If you're looking to get involved in the world of Counter-Strike, it's a fairly steep learning curve. There's a lot to learn, there are people that have been playing for literally decades, and it can be difficult to figure out where to even start. I've been playing the game for over ten years, competing in tournaments in Europe and LAN tournaments in Ireland. If you're a beginner, here are all the steps you should follow to get started and steadily improve.

1 Find the right peripherals

It can be hard to find what's right for you

First and foremost, your basic office mouse isn't going to cut it when it comes to competitive shooters. No matter what other hardware you have, your mouse is going to be the most important component of your entire setup. I use a Vaxee XE-S wireless, but I've also used the Logitech G Pro Wireless and countless SteelSeries mice over the years. This choice will be inherently personal, so don't be afraid to try out a few if the first one you pick up isn't the right one for you.

Next up is your keyboard, and you don't need the best of the best to get started. Movement in games like Counter-Strike has an incredibly high skill-ceiling, and it can take a long, long time to master. Unlike your mouse, a decent keyboard is all you need to start with. You don't need any of those fancy keyboards with the likes of Rapid Trigger for now, though they're certainly nice to have as you improve.

Finally, the right monitor can make a massive difference. Too big, and you won't be able to see your radar, your utility, or even what's happening elsewhere on your screen. Too small, and it'll be hard to see what's happening too. Plus, a high refresh-rate is a nice bonus, as it makes the game so much smoother. In a game which relies on twitch reactions at times, you want a smooth-as-butter experience.

2 Finding your sensitivity

This might take a while

The next thing is to find what in-game sensitivity works for you. You might think a high-sensitivity is great for flicking around quickly, but in actuality, it's a detriment as it prevents you from being accurate most of the time. With some notable exceptions, pretty much every professional player uses a sensitivity that many that come from gaming experiences outside of esports would consider to be extremely low.

You can play around with a low sensitivity in tools like Aimlabs, or you can just hop into a deathmatch with a low sensitivity and try it out. You'll probably want to use your mouse at a low DPI, with most players choosing anywhere between 400 and 1200 DPI. Then, in-game, you'll want to change your sensitivity too.

For reference, I play on 400 DPI with a sensitivity of 1.2 in-game. This is considered low even by esports players standards, and a more reasonable in-game sensitivity at that DPI would typically fall between 1.4 and 2. As we'll get to later on though, you can also try out configurations made by professional players so you can get a feel for it and see what works for you.

3 Make your crosshair

Tune it to your own tastes

Counter-Strike let's you create your own crosshair, and there are a lot of parameters that you can change. While you can mess around with the console in game and try different figures, you can also modify it in-game from the settings. Even better, there are many online generators to make it so you can see what it looks like in real-time without even launching your game. These generators will then give you a configuration file that you can place in your game's installation folder to use it.

For example, DatHost has a great Counter-Strike crosshair generator that you can use, and it will show you exactly how it looks in-game as you tweak it. While the default Counter-Strike crosshair works, it's not very good and will hold you back in the long run. Plus, crosshairs are inherently personal, and other people can see it when they spectate you. Make it your own!

Once you've made your crosshair, you can either paste the command DatHost gives you into your in-game console (enabled in your game's settings), or you can place it in your Autoexec file. If you don't know what that is, we'll be talking more about those in the settings section!

4 Get the right video settings

There are a surprising number of options here

Now that you have everything else ready to go, you'll want to play around with your video settings. You might have heard the long-running joke that Counter-Strike players buy the best hardware to make their games look like they're from the early 2000s, and to be honest, that's wildly true. While there are plenty of professional players that play on a native resolution (that is, standard 1080p or 1440p), there are a few reasons others might not.

For starters, a lower resolution actually has one big key advantage, and that's frame stability. A high frame-rate isn't enough, you want your frames to be consistent so that you don't experience any frame drops or stutters. A lower resolution means your hardware doesn't have to work as hard, and if there's a lot going on at once, your PC has a lot of headroom to work with without dropping frames.

However, another reason people change their resolution is to use another aspect ratio like 4:3. With regular black bars, it makes things easier to see as they're closer to the center of the screen, but plenty of players also play 4:3 stretched. This means that your game is in 4:3, but stretched and rendered across your entire screen. This can make models appear to be larger, and can make aiming easier. Depending on what GPU you have, the steps to set this up will differ, but you can do it in your GPU's control panel.

