AWPing is the more popular role on all fronts: People in MM want the AWP from you so bad, people love the AWPers from their favourite team, and all your friends feel like they should be the AWPer in your five-man-queue. This is understandable since most AWP kills mid-round will almost always take out an enemy in a crucial position or crack open the defense of your enemies. However, what does it actually take to AWP like a pro in CSGO? Find out what you have to do in order to become a god with the scoped gun!

Of course, if you think about the S1mples, kennyS's, GuardiaNs and so on, you think of the incredible flicks, the incredibly fast-paced action that unfolds on your screen as they move their mouse over the mousepad in order to get the next spectacular, round-winning kill. The bread and butter of such players is obviously the aim, movement, and positioning, so we're going to talk about those topics right after clearing something very important up:

To be confident you need to be comfortable.

This shouldn't come as a surprise, but if you feel comfortable it will be easier for you to fully focus on the task at hand, be it working out, practising smokes, or playing your officials/MMs. So, in order to feel confident and fully focus on your game, you need to feel comfortable. There are different ways to ensure maximum comfortability. One of those is, of course, feeling comfortable outside of the game by wearing convenient clothing if you prefer so, having the right chair, monitor, and mouse, and removing all that is bothering you from your gaming area.

Of course, there is also an in-game aspect to this. If you feel like you should just copy a pro's settings but you are not comfortable with them, you should start to customise your settings and try different ones out, offline with bots if you do not feel like facing real opponents. Configure your crosshair, viewmodel, sound levels, saturation, turn off Steam messages if you feel annoyed by them popping up mid-game and so on. Feel free to experiment and if you are fine with copying pros settings go ahead and choose the setting of your liking!



Aim

As we've already established, the aim is the bread and butter of all pro AWPers. So, in order to AWP like a pro in CSGO, you need to aim like a pro in CSGO! I know, this is easier said than done, but I'm here to help you reach your goals! In order to help you, I've gone back to one of my older articles and found a graphic that will help you understand how to get better at aiming, or any skill for that matter.

We start at the top: Isolate skill you need to work on. In this case, it's aim. The second step is to exercise said skill in an isolated environment, meaning that you need to get down to the core of what makes a good aimer: tracking aim, flicking and crosshair placement/pre-aim. Now find an isolated environment where you can practice those subcategories of aiming, where isolated environment refers to a place/server/map where you can solely concentrate on one of the aspects and do not need to worry about other aspects of playing. Then the next step would be to exercise your skill in a more realistic setting, referring to Deathmatch or AWP Deathmatch, testing your skills and getting used to real life opponents while focusing on your aim. The last step would be to use it in a competitive setting and then start from the top with a different skill.

Aim Maps (offline)

Let's start off small: Practice your skills in an isolated environment. One of the ways to do this is to choose one of the many offline practice maps that are available in the Steam workshop. A few of those maps would be Yprac Aim Arena, training_aim_csgo2_dark or Aim Botz - Training, but feel free to use any you're comfortable with.

Jump right in and start tracking targets, flick onto enemies, or pre-aim when you add objects as obstacles when trying to find an enemy behind it.

Online game modes

There are a bunch of community servers that allow AWPs in Free-For-All Deathmatch (FFA DM), but there also are AWP-only DM servers. Feel free to try out both and try to focus on your aim. Do not feel down if you have a negative score, no one gives any kind of attention to a person's DM score, as your score is determined by so many factors that are out of your control, like spawns.

Crosshair placement without a crosshair

This may sound counter-intuitive, but it wouldn't hurt to spend a few minutes figuring out where the middle of the screen is when you have no crosshair as you are holding the AWP. After all, no-scoping and quick-scoping can help the AWP get out of an incredibly dangerous situation, so there's no harm done to experiment with it and try to practice a few quick-scopes just to know how to react if you suddenly get pushed in close quarters.

Crosshair placement

In order to find out if you are placing your crosshair correctly at different angles, you can watch your demos and review how the enemies peek you on said angles. If they overshoot your crosshair constantly, and you can't flick to them consistently, you should change your crosshair to be further away from the edge of the corner. If you get shot before they enter your crosshair you should start placing it closer to the corner. You can also have a look at the more non-flashy AWPers like Allu or Skadoodle to find out how they place their crosshair at different angles.



If the enemies aren't jigglepeeking or shoulderpeeking much, you can place your crosshair so that you have enough time to react when they run out



Movement

Although counterstrafing at the right moment to fire an accurate shot is a big part of movement for an AWPer, falling back or pushing efficiently without getting stuck on things can just be as important. A more in-depth look at everything movement can be found here.

