In this article, you'll find 10 mistakes that almost everyone makes, to a smaller or bigger extent, and tips on how to overcome the urge to keep doing it or to unlearn the wrong way of doing things. You'll see a majority of the following mistakes at every skill level of CS:GO, including the Tier 2 and even the Tier 1 pro scene occasionally. This is why eliminating these mistakes may give you an edge in your climb to the top of the pile, whether your problem is not quickswitching when you're holding an angle or holding far enough away from the corner in order to actually hit your shot.

We'll start off with the ones easiest to understand, and the we'll slowly drift into more advanced or theoretical territory later in the list.

1. Quickswitching when holding angles

This is one of the easiest to notice and to understand why it's bad. You'll see this mistake in Silver 1s (if they ever stop to hold an angle) and FaceIt Level 10s. You may think to yourself, "Well, it helps me stay focused and not miss my shot once I finally do see an enemy." However, you can do a number of things to keep your focus. Move your crosshair slightly, follow the lines in the texture behind your crosshair, but stay near head level! However, quickswitching and giving the enemy a big random window to peek out and shoot you while your gun still isn't ready for a good 0.5 seconds is not a good way to stay focused and will seriously hurt your chances to climb further than you've already come. There is one notable exception, which is when you have an AWP or a scoped weapon and want to unscope without making a noise so you do not alert enemies in the surrounding area or announce what kind of gun you have.

2. Pulling a grenade out when you're in the open

This mistake will have cost you many a round. But of course, most people simply think that the timing was unlucky - hell, even if it was, it just is a thing that you can stop from happening completely or at least minimize the chances of it happening significantly. Let me be clear: Just standing in the open and pulling out a grenade will give the enemies a huge window to peek into a helpless CT/T that's about to deploy his grenade. To overcome this, try to jiggle into cover and back out before hiding again to give the enemies the smallest possible window. Watch out for this bad habit in your next few games and make it a conscious effort to stop doing it in order to get used to jiggling into cover before pulling out a grenade. You'll find a visual example below.

3. Quickswitching to "speed up the reload" or to "reset the gun"

You'll often find people that are quite good with the Deagle have this weird habit of quickswitching the gun before peeking with it. As long as they're not putting themselves at risk, that's kind of fine. However, it gets problematic when they do it in a firefight or in a tough situation. This also comes up when reloading any gun, since they're putting themselves at risk of missing the timing and actually making the reload take longer with the quickswitch, since you need to be perfect with it to get the same result as not quickswitching at all. In CS:GO, you cannot speed up a reload or reset a gun with a quickswitch. This has been tested before and no, it does not work at all. It's time to stop. You can find Kliksphilip testing it out twice here and here. The exception, again, is quickswitching to get out of the scope of a scoped weapon.

4. Not asking for a drop/support or asking into the crowd

We all know the cases where people ask for a flash and no one helps them, since no one felt like he's the one responsible. This is actually a known effect called the Bystander Effect, which is where people assume someone else will take care of helping person X. This effect makes it hard to get good support out of people when asking into the crowd, which is why you should make it a habit to ask a specific person for help. For example: "Purple, can you flash above Main while I run out?" which will cause Purple to feel directly responsible for helping you now, heightening the chances that you'll get the support you need to open up the round. Also, remember that you can now see the utility that your teammates have, which makes asking for support even easier.

5. Reloading behind a smoke

People will read the fifth point and think to themselves, "Well, what the heck should I do when my magazine is empty man?" and in a way you're right. Once the magazine is empty, sure. You'll need to reload eventually. However, it would do wonders for everyone if they stop thinking of a smoke as a safe haven and be careful around them. People like to hide inside of them and jump out to catch you off-guard, which is something that works at every level to differing degrees. Think about it like you're hiding inside of the smoke in front of you and when you spray it, there are multiple ways to not to end up completely helpless. For example, you could shoot until 6 or 7 bullets are left and fake the reload to bait out the aggression from the T inside of the smoke.

