A guide to understanding the CSGO economy and moneymaking

What is CSGO? How does it work?

The competitive side of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is simple. Two teams: Counter-Terrorists and Terrorists must defend or attack a bombsite. A team can win a round by simply killing the whole opposite squad, defusing the bomb, or making sure it blows. Players must buy armor and all necessary weapons to have high chances of winning.

Time

In Valve's Official Matchmaking, a match is a best out of 30 rounds. It is divided in two halves of 15 rounds, so the team that has won 16 rounds wins. Each round is 2 minutes long. Once the bomb is planted, which takes 3 seconds, 45 seconds remain until the bomb goes boom. As a Terrorist, time is your enemy. It pressures you, could potentially stress you out and causes you to make mistakes. This is what Counter Terrorists will use to their advantage. Smoking off areas and wasting time will grant them easy rounds.

However, Terrorist may acquire time as an ally once the bomb is planted. In that situation, Terrorists can hold off the bomb site and just wait for impatient Counter Terrorists to push in and die. Time is precious, use it wisely and you will come out victorious. That being said, Terrorists should plan out their strategies in the pre-round countdown timer of 15 seconds to take a bomb site and use time as effectively as possible. Always keep an eye on the timer to make sure it runs down or not, depending on what side you are playing.

 

Economy

Round economy

Here are five types of rounds, all of them will be explained for Counter-Terrorist and Terrorist side:

#1: Pistol Round

The game starts. It's pistol round. The most important round of the game. Why? Because it usually gives the winning team two extra easy rounds to win and sets the momentum. That is if everything goes as planned, of course. You are given 800$ at the first round.

CT: As Counter Terrorists, you should have at least one defuse kit on the team. The rest of the players should buy armor or grenades. Armor helps a lot since teams will usually split or rush you head on spraying their pistols. Because no one can purchase a helmet on the first round, buying other pistols on the first round is somewhat less of a viable option since stock pistols (glock, usp-s and p2000) are already one shot headshots at medium or short range on first round no matter what.

T: Terrorist should buy armor and grenades. Players with armor will be the first ones pushing out and taking all the damage while players with grenades will be the ones smoking off certain areas and flashing in to effectively take the bomb site. Lurking players could buy pistols first round to hide and take down CTs rotating. The high damage will kill them quickly and make the bomb defense easier. Keep in mind that without armor and proper cover, you will die easily.

 

#2: Eco Round

Eco stands for economy. It is of high importance that you do two eco rounds if you lose the pistol round. This will ensure that you may full buy the fourth round of the half. As a Terrorist, if you have planted the bomb the first round, but weren't able to defend it, you can save one round and full buy the third round, instead of the fourth. An eco round is a round that players will have if three or more players in the team cannot afford proper gear, having only one or two full buying players with three saving players will just create a snowball effect of bad economy.

You may tell yourself that some professional teams do half-buys. Yes, of course, but they are able to take down enemies quickly with headshots. If you are not confident or able to do so, just go with an eco. It is safer.

#3: Baiting the fish out and throwing trash away

Players will save their money to prepare for a full buy one or two rounds later. On these eco rounds, you can pick off a few of your opponents, retrieve their guns and save them. The only thing that could stop you from doing so is that the enemies can be smart about it: knowledgeable players will bait you if they know what they’re doing. Baiting a saving player out with a fallen team mate’s gun consists of surveying the weapon, waiting for an almost defenseless enemy to pick it up and killing him. A full buying player could also throw the gun out of the map to prevent anyone from taking it.

#4: New strategy!

Here is a new technique that professional teams now use: Pistol Armor. It is a round where you will buy armor and a pistol after losing pistol round. You might think that you won't be able to full buy the fourth round. Wrong. Even if you pistol armor, you'll be able to full buy with only one or two grenades missing. It is very useful when you want to turn the tides and make the momentum favor your team. It's always good to do pistol armors on second round, unless they opposite team is winning by a large margin. Then, you should be safe and get those extra grenades the fourth round.

CT: On an eco round, Counter-Terrorists should play the round very slowly, passively and sneakily. Wait for the Terrorists to get in the site, kill them from behind, get them by surprise! A pistol, a smoke grenade or a flash bang and maybe a defuse kit is all you need. If you want to play offensively, you can buy a grenade, grenade stack a terrorist choke point and just try to get a few kills.

T: Same goes for the Terrorist team. You could create a rush strategy: smoke off the bomb site entrances, rush in and plant the bomb for money and just play time. With proper communication, an eco round is easy to win. On the other hand, you could also stick together, wait for an impatient Counter-Terrorist to push you, then you take him down and push into the weaker bomb site as a team.

#5: Anti-Eco

An anti-eco is a round that the pistol winning team will have against and eco-ing team. They will usually buy SMGs, shotguns or a famas/galil. Teams will usually take this round slowly to make sure they do not give any weapons to the opposing team, helping the enemies' economy out and deteriorating their own.

CT: As mentioned before, teams should just play passive and pick off saving players. If Terrorists have planted the bomb first round, it is better that you purchase a M4A4 or M4A1-S since your opponents will full buy third round. This means that you won’t need to buy the stronger rifle of your side after buying anti-eco weapons.

T: On anti-ecos, the Terrorist team should have one lurker to make sure a rush is not being made by the opposing team and the rest of the squad should be taking possession of a certain area in the map to attack a bomb site.

 

Light Buys

Nothing much to say here. They grant you armor, a cheap rifle and a few grenades. You will want to do this type of buy when you need to force a few rounds in to avoid complete destruction and have a little chance of coming back to win the match. A light buy is usually around a budget of 3000$ to 4000$.

 

In depth theory

Let’s go a little bit deeper in our theory. Your money is not exclusively for yourself, you must use it for the good of your team. This means buying weapons for team mates as long as you have the money to ensure a higher percentage of victory. In Counter-Strike, you receive money for eliminating foes, winning or losing a round, or even doing certain things like defusing or planting the bomb. Let me explain how much money you lose or receive depending on your actions.

 

Eliminations:

When you hover you cursor over a weapon in the buy menu, in the statistics to the right, you can see the award money given per kill. In a competitive setting, the default award money is 300$. Some weapons will give more money per kill and some won’t. The AWP will give 33%, which means 100$ per kill. All SMGs except the awful P90 will give 200% of the default award money, so 600$. Also, all shotguns will award you 300% of the default award money, therefore 900$ per kill.

Last of all, a knife kill will award you 1500$. You can also lose 3300$ if you kill a team mate, which kills somewhat your economy. Some players will try to get the opposite team to team kill each other to ruin their economy. It is very hard to do, but done properly, winning the match is much easier.

 

Objectives:

If the bomb explodes or is defused, the winning team receives 3500$. Of course, the planter or defuser also gets 300$. Once all enemies are eliminated, the victorious squad receives 3250$. To compensate for a lost round, the team that has lost a round will receive 1400$. If they continue losing consecutive rounds, they will receive 500 extra dollars on top of every compensation they get.

1 round lost: 1400$
2 rounds lost IN A ROW: 1900$
3 rounds lost IN A ROW: 2400$ etc…

Since you've now learned that time is money, join me on my next guide that will explain what weapons to use and more!