So you may be reading the title and thinking "What? The whole point of this game is to get a high rank." Well, hear me out. Ranks aren't everything in this game, let me explain that to you.

Your rank in Counter-Strike shows your average skill group. You will be placed in a rank where you are on par with the players in your matches. You can be Silver 1 or Global Elite, you will be on par with the players in your matches, it doesn't matter what rank you are. If you're playing in Nova 4 and are losing matches consistently and you're getting negative kill/death ratio every match then you don't deserve to be in that rank and you will drop.

Now, you may think that being Global Elite means you are the best player in the world. Think again, it just means you're decent at Matchmaking. Your rank doesn't matter in the sense of showing your skill in higher up matches. You can be Nova 2 and be in a high-ranking team on CEVO or Faceit, it doesn't matter. If people laugh at you for being a certain rank you just need to laugh back, where are they? Slightly higher up a matchmaking ladder from you, which doesn't mean that much. You can get there too, they may have 1,000 more hours than you and they were once in your place.

At 696 wins and nearly 1,800 hours I earned Global Elite. My first rank being Silver Elite.

Most people complain about being a low rank. They say they deserve a higher rank than they are currently in. That's bad, you shouldn't think that way. Instead of complaining, whining and acting like a child, practice, get better and then you can climb the ranks. If you don't want to play matchmaking because your team is bringing you down, there are things you can do:

1. Find some friends. If you play in a 5 man team it makes matchmaking a lot easier than if you play alone. You can also co-ordinate and work together as a team to win matches.

2. Play on third party services. There are multiple Pugging services you can use to get better at the game. CEVOis a free client where people of many different skill groups come together and play against eachother. On CEVO you can play against Silver 1 players or even Professional players. Playing against people of a higher skill group can increase your play and make you much better than playing against people who are on par with you or worse. Faceitis another good program where it puts you straight into a 5v5 match. With Faceit however, there are skill groups and you will be playing with people on par with you. You also need to pay to get inside a skill group.

The CEVO pug interface

3. Train and learn. You should learn to aim, to move and to outplay. These three things are hard to master, but if you do, you will get a higher rank in no time. To learn to aim there are multiple aim maps on the Steam Workshop such as Aim Botz. This map has many different modes for you to play around with, many players use this to improve their aim and it DOES work so please use this if you want to improve your aim. There are different maps you can use just look around on the Workshop. Movement isn't something many people think about, they all think it's about aim. But if you can outmove someone, you can win a firefight. Play 'KZ' maps on community servers and find a low tier server where you can play easier maps and slowly gain your movement skill. Playing on 'Surf' servers can also help with strafing and smooth movement.

Outplaying is the hardest thing to understand. 'Game sense' is basically intuition. You have to think about what the enemy are doing and figure it out in your mind to outplay them. It takes time to learn this skill and even people with thousands of hours will still not have good intuition. Just don't get upset if you get outplayed and call hacks on the players, try to learn from it and if you can figure out what they're doing you can outplay them.

As long as you aren't getting mad at the game, it keeps it an enjoyable experience. Try not to think about your rank, and how there are higher ranks. If you strive for that higher rank you'll never get there because you'll end up getting frustrated and stop enjoying the game. Always remember that, it's just a game.