CSGO is one of the oldest esports in the world which makes it one of the hardest to go pro in. The people that play CSGO professionally have played and perfected the game for many years.
With that being said, it is still possible to go pro in CSGO if you take the right steps. Below I go over what is needed to go pro in CSGO.
How To Become A Pro CSGO Player?
Here are 10 things you must do if you want to go pro in CSGO:
Improve Your Aim
It may seem obvious, but aim is one of the most important aspects of being a CSGO pro. Your aim doesn’t just need to be good, it needs to be excellent.
You need to be able to snap over to the enemy and land your crosshair on their head before they even know what’s going on. You don’t have to be a machine, of course, but to be pro your aim has to be excellent.
Master Crosshair Placement
Crosshair placement is right up there with aim when it comes to important CSGO skills. Having good crosshair placement will eliminate the need to make huge, impossible flicks.
You always want to keep your crosshair at head level so as soon as you see an enemy you can just immediately click their head and take them out. Otherwise you’ll be moving your mouse all around, and likely miss.
Learn The Maps Inside And Out
Learning the maps will help you learn crosshair placement and help you entry sites. If you know a map inside and out, then you can entry onto site while peeking every single spot an enemy might be.
If you don’t know the map, then you’ll probably forget to check one or two spots, which will get you killed on many occasions. Learn where you need to clear at every site on every map.
Practice Lineups
Smoke line ups aren’t just fancy but they’re extremely useful to your team. Unlike Valorant, CSGO doesn’t let you just pick where your smokes go.
You have to either run in and toss them where you want (dangerous), or you have to learn useful smoke lineups that can completely blind important holding spots.
This will immediately give your team more control over site and make your games much easier.
Improve Awareness And Communication
I won’t lie to you, I hate talking in games like CSGO and Valorant, especially when my team is toxic. But there’s just no way to be completely aware and still focus on clicking heads.
This is why you have to be able to hear your team’s callouts, and why you should be making good callouts.
Don’t clog up comms with useless information, just call out where enemies are, where they’re going, and what plays to make.
Analyze Your Gameplay
Record your games and watch them from an objective standpoint. While we’re in the middle of a game, it’s almost impossible for us to really see our mistakes.
Sometimes we can see very obvious mistakes, but trying to analyze and play at the same time is hard. Record your games and watch them back while taking notes of mistakes you see.
Hire A Coach
You don’t have to be the only person watching your games. You can hire someone much better at the game than you and they’ll watch your game and take notes for you.
Some of these coaches even analyze your games for free on Youtube, which is a win-win for both of you. You just have to be able to take criticism and trust your coach.
You can find CSGO coaches on social media, but I prefer to use Fiverr. Fiverr allows you to see how others have rated a certain coach which will help you to avoid being scammed.
You can see a list of CSGO coaches on Fiverr here.
Form A Team
Solo queue sucks, but there’s no reason you have to stick to it. If you have other friends that are just as competitive as you are and are willing to take the game and practice seriously, then you might as well form a team.
Doing this will give you experience working as a team and practicing, and you may even be able to enter amateur tournaments to see where exactly you stand (and have a lot of fun).
Play In Tournaments
Speaking of tournaments, once you’ve practiced 6 hours a day, everyday, done 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 air squats, and a 10-km run, you’ll be ready to play against other amateur teams.
Tournaments are pretty fun, even if you don’t win. While CSGO isn’t as popular as it used to be, if you have any local gaming businesses, they may be interested in putting together a tournament if you can convince them it’s a good idea.
Reach Out To Teams
Okay, so you’re really good at CSGO. Now you need to market yourself. Start a Youtube channel and put together clips and montages.
This will build you a community and maybe get you noticed. After that, you can start reaching out to teams and coaches and asking them about their recruitment process.
Now here are some other questions that those looking to go pro in CSGO often ask.
What Is Considered A Pro In CSGO?
A professional CSGO player is someone who makes a living playing CSGO. Usually the CSGO community considers someone a pro if they compete in high skill tournaments, or stream in order to support themselves. CSGO pros are the best players in the world, and are usually signed to an organization or team.
Not every single pro has to be signed to a multi-million dollar contract and compete in tournaments across the world.