Alternatively, you can switch to the pistol and wait for him after faking the reload. You can fake the reload a few times before going through with it, especially if you caught the Ts jumping through the smokes a few times now.

6. Calling flashes too late

You're the one flashing your teammates in or and you're not being afraid of staying further back to help your team take a bombsite. Bravo! You're an integral part of the team! However, it is often so that people tend to forget that calling the flash they're throwing is almost as important as the flash itself. Not too rarely will you hear people call "FLASH" just before it pops in your face, rendering the flash play useless. Try to make it a habit to call out the flash just before or as it leaves your hand, ensuring that the player that asked or gets the support flash has enough time to react. If you are throwing the flash without being asked for it, also tell your people where it will pop in order to heighten your chances of success.

7. Crouching too much

Ah, just as prevalent as the panic-spray, crouching too much in fights and during peeks is what costs a lot of people their lives on the daily. It makes them a slow-moving, easy to hit target that is easy pickings for anyone not panicking. Whenever you peek into someone, try to stop yourself from using crouch and try to use A and D to counterstrafe the entire time the fight happens or you're crossing from place X to Y. This will make you harder to hit by a mile and increase your chances of winning the engagement. If you have some real trouble steering clear of the crouchspray, it may be worth it to unbind crouch for the next few training sessions. Below, you'll find a visual example.

8. Overcommitting to a peek

There are times where you are intended to run out as wide as possible to create space for your team and there are times when you're not supposed to do that. If you are split from the rest of the team, when you're in lower numbers than five, or you're splitting the attention from the CTs or Ts, running out as far as possible is a horrible idea. Instead, try to peek in a way so that only one position will be able to fight you, not exposing yourself to two or more enemies. If you have trouble with this, try to think after every death, "Could I have peeked differently in order to face fewer enemies at once?" and if the answer is yes and you were not running out to make space for at least one teammate behind you, then you just overcommitted to a peek. Better get that checklist ready and write that down!

Here is a visual example of overcommitting vs solo peeking:

9. Faking obviously

It's in the mid-round and suddenly you get a pick at A and B, but the majority of your team is at A. What do you do? Well, fake B of course in order to keep the CTs at B or even draw more CTs to B. Great idea, right? Yeah, it is! But people tend to fake so obviously, so they're often drawing the minimal amount of attention, or at least much less than they should. The problem with this is that people aren't sure how to fake. Try to think of it this way - if you were to actually go B, what would you do right now? Smoke position X, flash out Short and Long, and go out Long? Try to do that now! Making it look and feel real is the secret to faking.

You can also try to establish certain patterns that you break further down the line. For example, if you go out A on Mirage early as a T, you'll always flash above A Main early. After a few times, the CTs will be used to it and now your team can set up B and a lone the flash above A-Main will keep the players on A on their toes, especially partnered with a fast smoke CT and another flash at A. Below you'll find an example of what not to do.

10. Holding angles down way too close to the corner

People will often tilt when someone wide peeks and one-taps them. However, in at least a chunk of cases, it is no-one's fault but theirs, and it's a mistake that is really common among every level of CS. When you're holding an angle, keep in mind how long it will take for you to react and shoot the target and how the target is likely to peek. Will he wide peek? Place the crosshair further away. Will he jiggle? Hold close to the angle. Will he single-peek you? Place the crosshair a bit away from the corner. This may seem easy, but almost everyone does this wrong, so think about where exactly you're placing your crosshair the next few games and see for yourself. Here's a visual example for you, too:

Conclusion

There is not much that I can tell you but to sit down and focus on one or a few mistakes at once per practice session and try to unlearn the bad habits by overwriting them with good habits or making them impossible to keep doing (like unbinding crouch). As always with change, it might take a while for you to fully adapt to a playstyle where you'll do fewer mistakes in total. Here you'll have two more articles in order to help you with the two mistakes that will need the most learning to unlearn, which are Peeking and baiting out utility (faking).

If you have any feedback, you can shoot it to me on my Twitter or head over to our #Digscord in order to chat with other Dig community members and staff.

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