Your Guide To Counter-Strike's Competitive Maps

Counter-Strike is, arguably, the world’s most popular competitive video game in the world right now. Valve Corporation’s first-person shooter recently broke its own record for concurrent players twice within the past month, regularly pulls in hundreds of thousands of viewers for its flagship events and has increased its worth exponentially through lucrative sponsorships with the likes of Intel, Twitch and Red Bull.

An estimate shows that almost 500k Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) prime accounts are bought by professional players every month. Usually, players buy these accounts to play with high-level players and experience difficult gameplay.

With it being a better time than ever to dive in and get involved with the competitive world of Esports, we thought we would take a look through some of Counter-Strike’s most famous maps and give you a little insight into how to get ahead on them. 

Dust II

Arguably one of the most famous maps in the entire gaming community, Dust II has had a long history of upgrades, remodels and remakes from what it first looked like. From Fortnite to Minecraft, the map has also branched out into different games from the Esports world. 

Whether it’s through competitive matchmaking or deathmatches, Dust II has been moved to its very own pool in a great example of just how many people want to play on it. The map features three main long strips that lead up to CT spawn and bombsites A and B, and are easy enough to scope out and practice your grenade throwing on. 

However, there’s still plenty to keep the pros entertained with. Bombsite B remains one of the hardest bombsites in the game to retake if the CTs rush towards it, and the standoffs between CT Ramp, A Plant and Short are always super-competitive. 

 

Inferno

Set in a picturesque Italian village, Inferno has been one of the very few CS maps since the game’s inception to never rotate out of the competitive map pool. It’s slightly CT-favoured, but arguably the easiest for players to learn whichever side they end up on. 

Banana is the key to almost every round on Inferno, with CTs rushing down from CT spawn and bunkering down for an inevitable standoff. With Banana being the only route to the B Bombsite, learning the traditional smoke used by CTs is an absolute must-know for players, but thankfully it still remains one of the easiest smokes in the game. 

For T sides, there are a couple other routes to learn that will help bypass the inevitable CT smoke on Banana. Mid is obviously an option but, for the players out there that prefer the fast approach, a rush up through apartments onto A Site allows for some devastating attacks, if done right of course. 

 

Train

Along with Inferno, Train is another one of CS:GO’s ever-present competitive maps, though it has seen considerably more changes over the course of its lifetime. Set in a derelict old Soviet train station, Train is, according to Unikrn.com and their esports wagering odds on the map, arguably the most one-sided map in the game right now with CTs boasting a round win percentage of just under 55% at the time of writing. 

The long, straight shots at A, Ivy, Pop Dog and Inside give CTs more opening ground for Ts to break through than any other map, and the revamping of Heaven even offers a new vantage point for sniping from up high. Scouts and AWPs reign supreme on Train, for sure. 

It’s not all doom and gloom for Ts however, with Alley, Break Room and Boilers all allowing for some aggressive playstyles to flourish. Upper gives Ts the chance to sell an A site fake and flank into B and is perhaps the best chance for success currently given the state of play in the current competitive meta.