But to be a “pro” CSGO player, they should be making enough money to support themselves strictly from playing CSGO; be it through streaming, tournaments, or a team contract.
How Long Does It Take To Become A Pro In CSGO?
It takes years to go pro in CSGO because the game has been around so long and there are so many things to learn. To become a pro you should dedicate 6 hours a day to training your aim, crosshair placement, map awareness, and game knowledge. Your gaming background will also play a role in the time required.
If you’re coming from other FPS games then going pro in CSGO will mostly be about learning maps and general game knowledge.
Of course, this is assuming you already have professional level aim and crosshair placement. There’s so much to learn in CSGO that it’ll take at least a year or two to bring your skills up to a pro level.
How To Join A CSGO Pro Team?
To join a pro CSGO team you have to be better than current pro players and make a name for yourself either through streaming or through reaching extremely high ranks in CSGO. You can also use sites like esea or faceit to play in smaller league tournaments in order to gain experience and get noticed.
Just sending a coach an email won’t really be useful. Now, you could send an email and ask about their recruitment process, but you’re going to need something to offer them if you want signed.
This means you have to be able to put your skills where your mouth is and be able to prove you’re as good as you say (with your rank or through tournaments).
Is It Hard To Go Pro In CSGO?
It is very hard to go pro in CSGO. It takes many years of experience and dedicated training. Many CSGO pros have been playing the game for almost a decade and have even played previous versions of the game, so they have a lot of experience and know the game extremely well.
CSGO pros are some of the best, most dedicated pros in any eSport, and if you want to go pro you’ll need to compete against them. CSGO is one of the hardest games to go pro in at the moment.
How Much Do Pro CSGO Players Make?
Pro CSGO players earn anywhere from $40k – $200k a year. Tier 1 eSports pay their players very generous salaries and the players also take home tournament earnings and sponsorship contracts on top of their org salary. So the better a player is, or the bigger their following, the more money they can make.
How much a CSGO player makes completely depends on how famous they are and how good they are. If a player is on a top team that wins a lot of tournaments, there’s a good chance they are making millions.
If they’re on a lower tier team, they may be earning an upper-middle class wage, which is still great for playing videogames.
How Old Is The Average CSGO Pro?
The average CSGO pro is around 23 years old. There are not many CSGO pros older than 25, and most are older than 19. There are some exceptions to the average though, including players as young as 16 and as old as 32.
Reaction time in humans starts decreasing around age 25, so it’s no surprise that there aren’t many CSGO pros older than this.
However, knowledge and experience goes a long way in competitive games, which is why the occasional 30 year old can compete.
How Many Hours A Day Do Pro CSGO Players Play?
Most pro CSGO players play at least 6 – 8 hours a day and sometimes even more. Many of these hours are spent doing intense practice, while the other hours are usually spent just playing casually to keep their mechanics tight. Some CSGO players will play 12 hours per day when their schedule requires it.
How much you play doesn’t matter as much as how you play. CSGO pros don’t just play for 12 hours, fumbling around having fun.
They spend hours practicing, analyzing, and studying trying to get better and prepare for the next tournament. This kind of “play” can be mentally exhausting but it is necessary to be pro.
Is Being A CSGO Pro Worth It?
Being a CSGO pro is worth it if you are extremely talented and can land a good contract with a popular team. CSGO is not as popular as other eSports, which means it only pays well to teams and players at the very top. Going pro in CSGO is extremely hard, and the effort may be better spent on another game.
CSGO has existed for over a decade, and in that time players have gotten extremely good. The game is not as popular in North America as it is in China and parts of Eurpoe, so the pro scene is very niche in NA.
There are games that are much easier to go pro in, however CSGO has always been the most popular competitive FPS, and likely always will be. So if you can compete with the top 0.0001% of players in CSGO, it can be very worth it.
If you want to know whether gaming is a good career then check out my article here. Also, if you want to know what it takes to go pro in games like Fortnite or Apex Legends then check out the links provided.
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Eric streams 3 days a week on Twitch and uploads weekly to Youtube under the moniker, StreamersPlaybook. He loves gaming, PCs, and anything else related to tech. He’s the founder of the website StreamersPlaybook and loves helping people answer their streaming, gaming, and PC questions.
