The Deagle is a mighty pistol that is known for its balance between sheer power and difficulty to use, making it critically acclaimed in the sense of good balancing. It has high moving inaccuracy, high recoil, long reset time, and relatively low RPM, yet is able to one-shot opponents with a headshot, making every bullet that you shoot counts and is really damaging if it hits. Its price of 700 allows for it to be bought in most ecos, especially mid-game, and in force-buys for very accurate marksmen.

It is the weapon that has become a symbol of skillful play and players, establishing the term "onedeag" and striking fear in the enemy when he hears it go off on the other side of the map. Especially pros like NiKo and Lekr0 have come around to mastering the weapon, fiercely fighting for every round, even when they have a low economy, and often dealing huge damage or winning the round with just a Deagle.

Due to the high difficulty in using the Deagle, there are two categories to improving your Deagle skills, and those are mentality and mechanical skills. Let's start with mentality first.

Mentality

As I've already pointed out, the Deagle is balanced well, meaning that you do not get to wield its power without having to deal with certain disadvantages compared to other pistols and even more expensive weapons like SMGs. Not only is the Deagle highly inaccurate when moving, it also takes a long time for the gun to reset, meaning that the Deagle takes a bit of time before you can fire accurately again. On top of that, the more shots you take in succession the more inaccurate the Deagle becomes, and this in a non-controllable way compared to the M4 and AK, where you can control the spray. The Deagle has no pattern except for up.

This puts emphasis on concentration since a shot missed is a great chance for the enemy to retaliate, spanning multiple in-game moments. Of course, you should always concentrate when playing CS:GO, however, you can compensate for missing your first shot with an M4, AK, and basically any other weapon. This is not the case for the Deagle, so if you are holding an angle and try to have the enemy run into your crosshair, hitting him first shot is even more important than with other guns.

Furthermore, the Deagle also has the drawback of the magazine only holding seven bullets which means that you can't really spray or spam, neither through smokes even if you know that someone's there without running the risk of being caught with an empty magazine when the player finally pushes the smoke, nor against visible enemies. This is why one thing is very important with the Deagle - trigger discipline.

Due to the aforementioned facts, the Deagle is best used as a single-shot weapon without going ham on the trigger. Always try to ensure that you are actually on the head of the target instead of just being around there and starting to spray and hope for the best. To practice this, you can go into a practice map like aim_botz and set the bots to move around with the controls on the small wall.

Then place your crosshair on the heads of the bots and trace them with your crosshair and try to stay on them. You will want to shoot when they change direction or you think that you are barely on them, try to suppress those feelings and aim with a relaxed arm and only shoot when you are 100% that you are on the head. Eventually, you will miss shots, but just keep calm and give the Deagle enough time to reset, as well as your aim to be back on the head.

Then, once you have mastered that, you can try to keep your crosshair somewhere on the screen, then jump on a specific head and only fire when you have traced it properly, further establishing trigger discipline and increasing your mental stamina to wait for a sure shot. This trains both, your trigger discipline and first-shot accuracy, where we are at mechanical skill again.

Mechanical Skills

Crosshair Placement

Crosshair placement is the skill to place your crosshair where the next enemy will most likely be and aiming at head-level to ensure that you have to correct your crosshair as little as possible once an enemy pops up. Crosshair placement is also important when prefiring or at least pre-aiming spots before peeking an angle. This skill is especially important to increase your first bullet accuracy in normal play, a thing that, as we already established, is highly needed to improve your Deagle play. Just take a look at NiKo's infamous Deagle ace on Cache.

Even though this clip still shows spectacular aim and good reaction time, it also shows that you can shorten the amount of travel your crosshair has to do to land on the heads of the enemies.

To improve this aspect of aiming, be sure to get to know the heights of the models. This, for most, comes from experience. If you are not part of the majority, be sure to check out the models and their height in aim_botz or similar maps. Then you can download maps such as Prefire Practice - Cache to get to know common spots and where to aim there. If you concentrate on your crosshair placement you will quickly see an improvement from practising with such maps.

Once you have most of it down, you can fine-tune it by jumping into DM and concentrating on your crosshair placement - and don't look at the scoreboard. Literally no one cares, so don't beat yourself up about a score that doesn't matter.

It is important to note that it is also important to hold corners and angles correctly - most people like to aim really close to corners, let the enemy run out and correct their aim afterwards, when it would be way easier to place your crosshair at a place where you know that you can react in time and just click mouse 1 when an enemy runs out.

Snapping and Tracing Aim

Snapping onto, and staying on, targets is a skill that is required for all of CS:GO, but especially for weapons such as the Deagle. To practice such skills, you can use map specifically designed to improve these skills like Training Aim 2016 and training_aim_csgo2_dark or aim_botz, but you can also just free-ball it in DM. Especially headshot only is well suited to improve your onedeaging. Be sure to concentrate on correctly training instead of just getting kills - you will not improve when you just crouch and spam your Deagle, hoping to kill the enemy before he kills you. Take your time at first and place your crosshair on their head. Basically try to also use the same mentality you trained offline, as shown in the mentality paragraph.

Movement

The Deagle punishes you whenever you move while shooting with high inaccuracy, making it unlikely that you hit your enemy. To not be forced to stay stationary like a turret, you will need to know how to counterstrafe and stay accurate while not standing still and being an easy target for your enemies.

To practice this, you can once again jump into aim_botz and let the bots stay stationary. Place your crosshair on their head and start moving left and right, cancelling the movement in whatever direction by pressing the key in the opposite direction. You can do it slowly and hold down both movement keys to come to a standstill, or you can let go of the key you originally pressed and start moving in the opposite direction at the same time, which will make you stand still faster and then change direction instantly, making you a target that is hard to it in practice. Keep your crosshair on the bots head to ensure that you also train adjusting your aim to your movements. Now try to shoot whenever you are at the sideward apex of your movements and stop moving for the fraction of a second. Also, be sure to jiggle a bit when you have shot and missed to increase the time before the next shot if you do it too fast and your gun stays inaccurate.

Conclusion

The Deagle is hard to use, no doubt, but the reward is great. One shooting opponents can win you rounds and, by extension, entire games. You need to be sure that you do not become panic-y with such a recoil-sensitive gun and you always need to play to ensure maximum potential, waiting for it to correctly reset and adjusting to the situation (maybe shooting faster than the gun is actually resetting because you will 100% die the next moment, for example). Moving correctly and non-stop will give you a few more moments to get your shot in once you are in a fight, but pre-aiming and correctly waiting for the moment to shoot, often just fractions of a second once you have developed enough skill, will make this weapon a fierce one in your hands.

Also, be sure to post your mental Deagle-highlights to our #digscord and share the joy with us!

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