When playing Counter Strike, sometimes you get those games where nothing is working. It’s not your aim, it’s not your teammates, you’re losing and you don't know why, it feels almost suffocating. When in reality, It’s out of your control, and you’re just being outplayed, outsmarted. It’s not what you’re doing wrong, it’s what they are doing right. Counter Strike as much as it is a shooter, is a puzzle- a strategy game. While at the end of the day, one team has to choose “A” or “B”, and the other team has a 50-50 shot of guessing which one they picked, the manner of how this is done, the number of possibilities is unlimited. Having the ability to know the enemy's decisions is undeniably the biggest advantage a team can hold. Controlling the map, allows you to have influence on the decisions the other team has to make, and essentially control the outcome of each round.

Map control is the struggle between both teams to control as much of the map as fast as possible. This is essential for stronger CT defenses, and effective Terrorist assaults. In its basic form, map control allows a team to gain information about what the other team is doing, while also restricting the movement of the opposing team. As a CT, having control over contested areas eliminates the execution of certain strategies. On Inferno for example, by simply having a CT holding car in Banana, there's no way for the Terrorist to get to B through Banana without engaging this player. This narrows the T's options, the more control: the more predictable their strategies get. Due to the layout of most competitive maps, to gain this information, CT’s must push aggressively into contested zones. On the map Cache, often famed as being one of the most balanced maps in Counter Strike, there are many zones that are contested. Say, for example, you are a CT defending A site, and a teammate spots a single Terrorist in B Main as he quickly retreats back to the site. On A site, you've smoked off A Main and haven't heard any footsteps. Mid Garage is smoked off as well with no boosted players.

The only info you team has gathered is the single player in B Main. That single T’s presence has given the contested area B Main to Terrorist control. The Terrorist now have an advantage, they’re a step closer to executing on the B site. To counteract this, the CT's must take control of an adjacent area. This is when CT aggression is justified. To be an effective player, you need to have the game sense to be able to determine when this is necessary. By pushing into A Main, you counteract the Terrorist control and start to flank their team. By slowly pushing behind them, you gain more and more control of the area, upsetting this map balance in your favor. With enough intel, you can assume that the entire team is in fact in B Main. With this info, the entire team can rotate to the site, and the Terrorists would be walking into a brick wall. Without proper map control, and diversifying their players throughout the map, they lost the round before shooting a single bullet. This is why Counter Strike is such a mental game - With proper tactics on both sides, you can control the outcome of every round.

While Map control is very important for CT’s, it is even more so for the Terrorist side. While CT map control limits options, Terrorist control opens these options. Having more control of the map keeps the CT's where they should be, being spread out makes your team more unpredictable. This is why many teams will run default set-ups, or "play for picks". This is where the T's spread out across the map in the early round and look for weaknesses in the CT's defense, while they try to decide where to go. In the previous scenario, insert a lurker. Lurker’s are used by professional teams to hold rotations and cover the flank while said team is performing their execution. Often accused of being selfish playstyles, lurkers hold a real value in a team's composition.

With the simple addition of a lurker in A Main, the attacking team's presence is doubled. In the same scenario, the CT’s push A Main to get the needed information, and they're picked off by the lurker. Now down a man, the CT’s need to adjust their defense accordingly, thinning their coverage. The Z player will likely rotate to Truck, opening Mid. If this is taken advantage of, the T’s now have complete control of whatever site they choose, all due to correct positioning. With so much presence across the map, Mid players can just wait around and try to get an easy kill on a rotator, or help the site execution by flanking the defenders.

Map control isn't just being spread out everywhere, it takes a lot of knowledge about what map you’re currently on, and a lot of team coordination. Though used correctly, you not only have more freedom over your own actions, but shape the decisions others have to make to react to those said actions. Positioning is everything in Counter Strike, and game sense is just knowing where the right place is at the right time.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and gained a new perspective on map control.

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