"Git:Gud" (Get good), that's it. That's all you have to know.
Greetings, Hi, TheWarOwl greets you. Everything I've told you about Counter-Strike's ranking system is fake news.
Sorry about that.
Counter-Strike's rating system is far too complicated to reliably reverse-engineer.
So how do you rank up in Counter-Strike? The true answer is...
we don't know! Valve is very secretive about the secret sauce that goes into their rating system.
The idea of a rating system is to match people of equal skill against each other,
so everybody has a good time. If people figured out how to rank up faster,
they wouldn't be playing the game and having fun - they'd just be focusing on trying to rank up.
"The game is fun."
"If it's not fun, why bother?"
However, we do know a few things that will help you rank up, or at least will help you understand why your rank is
the way it is. Our best source of information comes directly from Valve's Vitaly.
He dispelled the idea that Valve uses a simple Elo system. What does Elo stand for, you might ask?
It stands for... Elo,
after professor Elo. Instead, they started to use the Glicko-2 system and heavily modified it specifically for Counter-Strike.
What does Glicko stand for you might ask? It stands for...
Glickman, after professor Glickman. So how does Glicko-2 work?
OOOOHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOO-
I'll link to professor Glickman's paper in the description if you're a math person and you want to learn more.
First, let's talk about an Elo rating system. The idea of an Elo rating system
is that every player has a rating, which is a number.
Let's think of it as points - if two players play against each other, the winner will take points away from the loser.
How many points they take is determined by how many points they both have at the start of it.
Better players are expected to have a higher probability of winning,
so better players will win less points off of worse players.
For example, if I play against S1mple in a 1v1 and I win, I'll get tons of points off of him,
but if he wins he'll get a few points off of me.
A Glicko system adds on to this - in a Glicko system, every player has a rating like an Elo,
but they also have a rating deviation.
The idea is that it's better to think of a player's skill as a range of numbers instead of a single number.
If the rating deviation is higher, than the range is higher as well,
meaning that we're less sure of what the player's actual skill is.
If the rating deviation is lower, than the range is lower as well,
meaning that we're more sure of what the player's actual skill is.
Obviously this adds on to the complexity of determining how many points someone wins when they win a game.
Every time a game is played, the rating changes, but the rating deviation also changes.
When you play a game, your rating deviation will go down. When you don't play a game,
your rating deviation will go up over time. "That's horribly complicated..."
Don't worry, it gets worse! Glicko-2 adds on to the Glicko system.
We still have a rating, a rating deviation, and a third value, rating volatility, which is basically how
consistent a player is. If you play consistently, you'll have a low rating volatility.
If all of a sudden you 40-bomb against Global's, your rating volatility will go up.
These systems were designed for one-versus-one, with the win scenario being the only thing of importance.
Counter-Strike is far more complicated than that, so Valve has over time,
crafted a completely unique system, with which to determine ratings. What we can learn from this is that Counter-Strike's rating system
probably takes into account: How good your opponents are. How good your teammates are.
How often you play, and how consistent you are.
Knowing this, we can modify our behavior in order to rank up faster.
I will recommend playing consistently but not binging - that means playing once a day,
instead of playing seven times every Saturday. For every game you play in a row,
Your rating deviation is gonna go down, and your rating's gonna narrow,
meaning that every game is going to count less.
If you play 7 games - once every day, and you win every single one, that's going to be worth a lot more points
then if you play 7 games and win every one all at the same time. This also works for deranking, so be careful!
But I think it helps explain why so many people report
Winning a ton of games in a row and not ranking up. I think they're playing them all at the same time
I think it's also important to play
Consistently in order to keep your rating
Volatility down the rating volatility exists in order to prevent crazy outliers from drastically affecting your performance
Both good and bad
So if you all of a sudden forty bomb against Global's it's not that big of a deal
Playing consistently and gradually increasing your performance over time is a much better way of ranking up
"Well, how do you do that? WarOwl? Easier said than done." I think after you learn the mechanics
The game sense and the teamwork aspects of counter-strike it very much becomes a mental game
you can't let what happens in the game affect you emotionally or you're gonna tilt I
Have some videos about that topic or there. I also think it's a good idea to play with a consistent group of other people
when I play solo queue a lot of it is luck of the draw and if my teammates are good or bad if
You play with a consistent group of people you're gonna have more consistent performances, and you won't want to die
We also don't know what factors affect rating in the first place
We do know from player run experiments. That round wins is the most important factor
However, there is speculation that MVP stars are also important
It's possible that valve also takes into account your score a statistic that almost nobody cares about
except valve because they show it on the scoreboard and determine your placing on the scoreboard based upon it kills, assists, and
Objectives feed into your score. So it makes sense that it's used probably minorly  to determine rating
I think they also might use ADR because it's a stat that's used very commonly in
Competitive Counter Strike, that's average damage per round. Here's my theory of how rating works in Counter Strike
This is based off of what valve has told us player run experiments
anecdotal evidence and my own intuition for Counter Strike
I believe that the winning team will take rating points away from the losing team
these points are distributed amongst the winners and
distributionally taken from the losers
I don't believe that you can lose rating points off of a win or
gain, rating points off of a loss
There have been reports of people ranking up off of losses or ranking down off of wins
But I believe this is just the result of the ranks settling over time
Your skill group can change based on the total number of active
CS:GO  players as well as the rating of players in your area as players rank up or quit the game
Your skill group may change
also if you play against a cheater
Once that cheater is found out the rating of that game is reset you get your points back
I believe that the number of points you take from the other players is
Determined by the difference in total skill rating between the two teams
so you take the skill rating of everybody on your team and add it up and you compare that to the other team if you
Somehow get a team of Novas queueing against Global's. Don't worry. You're not gonna lose many points
I think the system then factors in the difference in round wins
so a 16-0 win is worth more points than a
16-10 win after that is done. I think it takes into account each player's individual contribution
However, it decides to do that the points taken from the other team are distributed unevenly
Amongst your teammates. So in a way, you're also competing with your teammates for your cut of the loot
No honor amongst thieves
The best optimize your gameplay for ranking up. It makes sense to play to win
rounds that means working together with your team never giving up and never getting
overconfident if you're losing 0-10, and it looks like you're gonna lose everyone's throwing a hissy fit and bitching and say
Oh, we got a surrender
Remember every single round you win is a victory for your rating on
The other side if you're a head 10-0
finish the job
Show no mercy crush your enemies and hear the lamentation of their women this raises the question
does it make sense to frag hunt which is ignoring your teammates and just trying to increase your own personal score if
Frag hunting results in losing just one round then no it does not make sense to frag hunt
it makes more sense to work with your team to get as many round wins as
Possible and as you rank up more and more and get into higher-level games teamwork is only going to be more
Important but it does mean that stealing that defuse from your teammate will increase your rating a little bit
It also means that dropping the bomb to a teammate is a dumb idea
If you plant the bomb and get at least one kill, you're gonna get an MVP star
It's gonna increase your rating a little bit get you a little piece of the pie bigger than your teammates
So quit being a dick and play the objective
The bomb is a blessing. Not a curse.
Oh.
I'm done
Rank doesn't really matter have fun and improve over time the rank will naturally follow
Thank you folks very much for watching. I am the WarOwl and I still have no closer.
Man I got to follow my own advice
The rating volatility exists to prevent crazy outliers from drastically affecting your performance if you frighghghg
