Alright gaming yap time again. I play a little counter strike yada yada I have an ego yada yada you’re all caught up let’s go.

In my recent games I’ve had a fair few fellas that sucked, normal so far. I’ll usually ask them to do something every round that at least provides some value to me like getting info, a timing, a distraction like literally anything that might mean I don’t get shot in the back two seconds into the round. They often don’t bother and we lose while I go progressively more insane but it did get me wondering - how does game sense work.

Like for me I just have a gut feeling about timings now. Spawn timings are the easiest to learn, you generally meet the opposition at the same spots at roughly the same times every round (spawn dependant - looking at you mirage and dust) but how do I keep track of timings from people my teammates have seen on the other side of the map? For example I was playing an overpass game (hi barold you played it too) my teammate died A Long so I smoked it and started jumpspotting banana and bathroom - typical so far. Then suddenly I had a tugging feeling in my gut to spam the smoke for the right hand side of the wall. Easiest kill of the game. But how the hell did I know he’d be there at that point? It’s not the only time this happens, I even have a clip!

I don't know how or why I knew he would push that. We're only on round three so it's not like I can even use the excuse that I know he's an aggressive player. I was rotating from A I'm not even sure how long temple had been open I just knew when I looked back the second time he'd be there.

I often say to lower ranked friends that game sense is just thinking about what you would do if you were them and then predict accordingly but I’m not even sure I believe that. I don’t really think about what I’m doing anymore which might just be a side effect of time played. On CT side I’ll follow a general routine every round, for example if I’m playing A Anchor mirage I’ll always molly ramp early to stop the rush, flash into middle for the window and conn players, then either jiggle ramp and palace from triple or ticket. If the conn player dies I’ll jump up on ticket and hold ramp, palace and conn. I do this almost every round - it’s what I would consider the correct default for playing that position. What I can’t figure out is how do I change that round by round to not become predictable and what is the deciding factors? Is it just me noticing the pattern that I’ve done it too many rounds in a row? Or am I playing an incredible mental game, conditioning them to expect me ticket so I can make a fast palace play? Maybe Anchor is a terrible position to think about this there’s not much variance outside of where I can stand for the round and most of my choices would leave me on an island.

I just can’t figure out how I know what to do. Am I simply being more mindful about what I’ve done previously? Or am I paying more attention to the enemies reactions? Does the amount of pro cs I’ve watched have anything to do with it? It occurs to me I spend a lot of time not in the game watching other people significantly better then me playing it, is it simply some form of sponge learning and mimicking them? I think I unfortunately cannot answer any of this. Perhaps if I did demo reviews I’d be able to figure it out. It may even help me improve god forbid.

PS. I wish I could track the enemies economies like I used to in GO. Either it’s too volatile for me to properly track now or I’m just that much worse. Another thing to add to the improvement checklist.