We’ve all been there, moaning to our teammates about the baiting taking place on our monitors. It’s the greatest of all evils from a teammate; as they make their way up the leaderboard whilst ignoring the objectives completely. Whether it's “What’s that? B rush? Well don’t mind me, I’ll just go A apartments and leave you guys to it, good luck!” or “I don’t know about trying this retake guys, my Kill to Death ratio is looking pretty good right now…”, we’ve all experienced these players. However, it’s important to acknowledge that baiting can be a brilliant strategy to give yourself and your teammates an advantage in a round, when used effectively. I hope to explain this concept throughout my article.

Site Fakes

Known by most, this strategy doesn’t immediately leap out as a form of baiting, despite most certainly being so. The basic idea behind a site fake is to try and make the opposing CT side think you're attacking a/b site hence making them rotate over, only for your team to attack the opposing site which, if all goes to plan, has a depleted defence. Of course this can be done with smokes and flashes, without actually dedicating any teammates to the fake, but often the most effective are those where team members are used to bait the rotations. See the video below for perhaps the most famous of fakes, taking place during Dreamhack Winter 2013 between complexity and VeryGames (Sound not required).

The importance of the round cannot be understated, taking place in the group stage of the first major, with the scores finely balanced at 15-14, and it’s a classic example of the courageous plays Seangares carried out as IGL (In-game leader) during his time at Complexity/Cloud9. More importantly, it’s an excellent example of a site fake using baiting, with both Hiko and Semphis being used to stay on the site to lure the rotations. Obviously the round is full of mistakes from the VeryGame’s side, as they should have noticed the lack of bomb sound as well as preventing Semphis from exiting the site, but the point remains the same. Complexity used the two players, Hiko and Semphis, to sell the team’s fake, and whilst leaving them in a greatly disadvantaged position (2 v 4), which ultimately led to Hiko’s death, it won them the round and so, therefore, did baiting.

Baiting for Entries

Another T-sided example of baiting is, quite simply, baiting for entries, allowing teammates to swiftly trade your death. What makes some entries so valuable to their teams (freakazoid, apex, kioshima, rpk), despite varying skill levels, is their ability to bait willingly for the good of their team. Being first into a site, first through a smoke, first round a corner, whatever it may be, is a greatly disadvantaged position as a terrorist; but what is crucial, is that someone does it. Whilst not immediately something that may be perceived as baiting, here the T-side are using this player's life for the good of them team, hence being bait. What these excellent entry-fraggers offer is information so their teammates can proceed to trade their deaths and hopefully, successfully take a site. Whilst being a role that’s generally bad for the leaderboard, it’s essential that any team has a player to fulfil this role to make them successful.

Baiting to catch opponents off guard

I struggled for a subtitle with this one, so I settled for ‘baiting to catch opponents off guard’ as it’s essentially the general gist of this section. Baiting, when used effectively, can be used to lure opponents into a false sense of security. Take the example below for instance.

As a CT retaking the site, even if you manage to kill the terrorist standing in the open, it’s likely you don’t check dark corner, you may call it clear even. So from this situation the T in dark corner can proceed to cause some serious damage. Baiting can also work for Counter-Terrorists, in situations such as the below.

Seeing the CT fight on the corner, it’s quite possible the terrorist assumes there isn’t anyone hay, especially if the CT’s had put just 1 long for the majority of the game. It can be risky to force the 1 v 1 fights as a Counter-terrorist, but especially in eco/force-buy rounds, this sort of strategy could really help swing the odds in your team’s favour. The benefit of a position like this for a bait is that the CT player still has a chance of winning the fight, so the player at hay acts more like an 'insurance policy' than anything.

Obviously there are downsides to these baits, as they heavily rely on forcing 1 v 1 situations, rather than attempting to make it a 2 v 1 situation for your team, which goes against many principles in the game. It’s also reliant on a misplay from the opponent, and their assumptions. However that doesn’t belittle baiting as a tactic, just makes it more risky. It definitely shouldn’t become a default strategy for you and your team and I definitely wouldn’t recommend trying it with randoms in matchmaking, but as a trick in your bag (especially for Eco rounds) it can really do wonders. The most important thing in baiting strategies, alongside most tactics in general, is to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Because when they’re not… well, that’s when you become a teammate that’s just baiting to go up the scoreboard. Oh, and make sure you’re not always the baiter, give your teammates some joy and be the bait once in awhile! I’ll leave you with this, perhaps not the most strategic example of baiting, but effective all the same…

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