Hello, this is Ranking Up where I teach you basic necessities to help you rank yourself up in competitive matchmaking on CS:GO. Today I want to talk about "Game Sense" and how to achieve it.

What is game sense? Game sense is, like it states, a sense that you feel for the game. When you see top level players make certain decision in high pressure situations that make them either seem suspicious of hacking or just plain lucky it's probably due to game sense. Game sense is a process in your brain while playing that tells you where the enemies are and different positions on the map. You might be thinking "how will I know where my enemies are while I'm playing without hacks??", well the answer is you won't but you will see them in your imagination when problem solving. This sounds odd and weird but let me give you an example!

This following video of a recent ace that I recorded that I think is a decent example of game sense.
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So let's break this down! What decision went into this moment to give me an ace? More importantly, how does game sense play into this? I will also be using pictures from CSGOBoard.com to help illustrate some points.

So for the first two kills the decision was pretty straight forward, my minimap told me that a teammate caught sight of the bomb carrier near Birthday/Party area. I decided that because there was so much noise and action going on that I wouldn't have to worry about the enemies hearing my footsteps so I ran to flank them. Notice how as I am flanking them I keep my crosshair up and trace around the wall. This is because my game sense was telling me that it was likely that more terrorists were going to follow their bomb carrier and most likely come through Playground or Fountain, so I keep an eye out to make sure they don't catch me off guard. After I successfully flank the terrorists I still worry about the teammates that could be following behind them so I stop my direction of movement and turn back the other way to look for any enemies and I luckily win a gunfight against the third terrorist.

After my first three kills I am now in a bad position. I'm open to the connector stairs and fountain playground.

Now earlier in this video you hear my teammate Colter say that a terrorist flew up the ladder "like a bat" in his words and kill him. Based off of this I know that because bomb is down is going to come from either fountain or playground. Because of this I figure there is a 50% chance that there is a terrorist connector but 100% chance a terrorist is at fountain/playground. So I trust that my teammate outside bathrooms can trade the kill connector if I die and focus on fountain/playground.

First I throw a flash over to fountain to delay any pushes coming from there and then throw an incendiary into playground so I discourage any terrorists from pushing me from that direction.
Doing this gives me full confidence to peek out to fountain on the opposite side that I threw my grenades from to try and catch a terrorist off guard. Luckily my game sense was correct and there was a terrorist there and I gave myself the advantage in the gun fight because I predicted his position while keeping which side I was going to peek from unknown.

After this fourth kill I drop down from birthday and move towards the T spawn because I figure the last terrorist could be near B site or in connector. Since we have bomb down in a 1v3 I assume that this player will go for a clutch knowing that a teammate and I are lit, and because the bomb is down infront of bathroom he either has to wrap through A site or fight his way towards the bomb, knowing this I push towards T spawn to try and catch him if he is in connector. However, before I can do this my teammate dies to the last terrorist from connector stairs. My top priority now is to keep him off of the bomb or bomb site. While I trace the corner from fountain I hear footsteps and see that bomb is still on the ground. Because the footsteps I heard were on ground and not metal or concrete I knew that he did not retreat into connector and from the decaying volume of the steps I could tell that he was running away. So while he is running I run to peek out and hit him with one bullet before he takes cover in bathrooms.

This position is really difficult to win a gunfight in because I don't know which angle he will peek from and I am in the open. So my game sense guides me to pre-aim one angle and move towards his position. The reason why is because from my experience when someone runs behind there before a gun fight, he will peek the other side. I push towards him because if I can move myself into harder to see position I will be more likely to catch him in the middle of his peek in an angle that he didn't expect me to be in.



Luckily the terrorist then decides to peek while I'm walking, he runs out for a peek and because he is running his gun's accuracy is unstable due to his moving which gives me time to completely stop and spray with my gun's full potential accuracy!

My game sense helped me understand how the terrorists were going to play and where they were going to play. Call it a Spidey Sense, a voice in the back of your head, or just a feeling but most people know it by game sense. If game sense were a person it would be yourself standing over your shoulder telling you "they could be there... be careful of that... this doesn't feel right..." and sometimes this will cause you to lose or win, but the only way to improve it is to trust it and adjust it!



Okay I kind of understand what game sense is, but how do I get good game sense? There is only one true answer to this question: experience. The reason why is because to gain game sense you must understand the game and the way people play it. Attaining a strong game sense requires dedication and practice. No one earns game sense without playing dozens of games first. Game sense comes to you naturally with time, but there is a way to help yourself achieve it faster.

1. Watch streams! Whether it is your favorite player or a tournament, watching a stream will dramatically boost your understanding of the game. While doing this gives you a look into a high skilled player's mind, it also gives you an idea of the way people will play. There have been tournaments that have been watched by millions of people and people will always emulate top players to try and emulate their success. By watching this not only can you emulate the way they play and the things they do, but you can predict how others will play based off of what they have watched and tried to emulate as well!

2. Analysing your own demo! This one is a tip only for those who are willing to put a lot of time into improving. To analyze your demos you can click on WATCH in the main menu, then go to your matches and download the demos to watch. When you watch these demos there are two players you should focus on; you and the guy killing you. Watch these demos and look at all the contexts to understand why something happened. Understand why doing one thing worked for you and why one thing didn't. Look at who you're dying to and figure out why you're dying and how to prevent it. Learn from your demos and find solutions. Situations that you are put in during one game will surely happen in another at some point.

3. Play the bloody game!!! Some people are naturally good at the game but nobody reaches their peak after their first feel for the game. Sounds simple, right? To achieve a greater game sense you have to get a feel for the game and how people play. Part of game sense is also learning niches about the game that outsiders will never understand. For instance when you're playing on de_dust II, you can only learn pre-aim your crosshair on the corner of long or pit by practicing and playing the game. You can't watch a pro do that a hundred times and emulate it without practice. While game sense is for predicting things in game, it also includes how you play the game as well and the things that you learn that someone can't actually teach you.

Hopefully you at least learned a general idea of what game sense is today. Even if you skimmed through this whole article you will eventually find your own game sense and when you become self aware of it you will see the margin of difference in your play. Game sense is something that grows infinitely and there is no peak to it, so never stop improving. I hope this article helped you out or gave you some ideas on how to improve your play. Anyways have a great game and keep ranking up!

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