Before starting

Before starting to hop in to servers I highly suggest you make sure you join the server suitable for your skill. These ranks are divided within six different skill groups. Six being the highest and one being the lowest. One would be perfect to start off with. Two or three would be perfectly fine as well, anything higher will be incredibly difficult to complete. In this guide our main goal is to get you ready and prepared for a Tier 2 to Tier 3 map, because these maps are already considered quite difficult.

1) Surfing

I will teach you how to break records. Surfing! The reason it is called Surfing is because you glide over the ramps in a fluid motion, causing you to go very fast and shoot across the sky like the plane that you are. Keep in mind to forget everything you know about matchmaking. Crosshair placement, call outs, movement. It does not matter. It is all about speed and landing as fluidly as possible. In this guide I will cover things such as: Going fast, how to land in a fluid fashion which increases your speed, how to get a good time on any map, and much more.

2) Play to relax

You should not play surf when you are on tilt, on edge or on anything that puts you off. Surfing is a stressful mode which will put you on tilt eventually, but when done right it can be very soothing and meditating for your mind, something to do after you get home from work and you enjoy that cold beer, play some surf, watch the game. Relax. Do not ever attempt to surf when you are angry. This will lead to more anger, guaranteed.

3) Skillsurf Tier Levels

Skillsurf is a race against time. This race is divided between six difficulty levels, also known as Tiers. 1 being the lowest and 6 being the highest. Keep that in mind before joining any server. A challenge is fine, but do not overestimate yourself, it will only be a waste of time and it will put you on tilt. Tier 1 is a difficulty which everyone should be able to complete with a bit of practice. In this guide we are aiming to complete at least Tier 2 and 3, which is still considered hard, because of the incredibly high skill-ceiling, but no worries! Even if you are a lesser experienced surfer you will pick up a lot of useful things from this guide and soon you will be surfing like a proficient player.

4) The Jump

This is a key factor in getting a quick surf time, the jump. A lot of players often underestimate a good jump beforehand. On some maps, surf_beginner for example, you can immediatly jump when you spawn. This saves you about 0.80 to 1.00 second. Yes. A. Whole. Second. It sounds like nothing, but it is quite a lot when your runs are only milliseconds apart from eachother. To get a good jump you have to jump a bit sideways and try to land as close to the green line as possible, because whenever you cross the green line the timer starts. So instead of jumping on the green line, you jump way before the green line and end up barely scraping it. This saves a lot of time.

4) How to maintain speed

"How do I go fast?" is a frequently asked question. Lets start by falling onto the ramp. Start high, finish low, flick off. Three steps to make sure you get a lot of speed. Before even thinking about making a jump, hit the ramp as smooth as possible. The way you do this is you approach the ramp in mid-air, you turn away from the ramp giving you a better angle to hit it. Hit the ramp as diagonal as possible, this is the most fluid way to land, also giving you the most speed.

5) Cut Corners Close

Cutting corners close is a great way to save time and to assure you will get a faster time as opposed to taking large, wide corners. Think about it like math, the Pythagorean Theorem or A²*B²=C². A and B are the large, wide corners, however, C is the sharp corner. Meaning that you will save precious time. Some corners can not be cut because you will, as opposed to get a faster time, get a worse time, but this varies from map to map. You should study the map before speedsurfing one.

6) Study the map

As previously stated at paragraph 5, study the map! You can not get a good time if you do not take the time and effort to explore the map and find numerous of ways to save time, often refered to as skips. A good way to learn the map is, if the server has the plugin, !spec and then watch the best time on that particular map. This will show you the do's and don't's on that map and you should definitely follow those, if you are up for the task, of course.

As you can see on the picture above, the green arrow means good, the red arrow however, means bad. If you have sucessfully studied the map and you do in fact know the way the cookie crumbles. Proceed to execute your plan. Get a good time. For example, the red arrow will send you airborne, because you do not have to go straight forward. You have to drop down, because you have studied the map you know this. So you follow the green route, you hop off earlier and you just saved yourself six to seven seconds in time, good for you!

6) Final words

Surfing is very difficult and might put you on tilt numerous of times, but do not worry. I have been surfing for a year and I'm not nearly as good as people out there, surfing is really fun and I recommend it to every Counter Strike player I have met, it is challenging and works quite meditating for your mind. It also helps you improve in general, crosshair placement, manipulating your surroundings, and much more. Keep pushing yourself to the limit, exceed everyones expectations and most of all, have fun.