Counterstrafing

To work on this part of movement, you can go the same route you went with aiming: Start off easy in offline maps and then slowly increase the level of realism of the situations you're facing when practising. Be sure to not to give up quickly and study the way the crosshair changes blurriness in order to get a feel for how the AWP calculates accuracy, giving you a better chance to be more dynamic in games and not be limited by constantly sneaking and crouchpeeking every angle imaginable.

Navigating around the map

The main way to increase your intuitive knowledge of where you can and can't properly navigate through or around is to gain experience on those points of the map, which is done by playing the map that you struggle with a lot. If you do not feel like you're making enough progress fast enough, do not be ashamed to load into those maps offline and study the corners, edges, how they interact with your model and how to navigate through those passages, with your back turned to them or not. This can help save your life if you suddenly get flashed off, so take this part of your movement serious, too!



Positioning

As much as good aim and movement are the bread and butter of players like kennyS, Nifty and Skadoodle, positioning is what can really make or break a round, disregarding how good or bad your aim is at that moment. So in order to AWP like a pro in CSGO, you will also need to position yourself like a pro in CSGO!

Of course, positioning can be a thing of experience like navigating around the map is, but you can actively avoid being caught in bad positions and find out what a good position is by watching demos from pro AWPers. Especially the less-flashy more stationary AWPers like Allu and Skadoodle really lend themselves to learning correct positioning from. On top of watching demos, you can also evaluate positions yourself:

Characteristics of good positions

First off, a good position is situational. There are some positions out there who are useful 95% of the time, and there are some who can win you the most crucial round in one out of ten cases. So you need to understand that different scenarios call for different positioning and that there is no cure-all. That being said, here are a few important characteristics of a good position:

The position can catch people off-guard or is part of a strong bait and switch with a teammate

You have a high probability of a kill

You have a low probability of getting killed or traded (instantly)

You can fall back

A teammate can help you out of trouble fast

You can get back into cover and repeek at will/wait for friendly utility

You aren't exposed to multiple angles

You will hold on to a lot of map control (Ex.: Banana on Inferno)

Your position does not get prefired commonly

Keep in mind that a position should have more than one of those characteristics to be consistently viable.

Visual Example:



You are not getting prefired, you can catch people off-guard, you hold on to a lot of map control, and you can fall back

Peeking

I choose to present peeking as part of positioning because at the end of the day, where and how you peek is determined by positioning/spawns.

There are a few things you should keep in mind when peeking with the AWP. The first thing to think about is the slow movement speed, no matter how you try to peek, and how the crosshair wobbles when you peek while running. This causes it to be quite hard to tell where you are actually pre-aiming without enough experience, so keep that in the back of your mind. At the same time, more controlled peeks, like walkpeeks and crouchpeeks, are even slower and I'd dare to say that an AWP that is pre-aimed at your angle is going to get the kill against a crouchpeeking you eight out of ten times, depending on if they expected the crouchpeek.

Pros have internalised the fact that you shouldn't take too many fair fights, which is why you should ask for flashes from your teammates in order to AWP like a pro in CSGO. On the other hand, if you have a spawn that allows you to be somewhere earlier than the opposition, abusing that spawn to pre-aim the angle instead of peeking into it afterwards is worth its weight in gold. The same can be said about information given to you by the teammates and you making it to the opponents' destination before they do, allowing you to establish the line of fire correctly to surprise them when they come around the corner.

If you know that an AWP is standing at the position you want to peek, it may be good to get the knife in hand and shoulderpeek, causing the AWP to miss his shot and allowing you to repeek into the angle without the enemy AWP being able to kill you instantly. Also, if you do not have utility to spare, jumping across an angle or into the angle can catch the enemy by surprise and may allow you to win a duel more easily compared to just crouching into it. A different alternative to just widepeeking while running and crouchpeeking is to run up until you are barely visible and then to crouch. The momentum will carry you through their crosshair but if they try to track you or flick on you, you crouching is going to nullify their upper-body crosshair placement, allowing you to capitalise.

Conclusion

In order to AWP like a pro in CSGO, you need to look at the pros and then adopt characteristics of their play. Internalise the same principles they have for ages now, like not taking fair duels without at least throwing a curveball, changing your position often and trying to keep the positions valuable instead of one-and-done. Try to get the impact frags by not baiting your teammates, but by being where you need to be when you try to take map control on T and CT. A small extra tip: If you have successfully picked someone while playing on the CT side, consider changing your position. There is nothing more pro than keeping the opponent guessing where you are!