How to improve your Counter Strike Skills
1. Play with people who are a little bit better than you. If you play with people that are horrible or people that are much better than you, then you're not learning anything. As you get better, move up servers.
2. Remember to close memory and bandwidth consuming applications (IE: MSN, AIM, Limewire, etc.). If you experience lag, then try contacting your ISP or try fixing it in some way. If you lag in Counter-Strike, it can greatly alter how well you play.
3. Talk only when you're dead. If you try to talk while you're alive, you're wasting time, unless of course you're using voice communication. Also, most people ignore radio commands, so don't expect your teammates to come when you hit "c3."
4. Keep moving at all times, and when you are turning corners, jump and duck and stay crouched for a little bit, in case anyone planned on you popping out. This strategy can work well against snipers, but in an enclosed space it is always best to move quickly and always make sure to aim at head level unless you know the opponent is crouched. ALWAYS aim at head level unless you know the opponent is positioned differently.
5. Avoid crouching. Contrary to popular belief, crouching is a bad way to improve your aim, as it slows you from moving quickly and does absolutely nothing to sniper fire, which is dead on.
6. If you have the person inside of the 4 lines that make up your crosshair, you'll only shoot within those 4 lines. Thinking about that when you attack will probably help you quite a bit. This is only true if you have dynamic crosshair enabled! Try disabling the dynamic crosshair; most upper level players disable it because it makes aiming a lot easier with rifles and the deagle.
7. Sound is the most important factor in CS. By listening to footsteps, you can know when to start walking silently (default - shift) or to crouch and hide in a dark area. Then when your enemy walks out into the open.... Boom headshot! Also pay attention to the type of footstep sound, there are different sounds for gravel, wood, cement, and steel. Knowing which sound was made can pinpoint an enemy and make him very easy to shoot through a wall. These sounds are especially useful in detecting the elevation of a player, a good example would be de_nuke. Avoid hiding in obvious places, often times it's more of a surprise to an enemy to find you in the open than behind a paper-thin box.
8. Make sure to follow your teammates and stick together, as taking on a group of players by yourself can mean certain death except for the best of CS players. Also try to make sure that your teammates aren't trying to use grenades before you go around a corner, you might be asking for a flash in the face!
9. Always buy a flashbang and a HE-grenade if you can afford it after buying your weapons/armor so if somebody is camping you can flash him out or nade him out. Also try flashing the enemy in a hallway so that he's trapped and you can easily take him out.
10. Don't be a hero and use a knife when attacking somebody in the back, he might just turn around and you will be helpless (unless he's afk of course). Besides, he can hear you pull your knife (a "tsing" noise). Also, you can achieve a one hit knife kill if you put your knife in his head area (headshot).
11. Learn what walls and boxes can be shot through. Pinpointing an enemy with sound is very helpful, but there still remains the problem of having to remove that threat. There are options like flashes, grenades, and peeking the player in a one on one situation, but overall your best bet is to take the opponent out without risking yourself or wasting a flash or grenade that you may need later. It really pays to do your homework and learn where you can shoot walls effectively. Maps like de_nuke are very good for learning how to "wall" efficiently.
12. Learn about how long it takes for you to get from your spawn to specific places. For example on de_dust2, as a terrorist, if you know how long it takes for a CT to get into lower B tunnels, then all you have to do is listen. If you don't hear anything, you don't have to peek lower B and can continue on to the bombsite. Or, if you hear some footsteps, you can take appropriate measures to ensure that you don't die helplessly.
13. Join a league! Get together with a few other people and join a league of some kind, there are leagues for all different skill levels. Most of the really competitive teams play in CAL or CEVO. Most games are played in a 5on5 format on select bomb defuse maps. Those leagues can be found at www.caleague.com and www.cevolved.com respectively. There are other, less competitive leagues, but most serious players don't lend them any respect.
14. Be sure, when sniping that you are not moving when you fire your shot. If your moving you will miss and having to wait until you can fire your next shot can be deadly. In order to successfully snipe you must either shoot accurately before the other person or get the other person to miss giving you time to aim and make the kill. To fire accurately you must be still or crouched in order to stop staffing quickly be sure to tp the opposite direction of where you are going. This will make you stop suddenly making you more accurate faster. In order to make the opponent miss try a jump crouch where you jump far out into the field of vision of the opponent and then as you land crouch. It is hard to hit you when u do this and the second you land you will be able to make a clean shot.
ALSO
* Broadband Internet.
* A "good" graphics card. CS 1.6 runs on the old Half-Life engine from the late 90's and takes very little to max out in comparison to other, more current engines.
* At least 512MB of RAM is helpful, once again, this game is OLD, but the better your specs, the smoother your gameplay.
* A "good" mouse, preferably an optical mouse. Logitech has an amazing series of mice, the MX 510 was considered the standard CS mouse for a time. (It's still a great mouse!)
* A decent sound card, nothing amazing, anything with Soundblaster on the side is probably good enough. Make sure it's capable of "full duplex" which means that it can receive input (microphone) simultaneously to sound output.
* A durable pair of headphones, preferably with a long cord. There's nothing worse than standing up quickly and yanking your headphones off of your head or out of the socket... or worse... in half. Also, higher bass will make it easier to hear footsteps, but it will also make guns like the AWP louder, which obviously can mask footsteps.
* A good surface for your mouse. Lots of players spend money on fancy mousepads or oversized mousepads, but that's your personal choice. Most of the time the mouse pad doesn't make or break anything like other things can, but finding a comfortable, smooth surface CAN make a difference. This might be the edge you need over your opponents, but most casual gamers don't care that much. However, a fancy mouse pad won't cost you a whole lot, even with shipping you should spend less than $30. There are great mousepads for under $5!
* Make sure that your keyboard isn't one of those split keyboards, it helps to have keys that line up and are uniform in size and shape.
* A client version of the best voice communication software available: Ventrilo.
Lastly GO Pwn some Noobs! >.>
