You've just won a huge gun round and have just reset the opposing team. You have a lead of 7-3 and are poised to make a push for 12-3. However, the next round, they rush with pistols and win the next round, sending your own economy into disarray. Feeling disorganized, your team quickly forces, but they win the ensuing round and now instead of 12-3, the best you can hope for is 10-5. An anti-eco round is one where you face these kind of pistols buys with your superior weapons. Often time, they have pistols and armor and sparse utility. These kind of rounds are super frustrating to lose and you will continue to inevitably lose them as your career progresses, but you can take preventative measures in order to maximize your chance of winning anti-ecos.

The bane of every anti-eco

Trading:

Put your team in positions to trade each other no matter what. If you trade one for one, the situation still favors you due to the advantages of your weapon and utility. Make sure to double/triple/however many people peek on the T-side and hold crossfires on CT-side. By doing a double/triple peek, you ensure that the enemy cannot shoot more than one of you at a time, often confusing their aim. By holding crossfires on the CT side, you also ensure that you can offer only one target while they face two people's aims.

Rushing is a strategy that you can employ, but be careful as you will have little map knowledge and you could run into a stack or have a person flank you quite quickly. Peeking one by one in a rush could also lead to those highlight CZ-75 rounds. However, by properly moving as one unit, you ensure trading potential with your superior weapons. Just try not to lurk as one person on one side of the map with a superior weapon, as if that person gets killed without being traded, that leaves part of the map vulnerable and a weapon available for trading. (Traditionally, losing an SMG is fine, like a MAC-10 or MP-9, so often you will see the players with these kind of weapons rushing around the map, which is fine).

Weaponry/Utility:

Consider the weapons your teammate buys and the weapons you are buying. It varies from team to team and situation to situation, but in general, 2-3 SMGs and the corresponding 2-3 Rifles is appropriate. The rifles should hang back a bit and be the traders while the SMGs will take first contact and be the entry fraggers in order to try to build up your economy with SMG kills. If a rifler dies, either pick up his weapon if you have an SMG or make a mental note to have you or a teammate trade their weapon out for it later in the round. Try to keep things fairly long distance as you have the range advantage.

The pistols are generally more inaccurate at range or do less damage than your rifles and SMGs and it is only when you carelessly push tight chokepoints that you start losing to pistols. Don't forget to buy utility (the few hundred dollars of investment on a smoke or a flash could save you a round if things get hairy). The utility is also another advantage you will generally have over the opposition and by using it effectively, you can flush out them with a molly, block them from even entering the site with a smoke/molly, or even blind them giving you easy kills when they are flashed.

Figure 2: A default on both sides

Holding for Pushes/Playing Default:

Hold for pushes as there are a lot of rounds in which the opposing team will five-man push something or one person will get curious. In both cases, your team should get 1-2 kills or valuable info allowing you to choose a bombsite to go into that might be weakened. Even if you don't see a push or a player in the first minute or so of the round, the CTs will probably get restless and start pushing or running around to different bombsites allowing you hear info and relay it to your IGL, who can then decide to attack the weakened bombsite with an aggressive push or an execute.

In an extension of this philosophy, playing a default is wise. Basically, it consists of spreading out around the map and observing for various info and taking calculated risks for info and potential picks. If you need more information on how to run a default, I wrote an article which I will link here.

Conclusion:

Playing anti-ecos generally consist of passively holding angles, taking fights from a distance, gathering info, and then finally executing onto a site. You can rush onto a site but beware of the lack of info and the risk you are taking with this rush. Hopefully, with all these tips, you can avoid getting reset and the feeling of frustration of losing these supposedly "winnable" rounds. Good luck!

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