Hi guys. I hope that everybody is fine.

First of, I would just like to say happy birthday to Patrik (cArn). He turned 21 for a week or so ago, so watch out Las Vegas.

I thought of focusing on a blog that’s more about teaching the game than about fun things going on in my life. The reason to this is that I very often receive questions from players who want to improve their game. I found that it was actually quite hard to give specific answers on how to practice and think. I think that’s due to the fact that I’ve played for so long now; I started out when the game was fresh on the market, and have pretty much evolved since then, picking up things from all the good players during all different versions of the game. Since I get so many questions on how to become a better player, I started thinking a lot about the game and how I think it’s supposed to be play. I learned a lot about myself thinking like this, which was very positive, and I was able to squeeze out a few things from my head that I thought could be useful.

Ways to improve yourself and your team.

As a player it’s really important to think a lot about the game. You should always be creative when thinking in terms of tactics and different positions. If you’re a new player, a good advice is to just watch a lot of demos from top clans playing, and notice how each and every player plays their positions differently. I believe that it is important – when trying to advance versus medium-skilled opponents – to use your best angles and best positions at all times. You don’t have to worry about deception when playing Counter-Strike at a medium-level; nobody will take serious notice about what you’re doing and be able to adjust, and you’ll be playing a lot of different teams, which favours my argument as well. The best thing to do if you want to improve as a team, is probably to practice a lot of strategies versus different teams and choose 3-4 different setups/strategies that work against the stereotype opponent that you use to play. There is no reason for you to try to play fancy anti-strategies when facing a lot of different teams all the time.

When trying to developing strategies your really have to think like a team. You want to be able to outmanoeuvre your opponents with style and outthink them like you were playing chess. How do you do that? Well, you practice hard on your timing and use your grenades smart. Even if your opponent might be better individually, they will have no chance if you’re playing smarter than them as a team. My advices here are really general and are probably not saying much if you don’t have any ideas of what good tactics can be. As I said before: Download demos and watch the best teams play, watch them move and attack with timing and style, then you will clearly see what I mean when mentioning that the better team can pretty easy win versus the better players.

The most common thing that people want to know is how to improve their aim. This is really hard to answer, because people can make so many mistakes and it’s really hard to know “where they’re at” in the careers, meaning it’s hard to know if you can give them pretty obvious answers like; “Always keep your crosshair at your enemy’s head”, or a bit more advanced one like; “If you want to become a good sprayer in Counter-Strike you have to be able to adjust depending on which crosshair size your using, if you’re using large you can pretty easy control your spray by using the upper line of your crosshair to compensate for the recoil”. My best advice is therefore to analyze your own play. You really have to realize your strong and weak sides to be able to improve. You might be better of bursting than spraying, and vice versa. If so, use your best way to handle guns when playing matches and practice your weak sides afterwards. Remember that you really have to be dedicated when playing and practicing to be able to become a good player.

People are always asking me how to improve as a player, when the real question should be how to improve as a team. If you realize how to use tactics in a good way, it will make your team a lot better, and thus give you the chance to play better opponents and just climb the ladder. The aiming part will come, you just have to give it time. Try to fool around a lot on aim_maps and explore different techniques. Don’t put to much emphasis on what “top-players” are using – mousepads, sensitivity, mouse, etc. I can promise you guys that it doesn’t matter. Just find out what fits YOU the best and try to learn how to control your sensitivity. How many degrees do you turn when dragging the mouse over half your mousepad? The one thing that can really improve your aim is to work at being able to control your sensitivity flawlessly, so practice this a lot.

If the players in your team live pretty close to each other, explore the possibility to play at LAN. When you’re a new team, it’s much easier to discuss tactics when you can actually see the person you’re talking with and point at a screen while talking. Another thing is that I find it much more fun to play at LAN where you can joke around with your friends and just have a great time while playing.

I could go on pretty long about this and be more specific about errors that I see players/clans make, and more on different ways to improve, but it would have been so long and boring so I think I’ll skip it.

However, I thought that I should write down things that I’m thinking about as a player and as a member of a team.

My game.

One thing I like to do is to try to get into other top players’ heads. I usually play a lot with almost everybody of Sweden’s top-notch players outside of practice with the team, just fooling around together. You should really take advantage of how they view you as a player. For example, you should tend to take defuses direct instead of making a fake defuse first. People might not notice directly, but when doing this all the time, they’re going to believe that it’s your way of playing. Another thing that you really need to work on is positioning. You really have to mix up your game a lot; whenever the enemy might suspects where you’re at, they get the edge, and vice versa. Make sure that you always have the edge. When you’re dead, try to stay focused and take notes on how different players like to play their positions. Are they usually aggressive or defensive, or are they mixing it up? How many different positions do they usually switch between? When playing at a high level you really need to use deception. Your enemy shouldn’t know that a certain grenade can mean that we’re striking A and not B, or that some step sounds could mean the same thing. You have to play smart and keeping your opponents guessing all the time. At the same time, you should always notice your opponents’ tendencies when practicing. A lot of clans play in the same kind of way in practice and during a match. This is a cardinal mistake and it’s really costly. Whenever we – Fnatic – can narrow down the possibilities an opponent has given their history with us, we have the edge. At the highest level of Counter-Strike, you can’t play using metagame. You have to use anti-tactics a lot, and you have to take notes on your opponents’ game and watch demos.

I could go on for hours about things that I think about, but it would just be boring for you guys, so I’ll leave it at this. I hope that you could pick up at least some advice, as well as had some interest in things you think about when you’re playing at the highest level.

I hope you can excuse the grammar anomalies in this text, I corrected it but I surely missed something.

Have a nice day,

Harley ‘dsn’.