Using cheeky corners to your advantage in CSGO

“The one and done” in CS:GO refers to an off angle position a corner played in a defensive setup, mostly by the CTs, sometime by the Ts in after plant positions, where you have a great chance of getting a kill but can’t fall back after doing so. This article aims to explain how to make the most of this high risk high reward type situation. In fact, in most cases, you’ll get one kill out of a position like sandbags on Inferno, but you’ll most likely get traded right afterwards giving the Ts the advantages. However, if done right, these positions can reveal to be deadly in eco round situations, potentially getting you two or three kills and the round win.

To achieve that, you’ll need spontaneity, team coordination, nerves and patience, all of which we will discuss here.

Spontaneity

By spontaneity, I mean that you need to surprise the enemy when playing that kind of position. In a competitive game, you’ll be able to play that corner only once or twice, and playing it twice in a row is strongly unadvised. Even in matchmaking teams communicate well enough so that if you pull of even a single kill from a cheeky corner, you’ll most likely get pre-fired into oblivion the following round.

You’ll also need to pick and choose your moments.

Like I said previously, those positions are best played on eco rounds when you have less to lose and you can thus take more risks. Playing that kind of position when you’re in a full buy situation really is playing with fire because you put your fate in the fact that the enemy won’t look at you. The problem is, in most cases they do, and you are hurting your team a lot if you’re losing all your gear and your life just for the chance of catching an enemy of guard.

A great moment to play these positions is after several rounds of playing more traditional positions. The opposite team is most likely going to expect to be at the same traditional spot and they might forget about the off angles. For example, I've successfully gotten multiple kills and the win on eco rounds with just a P2000 and no armor by simply playing in Mirage connector after having played several rounds elsewhere and realizing that the enemy team was often just running up connector, putting our team in danger.

But again, if they are conscientious, you might get pre-fired with no warning.

Team coordination

Team coordination can be a great helper in a "one and done" situation. Indeed, if your entire team is in on it, they will bait and lure the enemies towards you without necessarily dying, giving your team a shot if you can capitalize on it.

For example, if you play at the flower pot on Mirage B site to surprise people coming out of apartments, have a teammate playing van, jumping in the pit and falling back to site so that the enemy team tries to track him down or at least focus on him. Then you can pop out and easily take a few of them down with a small investment like a P250.

Another example which results more often in the death of the bait is sandbags on Inferno. The trick is to have one of the two people playing there staying hidden while the other one peeks in and out, usually getting taken down. Then the Ts should proceed to push in B site without checking sandbags again, giving you a golden opportunity to shoot them in the back of the head.

Those points are brilliantly explained in an earlier blog by Jugg3rNAUT that you can read here.

In fact, the tactics associated with these one and done spots require a lot of baiting which in those cases is good baiting, or teamwork, based baiting, as opposed to that guy that lets you enter into sites or watches you die just so he can potentially get easy kills and pats his stats.

An essential quality to have if this trick is to be successful is to be patient and calm, which brings me to my next point.

Nerves and patience

Nothing will better illustrate this point that the now famous Adam “Friberg” Friberg play versus Cloud9 in the quarter finals of ESL Cologne 2014. As you can see, he patiently let the first player go by, spots the bomb, let the second one go by as well and waits for the bomb carrier to start planting before opening fire, winning the round for his team after time had run up and bomb wasn’t planted.

The idea behind this kind of play is to stay extremely calm and have great trigger discipline. In fact, if you shoot the first enemy you see, you will be killed a second after in most cases. When you’re on eco and have nothing to lose, take the risk of being patient and let the first one go by, keep him in your crosshair just in case he would turn around, and wait to see how many will follow.  In the worst case scenario, you get killed by the one enemy that finally checks your position, but you will still have gained massive information to give to your team.

In the best of cases, you get a multi-kill, a weapon, and even the round win on a round the enemy should have secured rather easily, allowing for a huge momentum switch that can eventually lead to victory. Being patient works extremely well with team coordination, as having a teammate baits for you helps take the attention away from your spot and can result in a many enemies passing by unsuspectingly.

Ultimately, "one and done" spots are risky but when done well, they can results in wins and awesome moments that will make your hands shake and your heart beats fast.