A sound card w/ decent surround sound features (Creative <3), noise cancelling headphones, and good map awareness & position play gave me a far higher KDA in CS 1.6 and Source than practicing with the AWP til my eyes and fingertips bled.

The Shift key became infinitely more useful once my ears acclimated to the setup change.

In many ways it's not so different than billiards/snooker/pool. Being a good shot-maker helps but just about all the consistently performing pros focus first and foremost on position-play and thinking several shots ahead.

I find that open back headphones are better for this if you are in a relatively controlled environment without too much background noise. I can hear basically everything on the map with my sennheisers even compared to my friends who have the same closed backs pros use in tournaments (which they only do because they need full noise isolation for the competition).

I mean, to some extent maybe, but CS is still extremely reliant on twitch mechanics and reaction speed. To put it in perspective: I've put 650 hours into Rocket League and have hit the 99th percentile. I put 2000+ hours into League back in the day and hit the 99.9th percentile. I've put 1300 hours into CSGO (and probably hundreds more watching pro matches) and am still at the 50th percentile.

I'd say in most of my games I've got more playtime, trying various strategies, and learning from mistakes, than the other 9 people in the game put together. But at some point it all just comes down to who wins a trade, and I very rarely win them. Game's still fun though, somehow.

> I have gotten reported for walling but people just need to realize how much damn noise they make.

Always amusing when this happens.

I've noticed people who perform best are the ones who pick a strategy and stick with it rather than trying to get the glory.

Another thing is lower level players use nades poorly and are always caught off guard.