As satisfying as clutching rounds and securing the win can be, CS:GO can also cause a lot of frustration. Losing streaks can lead to intense feelings of existential dread, and many players have pondered whether they have stagnated and have reached their individual skill cap. This is, however, rarely the case. Instead, it is usually precisely the obsessive focus on performing well that hinders players in putting up the desired performance. In this guide, let’s go over some of the things you can do when the losses keep piling on.

Take a break

More often than not, performance in CS:GO comes down to managing mental pressure. It often happens that players mess up their spray or flicks not because they don’t have the required skill but rather because the pressure gets to them. By queuing game after game, you just keep adding to that pressure, especially if you have been under-performing several games in a row. Under that pressure, it becomes nearly impossible to get those frags you desperately chase, leading to frustration and furth negatively affecting your performance.

Consequently, it is a good idea to take a break from time to time, both on a single given day and a longer timescale. For example, if you feel yourself not hitting your shots during one or two games, then it might be better to call it a day and let your mind rest instead of powering on. This can be particularly beneficial in the long term. Moreover, if you are used to grinding every night and feel yourself slacking, you should probably take off a day or two a week. During these breaks, make sure not to do anything related to CS:GO and fully relax your mind.

However, this is not a magical cure-all solution and can even be damaging if you set your expectations of a ‘comeback’ too high. Instead, you should see taking a break as a platform that facilitates the improvement of your skills, but not as the solution itself to your issues.

Watch pro games

Watching professional games is not only fun, but it is also a great way to improve your knowledge of the game without getting exhausted from the grind. So, next time one of your favorite teams is playing, make sure to watch the stream. There’s no need to get too analytical, but try to think about the decisions you would make in their shoes. If they do something differently, try to figure out what led these players to make that decision and why that decision was better than yours, if at all. Moreover, tournaments will usually have analysts who talk more about certain noteworthy plays during the match. Other tournaments sometimes even have pros explaining certain aspects of the game. Pay good attention to what they say and try to absorb this knowledge.

Additionally, there are plenty of YouTube channels that upload different players’ POV footage from matches. If you have a favorite player that consistently performs, watch their footage and analyze their gameplay. Make sure to disable X-ray to view the game from the same perspective as the player. It is often quite surprising just how much X-ray can alter and shape our expectations. Finally, if you’d like someone to offer more insight, launders usually posts videos in which he analyzes a player’s perspective of a full given match. These videos provide an incredible source of information and wisdom, and I highly recommend them.

Warmup and practice

So far, the recommendations of this guide have been relatively passive. There’s a good reason for this. As usual, the problem is not so much skill but rather mental fortitude. An excellent way to prepare both mentally and physically for a match is to warm up. It allows you to jump into the game confident that you will hit your shots, gets you in that perfect CS:GO headspace, and gives your muscle memory a quick refresher. If you’re looking for a quick warmup routine that gets the blood flowing, you can read my 10-minute warmup routine. Go to the bottom of that page for a quick overview.

Of course, if you want to rise through the ranks, you have to improve continuously. The only way to improve is through targeted practice. There are several ways to practice, and none of them are necessarily much better than the other. Pros use various methods to improve, so the best way to practice is just to get started, spending as little time as necessary worrying about the best way to practice and sticking to whatever mode feels most comfortable for you. If you have no idea how to practice your aim, you can read my entry fragger guide, which has a dedicated section for aim practice. However, be careful not to over-practice, as this can lead to both muscle and mental fatigue.

Switch up your playstyle

It might also be the case that the opposing team is effectively countering your playstyle. For example, they might be throwing a lot of utility in Banana on Inferno, taking your HP down below 50 before you’ve even seen an enemy. If you then push on to take the fight to them, the early damage you received puts you at a significant disadvantage which might make you feel like you’re underperforming, when, in fact, it is the circumstances that cause you to die prematurely.

To recognize this takes not only game knowledge but also a thorough focus on what goes wrong and continuous self-evaluation. If you haven’t paid attention to this facet of the game, it might be pretty hard to get started. Instead, what you can do is switch up your playstyle and do the opposite of what you have been doing. If you have been playing very aggressively, then play more passively, and vice versa. Soon after, you will slowly start to figure out exactly why switching up your playstyle helped you get the upper hand. Eventually, you will be able to accurately react to your enemy’s playbook, adapting to whatever counterstrategy they throw at you.

Different game modes

Finally, CS:GO offers a plethora of other game modes that are incredibly fun to play and train your in-game skills while relaxing your brain. There is the wingman game mode allowing you and a friend to go up against two other enemies. Danger Zone lets you mess around in a battle royale game adapted to fit CS: GO’s gunplay and economy mechanics. Retakes enable you to practice defending or retaking the site with different types of loadouts, and there are many community servers hosting game modes such as surf, DM, KZ, and 1v1 servers. All these modes offer countless hours of mindless fun while improving your skills at the same time. Of course, even in these game modes, you can get competitive very quickly, so if you reach the point where losing in these modes becomes too frustrating, you should probably switch to something else.

Get a good night’s rest

At the risk of sounding like your mom, it is crucial to get your total of 8 hours every night. It is always very enticing to soldier on and play ‘just one more game,’ but often that game is one too many. These are often the games that erase an entire night’s progress and make you lose a lot of your hard-earned ELO, whereas you would have ended the day neutrally otherwise. Moreover, the frustration and adrenaline of this loss, combined with the lack of sleep, makes it even harder to focus the next day and might lead to a vicious cycle of exhaustion and frustration.

Conclusion

In this guide, we looked at some of the things you can do when you’re on a losing streak. The leading cause of losing streaks is a mental downwards spiral, and many of the tips in this guide are meant to give your mind a break while still making progress towards becoming a better player.

Visit our partner VIE for the safest market and best customer care in esports betting.
Must be age 18+ and reside in a country where online gambling is legal. Gamble responsibly.