Clutching: No magic required

In this article, we try and break down the different steps that are essential to clutching so that you can apply them in game next time your whole team is spectating you.

Get Intel

Intelligence or information is the first and most important part of clutching. Indeed, knowing where your enemies are simplifies your whole playmaking as you can adjust your movement, the way you peek angles and the order in which you segment your clutch based on the positions your enemies play.

In order to get good intelligence you first need to rely on your teammates which is obvious when you play as a team but much less so when you are solo queueing and playing with randoms.

You then need to listen for the calls your teammates make, and ask for more complete information if it is not precise enough. In fact, a call saying “there is a guy A site” can only give an approximate idea of where to aim and how to prepare for a gunfight. If that call is instead “there is a guy playing goose” you can now effectively pre-aim and have a substantial advantage going into the gunfight as the enemy might not know where you will be coming from.

Sadly, in most situations you don’t have the luxury to know every single position played by the opposite team and in that case the quest for information is much harder. The reason for that is that if you don’t know where enemies are you will have to take risks to get the information about their positioning which most of the time is going to give your position away, killing any surprise effect you had.

Indeed, a way to get information in that case is to shoulder peek corners and try to bait out shots to figure out where the shots are coming from. Another way that you should do together with the one above, is to use your grenades. There are so many clutches lost by players with a non-utilized full set of grenades, or just an approximate flashbang thrown for the sake of it.

Use your molotovs to clear out corners, like new box on inferno B site, or the appropriately named fire-box on mirage A site. Use your HE grenades to do the same, more often than not, players will react to a nearby HE grenade by peeking, thinking their position is known. Moreover, you can hear the difference between a HE grenades doing damage to someone or not. Use it to get information.

Clear positions

Clutching ends up being a moment which condenses most of what Counter-Strike is, and how it should be played. For example, in Counter-Strike you always want to be at an advantage when going into a gunfight, so in a “1 versus x” situation, that means segmenting the “1 versus x” into “x” “1 versus 1”. That is achieved in part by methodically clearing positions your enemies might be playing. You might have seen such advice in aim guides as it is very much tied with crosshair placement and positioning when peeking angles.

For instance, you want to check every position but only one by one while being exposed to the least possible position. That means decomposing your entry onto a bombsite into a multitude of steps, as many as there are angles to cover. Moreover, for that technique to be successful, you will need to use shoulder peeking and counter strafing as it helps you get information and be precise while shooting at a corner while dodging in and out of cover. Also, based on the information you have, pre-firing corners where enemies might be is essential.

Quite logically, grenades are again a major help and a crucial component of clearing corners and isolating gunfights. In fact, smoke grenades can help you block off angles that you don’t want to expose yourself to while you peek another angle. For example, if come up banana onto bombsite B on Inferno, smoking off spools is a great way to avoid getting shot in the side while you clear dark, new box, first and second oranges.

Be aware

Before getting into the thick of the action, you need to take a couple of seconds to check your HUD and be aware of every parameter that is going to impact the outcome of your action. Firstly, the timer, if it is an end of round situation, check the clock. How much time is there left? If I am CT, should I hide or deny a plant. If I am T, should I fake plant or go for it, or do I have time to fake and switch bombsite?

Whether you are CT or T, when the bomb is planted, you need to watch the clock, but the problem is, the clock is not there anymore and you have to do with the “bips”. Or do you though?

A very good alternative I use is to activate in your sound settings the 10 seconds timer music and put it at a low value so it doesn’t prevent you from hearing footsteps. For instance, defusing without a kit is 10 seconds, so you know you have to stick it before the music starts. With that setting turned on, you can know if you have to rush it, if as a T you should play the time and not peek for a few more seconds, if you should rather save as a CT because there’s not enough time, or you do have a kit and just have time to stick it. It is a great tool in every way.

Then of course, be aware of the utilities you have. Like I mentioned earlier, grenades are a great asset to clutch as they can be used to block off angles, clear corners, and even ninja defuse.

Finally, in those split seconds when you are playing as CT and you just check the clock, also check if you did buy a defuse kit or if you picked one up. That will define how fast you have to act to retake or how patient you can be.

In the end clutching is a process that you have to execute methodically with the information you can gather. So when you are coming up to a bombsite or when you are defending it, take a deep breath, check your utilities and include every different step into one motion.

"GeT_RiGhT" and "Hiko" do not have magic powers. Well, maybe some inhuman reactions, but mostly, they practiced those situations a thousand times and they developed the ability to repeat and adapt those steps.

If you want to practice that and don’t want to play full games for a chance to end up in a clutch situation, I suggest you try retakes community servers, they are a great way to warm-up and gain experience at the same time.