Common Misconceptions

Like an Elo rating in Chess, the CS:GO competitive Skill Groups predict how well players will perform when playing against other players. Two equally skilled teams should, on average, win an equal number of matches when competing against each other.

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I honestly don't know what the hell the guy who made this up was thinking but this is completely false. The true definition of Skill Group (Rank) is:So basically, your rank is roughly the skill group at which you can win approximately half of your total matches. You doneed to carry a full team of bad players to rank-up, all you need to do is play your best.You can keep buying new copies as many times as you can afford, it's not gonna make you any better. Sure, you might get lucky and be carried to higher ranks on one of them eventually but if you're bad, you'll derank back to Silver in no time.Don't just play to get a higher rank, improve yourself and the higher rank will come on its own. In the end, it's just a meaningless badge. What truly matters, is your real skill.It's actually quite possible, you don't need a 5-man pre-made just to get out of Silvers. Sure, you mean end up in a really bad team from time to time but you should keep in mind if you "always end up with bad teammates", chances are, you're actually the bad teammate yourself.Top-fragging and getting the most kills means nothing in CSGO, this isn't Quake Live. There's a reason we have objectives. You need to get the "right" kills not the "most" kills to win the game. Just because you can rush the site with P90 and get 2 kills each round while the rest of your teammates just die (and you eventually lose the game) doesn't mean you're good, it means you lack teamwork and you deserved the loss.Well, this is not completely false but this fact is quite misunderstood among Silver players. It's very logical if you think about it the right way. Let's say you're really bad at football, and your friend is quite good and always beats you. You both want to get into a professional team, can you both make it with the same amount of practice/effort? The answer, obviously, is no. You need a lot more practice than your friend.The same logic applies to CSGO, while you may not rank-up quickly, you will get out of Silver eventually if you're truly good. Getting from SEM to GN1 takes a lot more effort than getting to MG1 from GNM because you need a lot more practice than someone who's Gold Nova.Rank-up from Silver is justthan other Skill Groups, nothing more. Silver Hell is something that only exists in your mind, it's your mental prison.This is definitely not how it works! Sure, if you maintain a massive win-streak, you would obviously rank-up quickly but a single loss is not going to ruin the whole thing for you. The only thing you need to do in order to rank-up, is win more rounds than you lose. As simple as that, you don't need to go on a rampage and win 20 games in row, but if you do that you would surely rank up.So stop blaming it on bad teammates and russians and just do your best, you will rank-up eventually. Don't be discouraged if you lose, just keep improving until you win. If you win more than you lose over time, you will rank-up.The only thing your streak will affect is how fast you rank-up, it doesn't prevent you from ranking up if your winstreak is broken.If your aim is bad, or if you don't know the basics of gameplay, mimicking pros won't help you. You will still lose. You need to find your weaknesses, understand your mistakes and try to improve yourself. Watching pro matches alone is not gonna make you any better if you keep making the same mistake over and over again without even realizing what you're doing wrong.Sure, learning from pros is a really good thing but blindly mimicking them is not. You need to understand why they do the things they do first...Let's debunk is myth once and for all: Ranking out of Silver is NOT impossible, nothing is impossible and smurfs certainly don't make it impossible to rank-up for legit Silvers:1) At silver-level, you don't really get thousands of super-skilled Global Elite players smurfing 24/7 just to ruin the game for bad players. Don't automatically assume everyone who can beat you is a smurf just because they're better than you. It's like calling anyone who gets a headshot a cheater.2) Players get matched based on their ranks, so the chance of getting matched against a smurf is the same as getting matched with one (on your team). So why do you only complain when you get beaten by one (who probably is just better than you and not a smurf)? Why don't you complain when a real smurf carries your team 16-2 alone? It's simply the balance of probability.3) A Gold Nova 2 player who has a Silver Elite account isn't really game-breaking, GN2 itself a low-skill anyway. You can easily beat him if you just focus on improving yourself.4) Just because someone puts "Smurf" in their nickname doesn't mean they're actually smurfing (or they're high-ranked). I change my nickname to "flusha", does that actually turn me into him?So maybe it's time you stop blaming your losses on smurfs and cheaters and actually learn how to play?