5 Learn the maps

Every nook and cranny is important

When it comes to Counter-Strike, map knowledge is also incredibly important. You'll pick things up and learn as you play, but even just the callouts of locations are important. If someone in your game on Mirage starts saying "One delpan," you're expected to just know where that is. It's at the wooden chair in mid, by the way.

There are plenty of great tutorials for this online, but to be honest, the best thing to do is simply play and look around the maps in a private offline game. Most things are named pretty intuitvely, but the places that don't have any particular discerning features are the ones that will likely have strange callouts. These can even differ by region! For example, on Vertigo, there used to be a window that you could use to go close to B stairs from mid. In Ireland, this was called "Sicko Mode," which I later learned no other country of players referred to it as that.

All of this is to say that you should just look around, spot interesting places, and even watch some professional games on the maps to see how they play it and where they go. You'll pick it up surprisingly easily over time, and even something small like a bucket or a box can be the difference between you winning or losing a fight.

6 Understand utility

The most tactical depth Counter-Strike has to offer

For new players, utility can be a daunting barrier to improvement. Smoke grenades? HE grenades? Molotovs? Flashbangs? Decoys? There's a lot to learn, and to be honest, it's not even worth focusing on them at a lower level. At a lower level, your map knowledge, game sense, and your aim will carry you quite a long way up the ladder. Even at the level I play at, there are some players that still don't understand utility.

With that said, it can give you a massive advantage. A well-timed flashbang that the enemy can't react to can net you a free kill, and a well-placed smoke can block the enemy's vision to give you more control over the map. Plus, if they decide to run through it, you'll see them before they see you.

There are plenty of lineup tutorials out there that you can check out to teach you the basics, and utility is one of the parts of the game you can go most in-depth about. The game's meta is always changing, and utility is one of the biggest conduits to that.

7 You can try out a professional player's config

You could be the next donk (or just use his config)

Professionals are the best at the game, and most professional players publish their configs for regular players to try out. If you aren't sure what you want to change or what you should change it to, this is a great place to start. It's not a great idea to just take a professional's config and call it a day, but it can help you get a feel for what suits you and what you can (or should) change.

To get started, ProSettings is by far the best place to go. You can look at the most downloaded configuration files, and it'll also show you each setting so that you can manually change it yourself if you want to. If you do want to download a config, you can place it in your Counter-Strike install directory. By default, your config files go in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\game\csgo\cfg

It says Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and csgo, but it's the right place. Trust me.

One of these files will likely be a file called "autoexec.cfg". This file contains commands that are run as soon as the game is launched, and all settings in Source games can be changed through console commands. Play around with it and have a look around and see what you can do!

8 When to look at alternative matchmaking platforms

Faceit, ESEA, Esportal

Counter-Strike is unique in its matchmaking in that there are plenty of atlernative platforms to play on, and you might be wondering when the right time is to make the switch. While the game improved things considerably by adding the Premier rating system (which is a number, ratcher than a fixed rank), the level of competition can still be lower than what you'll find on other platforms like Faceit.

To be honest, it's hard to say when you should make the switch, but it certainly shouldn't be when you're new. It's hard to really gauge, so do it when the time is right. Nothing stops you even making an account, trying a game or two, and then realizing that you might not be at the level to play on those platforms just yet and deciding to come back later on with it.

9 How to continuously get better and improve

There are many options out there

If you want to improve in an efficient way, there are several ways to do it. The first is to make sure you rewatch your own games, as you can learn a lot from them. Watch it back, see how you died, and see what you could have done differently to stay alive or even take the kill. I remember when I first started I would watch back my own games and actually take notes as well, so that I would learn and not make those same mistakes again.

For more advanced players, tools like Refrag are fantastic, and I personally pay for a Refrag subscription. It can load up servers for you with bots that you can practice against, but they're a lot better than standard bots in the game. Modes like "prefire" will help you learn to quickly clear angles as you push a site, and "crossfire" will help you to deal with situations where there are multiple enemies.

As for utility, there are multiple options. There are plenty of YouTubers like austincs and NartOutHere that can teach you things from professional games, and Refrag also has some great utility options and practice modes built in, too.

Finally, you'll improve simply by playing. Deathmatching is a great way to improve your aim and get used to things moving fast, especially third-party deathmatch servers like Cybershoke. Plus, playing a lot will make you better too. It's a game with an incredible level of tactical depth, so no matter what you do, you'll get better as you go.