How To: Be Confident in CS:GO

Many things separate a good player from a bad player. Obvious differences include game sense, aim, etc. But one often overlooked aspect of a good player is confidence. Confidence is the act of completely trusting your instincts and skills. In your mind, you "know" that you can defeat the enemy, whether it be in a 5v5 match or a 1v5 clutch. 

 

Question is, why should you be confident?  If you are certain in your abilites to kill the person at long A, you will play much more aggressive. Compared to the shy player that will sit in a corner and wait for his teammates to make a play, you will be able to make the entry frag. You will be able to make big plays and dominate 1v1's. You will control the game. This may be an overstatement but you get the point.

When asked the question to Kyle "minikerr" Kerr, a North American player currently on team Manajumas, he responds: 

"If you want to be the best, you have to be the most confident. You can't just mess around. You can't just say 'Oh my god, I'm afraid to peek this guy.' If you peek the best player in the world, you should be thinking  'I'm going to kill the best player in the world because I know I'm better than him.' If you don't have any confidence, you're always going to be scared and you'll always fail." 

 

Now that we settled the reasons behind why you should be confident, let's talk about the how.

1. Treat competitive games as deathmatches

This may seem like an obvious way to learn or be anything, but it is a big deal.

When you play deathmatch, what do you do when you get killed? The answer is most likely nothing at all. You couldn't care less if died. On the other hand, what do you do when you die in a competitive game? More often than not, you'd probably rage just a little inside, if not rage a ton outside. Why is this? It's because you care much more. There can be consequences if you die, unlike in deathmatch. 

So why not treat a competitive game just like a deathmatch just with added objectives? Don't be afraid to go for those kills, don't hold back the skills you know you have, and don't be petrified of dying. (This, however, doesn't mean you should just go and get yourself killed every round)

 

2. Work on your raw aim

Playing on dedicated FFA, aim, and headshot-only servers cannot do anything besides boost your confidence. As soon as you enter a 1v1 situation, you will already have the raw skill and ability to take the enemy down. If you don't have the aiming capacity to kill the guy around the corner, no amount of confidence can help you. 

Practicing aim includes recoil control, crosshair placement, etc. A great map for practicing reaction times and recoil control is training_aim_csgo_2. When learning recoil patterns and compensation, recoil_training can come in handy.

Animated GIFs of recoil patterns of different guns, from recoil_training map (credits to Pingu)

 

3. Just play the game

Simply playing the game and encountering as many diverse situations as you can will improve your game sense heavily. Game sense is not something that can be taught. They say Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither is game sense. It's something that has to be "experienced." You are the only person that can truly teach yourself what to do in what situation, simply because you've done it before. 

Situations become routine, and once you've sat through enough B-rushes and split-A's, you won't be left in the dark as to what to do anymore. Pieces in your mind will click ("Hey! I've done this before!"), you may throw a flash or a smoke, and let the fragmovie begin!

And of course, with game sense comes confidence!

 

4. Help your teammates increase their confidence too!

Just as it is important to be confident yourself, helping out your teammates is incredibly important as well. He didn't do as well as he should've in that retake? A simple "Nice try" or a "Bad luck" can help lift his spirits. Besides, there's no use raging. After a while, you will notice that he can rise up to the occasion more often than not. If such a simple act (typing or saying no more than 2 words) can have a beneficial impact on your teamplay, why not do it?