. The anchor is the player whose primary task is to defend the A or B bombsite, either with kills or by delaying the onrushing Ts. They are often left on their own, making it a particularly tricky role. And also can be a boring one; these are low-action spots for most of the half, aside from when five Ts are rushing at you in a full execution.

Rotators, meanwhile, are usually the star riflers, a role with freedom to make plays and farm kills as opposed to the stricter requirements imposed upon anchors. On Mirage this comes in the form of spots like A Connector or B Short, positions from which players can help fight in Middle or their bomb site. These are high-activity positions, and where you will find most of the best players in the world.

The AWPer has more freedom on the CT side than on T, and the key to the sniper's role on defense is unpredictability. Utility is powerful enough in Counter-Strike that if a professional team expects to encounter an AWPer they can usually neutralize him. Surprise, then, becomes the name of the game: AWPers need to have frequent rotations, set pathing for opening kills, and the ability to support teammates with utility when smoked off by the Ts.

Stats

Soccer has goals. Football has touchdowns. Cricket has runs. Counter-Strike has kills.

Kills are the currency of success in-game, the most obvious indicator of a player’s impact.

But, like in any other sport, they do not always tell the full story. We can improve the picture by taking into account things like deaths — which show the risk a player is taking to get these kills — and how much damage a player is dealing.

There are more advanced stats that you’ll see on scoreboards in HLTV. KAST measures a player’s consistency, or how often they end a round with some sort of positive impact like a kill, assist, survival, or by having their death traded (a teammate killing the player that killed them within five seconds).

HLTV Rating 2.0 takes those four factors, as well as ‘Impact’ (taking into account opening kills, multi-kills, and 1vsX clutches), to spit out a number that roughly indicates a player’s output on the server. The average player has a 1.00 rating over an entire event, so higher than that indicates a good performance and lower a bad one.

While they can offer a lot of insight into performance, it is important to treat raw statistics with care and not always take them at face value, especially in a small sample like one map or series. The eye test complements stats and is needed to gain a more complete picture of a player's performance, but even that cannot encapsulate everything that happens on a server, like communication and shot-calling.

Spirit's basic statistics at the IEM Katowice 2024 grand final:

Stages of the round

In Counter-Strike, the progression of a round is often divided into three phases: early, mid, and late round.

Early round: This phase kicks off immediately after the buy period ends. Teams deploy their initial strategies here, which might include taking control of key map areas, establishing map presence, or setting up quick picks. For Ts, it's about gaining ground and information, while CTs focus on defending key chokepoints and gathering information on the enemy’s movements.

Mid round: This phase is defined by the actions and reactions based on the initial engagements or information gathered during the early round. Teams may adjust their strategies based on kills, map control gained or lost, or utility usage observed. It's a critical phase for decision-making, when teams decide to commit to a bombsite, execute a strategy, or rotate. The mid round is often where the flexibility and adaptability of a team is tested.

Late round: Initial strategies have played out, usually characterized by the bomb being planted or the teams being committed to specific sites or objectives, and generally focuses on post-plant scenarios, retakes, and clutch situations.

Know the maps

As a primer, CS maps tend to follow certain guidelines. There are two Spawns at each end of the map, where the CTs and Ts start, and two bomb sites, which the CTs reach before the Ts to set up their defenses. There are typically two ways to enter a bombsite, some more direct than others, and there tend to be three-lane setups: One lane goes to A, one Mid — which then splits towards each site —, and one to B. Historically, the A site tended to be bigger and more accessible than the B site, although that is not always the case.

At the end of the day, no tips will be as good as playing the game. No amount of watching the game can compare to experiential learning; being in the server and running around a map. The dread one gets when flashed and smoked off while trying to anchor a site can only be learned after staring at a white screen for 10 seconds just to find out you’re dead and the site has been taken. This, in turn, allows one to awe at the incredible plays professionals make.

There are seven maps in the active duty pool and maps rotate on occasion. To get the feel of what areas are comfortable, where it’s easy or hard to defend, how much time is needed to go from one point to another, etc., the best way to learn all of the intricacies is just to play the game, even if just casually to get a sense of place. From the quick rotations on Overpass to the Ts’ ability to fake on Inferno if they’ve gained enough map control, there’s a map for everyone.

The current competitive map pool is:

Be aware of what you can’t see

Last but not least we return to where we started. Watching one player’s crosshair means there are possibly up to nine points of view we’re missing out on. To make up for this, the mini-map is one of the most important resources in the spectator’s repertoire. The spectator mini-map has evolved over the years and now shows plenty of useful data beyond where all players are. The position of the bomb and deployed utility is also visible, giving an idea of what the CTs and Ts are doing. Are the CTs stacking a bombsite? Are the Ts faking utility on one site and running the bomb to another?

The mini-map is of such vital importance that commentators will have, in their multi-screen setup, one screen solely dedicated to the map for them to get a bird’s eye view of what is happening on the server. This gives them the ability to, for example, remind viewers to keep an eye on what movements a lurker may be making while the observer is punched into one of the pack’s riflers.

Another great tool to follow a round holistically while staring down a player’s crosshairs is taking into account all of the information on the HUD. In football, one only has the score and the time to follow, perhaps a small icon will indicate if a team has gotten a red card or something superfluous such as each team’s colors. In Counter-Strike, the HUD gets plenty of attention from viewers as it allows one to understand the situation teams are in at a glance.

From what economy teams are in, the weapons they buy, the utility they have, down to the life a player has, the ammunition left in his gun, or his statistics so far. From the micro to the macro, a glance at the HUD can get someone up to speed on what is going on in the round and the map.

Counter-Strike is often considered one of the easiest esports to start watching because it has a low floor for understanding, but also one of the most enthralling because of its high ceiling. One doesn’t have to know dozens of characters or abilities and the game — at its most basic, is about clicking heads. But when it comes to understanding its intricacies, it turns out much can fall through the cracks. Hopefully, this guide will help you watch the Major and understand what is happening more clearly, or at least give you the tools to make you the most insufferable person on your TeamSpeak or Discord server.