The former Counter-Strike pro discusses the things you do not read about that can change outcomes drastically
Sometimes it is easy to forget how random everything in Counter-Strike – and even in life – can be at times.
NRG player ptr breaking his leg during turbulence on a transatlantic flight en route to Counter Pit Finals in Croatia serves as a good reminder of that.
Over a longer period of time, randomness, chance, or luck – whichever name you want to call it – will be fairly constant.
You lose rounds due to unlucky timings or seemingly random mid-air shots, and you win some back with similar plays that should not have worked out, but did.
I believe you do, effectively, make your own luck.
If you put yourself in a position to succeed often, it will appear as if you are lucky.
That is why, for example, for the longest time it seemed Ninjas in Pyjamas, back in the Fifflaren-era, were incredibly lucky.
Despite seemingly getting all-but outplayed at times, they found ways to get back into games and win.
It seems lucky, but if you do things the correct way, more things will break in your favor in the long run.
And that is when it stops being luck.
Of course there are out-of-the-game examples of chance, or luck, as well – some of it extreme.
No one wants to think back to the car accident that led to cyx’s death in July 2010, let alone the fact the accident took place on the way back home from the airport after missing his flight to IEM V Global Challenge Shanghai – meaning he may still be alive had he made it.
And no one knows how much he missed it by.
There are less extreme examples as well, but ones that nonetheless potentially changed outcomes of not only matches, but tournaments.
At ESWC 2010, the reception of our ESWC-booked hotel refused to call us a taxi to go to the event, forcing us to walk one-and-a-half-or-so kilometers in the blue-skied, 30-degree Paris heat.
My teammate fRoD wound up getting a sunstroke and threw up multiple times during our eventual upset-loss to HaRts’s Fair Frag.
These are things you do not read about – at least did not before the social media-era – but that change outcomes drastically.
Things as minor as picking the wrong dish at a restaurant the previous night, getting food poisoning and playing matches awfully sick change outcomes of single tournaments.
It happened to REAL at WEG Masters and has surely happened to many others at other tournaments.
Even less controllable is someone getting sick, for whatever reason, before a big tournament.
For instance, I played all of WCG 2007 – one of the three majors each year back then – with a 38-39°C fever.
Simply bad luck combined with an inopportune timing.
A few cases have also taken place – even in the past 12 months when Counter-Strike has had incredibly large prize purses in play – where certain players have stayed out a bit too late at night, had a few drinks too many and been unable to perform as you would expect them to the next day.
Some of them have even led to upset wins touted in the media.
All of these things happen, though for the most part they do stay outside of press.
Aside from looking at a long enough time horizon that effectively eliminates chance, the other way you can analyse games properly requires you to actually go through the matches.
You may not know the reason why Player A had a poor game or why Team B lost, but you can see when things are off and can discount games accordingly.
It will not change the result or make a loss any less meaningful for a team, but it will help in analysing the game’s impact on the future.
That is an important part of analysis, but one that gets overlooked all too often.
It is the difference between an upset win that will not be repeated and will end up as a one-time wonder, and a beginning to something bigger.
I encourage more people to actually go through games before commenting on them and to spend extra effort on determining what made the difference.
It is an area where even average knowledge of Counter-Strike, combined with above average effort, can yield above average results.
Keep that in mind when pushing your chips towards the middle.
Hard work pays off, but that work does not stop at looking at statistics and past results.
The ultimate decider is the eye test.
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