Target Rating: Identifying over and under performers on CT side

We have used a player's positions and map pool to see who is making the most out of their roles.

When we look at a player's rating, there is an implicit understanding that some players have harder jobs than others.

Counter-Strike is a game of limited resources when it comes to playmaking. That means, for most teams, you build around a star duo or trio, with at least two supportive elements.

Getting the most output from those supportive elements is a key factor behind the very best teams in the world. Anchoring is a specialist role that can turn championships your way.

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What are CS:GO's easiest and hardest CT positions?

In CS:GO, we tried to put a number to how hard or easy a position is based on the average rating of tier-one players in each role.

That logic has followed into CS2 with a clear divide between high-output spots like AWPing on, well, every map, or Mirage's Connector and Nuke's Yard, and anchor spots on Vertigo, Mirage, or the T-sided Anubis.

The fact that three Anubis positions show up in the seven lowest-rated positions immediately rings alarm bells. If a player plays Anubis a lot, like someone on G2, it follows that their CT rating will likely be lower than a team that bans the map and has a home map on something CT sided like Overpass or Nuke.

It is also not enough to say that anchor positions are hard, and rotating easy. Ancient's A Anchors average a 1.12 rating, Anubis A is 1.10, and Pit on Inferno is 1.07. Middle on Anubis is a star role on paper, but averages just 1.03.

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Why more and more IGLs are taking up the 'supportive rotator' role

With plenty of IGLs taking up rotation positions too, the picture becomes more murky as the 'star anchor' in the ilk of Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool, Kaike "⁠KSCERATO⁠" Cerato, and Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov takes up roost in all three of the higher-rated Anchor spots we just mentioned but rotate on other maps.

Anchor and Rotator, therefore, are not good enough tools on their own to determine a player has a 'hard' role. The meta is now to put powerful players into anchor positions to shield teams from aggressive lurkers grabbing a pick, 5v4, and the round.

So here's what we have come up with: Target Rating. Every player is assigned an average rating based on not only their positions but how often they play that role. If most of a player's playtime came on Overpass, their position on that map is weighted more heavily in the average.

The result is this, a target rating largely disconnected from the anchor-rotator divide. ropz, KSCERATO, and Ax1Le all show up in the top ten target ratings despite anchoring on certain maps.

The big hitters also crop up, with Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş, Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets, and Copenhagen Major stand-out Rodrigo "⁠biguzera⁠" Bittencourt in the best possible position to frag on all seven maps.

Some of this is self-fulfilling; share a position with donk, and the average will be higher than otherwise. But target rating is based on averages from around 30 players in each position in matches between top 50 teams: The overall picture is still of an average.

When we look at the most hard-done by players, we are back at looking at anchors but these are the full-time ones, small-site players who do not have the luxury of rotating on some maps.

Old-school sacrifical anchor IGLs Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou, Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen, and Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen all appear as do the primary anchors of teams with rotator IGLs like William "⁠mezii⁠" Merriman and Boris "⁠magixx⁠" Vorobiev.

We can now compare target rating to a player's actual output to see which players are making the most of their set of roles.

No surprises that donk is first, at a whopping +0.45 delta. biguzera, with a 1.49 CT rating in our sample, is second.

But we can also see some more under-appreciated players climb the ranking. Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif was the best anchor of 2023 and it is no surprise to see him over-performing his positions once again even in a down period for Falcons.

David "⁠n0rb3r7⁠" Danielyan has been a sensation in CS2 and is finally getting his flowers as the supportive piece of Virtus.pro. Jimi "⁠Jimpphat⁠" Salo is also here, a player that is still a full-time small-site anchor but making his spots look like star ones.

The difference in expected rating based on a player's map pool is even more clear when we look at every player together in a scatterplot.

The roles are clustered mostly, but, even in a group that should be fairly homogeneous like primary AWPers, their target rating ranges from 1.14-1.20.

Full-time rotators can drop to as low as Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač's 1.05 and Evgenii "⁠FL1T⁠" Lebedev's 1.07. Myroslav "⁠zont1x⁠" Plakhotia, essentially a full-time anchor, is the only blue dot in the green zone with a 1.10 target.

This target rating can also expose players underperforming their positions. Nikolay "⁠mir⁠" Bityukov, Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan, and Paweł "⁠dycha⁠" Dycha have had torrid 2024s in positions where frags and the scoreboard really do matter.

Explore target rating in more detail, with every player listed, in this interactive Tableau.

AWPers below the 1.10 mark like Usukhbayar "⁠910⁠" Banzragch and Håkon "⁠hallzerk⁠" Fjærli are worthy of criticism even if they are higher-rated than most of their team.

This is not a tool without blind spots. donk and Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire play very similar positions but in completely opposite fashions. But for the vast majority of non-IGL players positions map onto fragging expectations well.

Comparing apples to apples is close to impossible with the differences in team's style and philosophy but at least now we are comparing apples to other fruit, instead of a completely different food group.