What are CS:GO's easiest and hardest CT positions?

25-7-2022 21:59

We've all fought over spots in matchmaking, but how much do they really matter when it comes to performance?

Rating, while still the best metric we have for evaluating performance, still has its blind points. One of those is the economy, but this time round we will be looking at its (and nearly every other CS:GO metric, advanced or otherwise) other key limitation: Roles. A player anchoring B on Mirage is treated the same by the system as the AWPer marauding around middle and connector.

So here's an attempt to fix that; instead of comparing players to every other player, we narrow the comparison down to those that play the same position on CT side.

For a full list, click here

This still isn't perfect, given that players can still have different 'roles' while playing the same position. Take AWPers: The passive Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov and aggressive Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut play the same spot on every map but with widely different styles.

Those different styles then have a knock-on effect on the players around them, whether that comes in the form of who is throwing the supportive flashes or who takes contact first. Broadly speaking, though, this is still a fairer way to compare players' performance.

To start, here are the median ratings of each position in the game. Surprisingly, three rifler spots show up in the top five: Toilets on Overpass, outside on Nuke, and Donut on Ancient. Again, this isn't flawless; the more CT-sided the map, the more likely a spot is going to crop up here.

Yet, there are still points of interest. B Mirage is the go-to example of a tricky position on analyst desks when talking about a more supportive player, and that is borne out here with the lowest median of all, a 0.96 rating (which is actually fairly low in the CT-side meta). Joining it in this list is long on Dust2, another infamous role, and B monster on Overpass. All three are hard-anchor positions, with safe aggression and a barrage of utility likely.

When we group spots by role, this trend is even more clear. Anchor positions — defined as the two 'extremity' positions on each map, with some exceptions such as the very active role that is toilets on Overpass — have by far the lowest median ratings. Even spots like B on Inferno or Ancient, which have a few star players among their inhabitants, fail to go above the median rating for rotator positions.

AWPers, despite losing out in terms of the top position to toilets on Overpass, wipes the floor with the riflers when you take more spots into position. Its 25th percentile is higher than the median rating for a rotating rifle.

The hardest map to AWP on, Vertigo, has a 1.11 median rating which is just above A anchor on Mirage or just below ramp on Nuke. That, though, is the exception; five of the seven maps have a median rating above 1.20.

One thing to consider here is that roles still have an element of chicken-and-egg to them. Do players average higher ratings because their role is easier, or because the most talented players get the easiest roles to have impact in? There's definitely a bit of both at play, but this is still worth bearing in mind. If Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev was a B Anchor on Mirage, even as a rifle, there's little question he would post higher ratings than our cohort has.

On some maps, too, the 'star' roles have less disparity to the anchor positions. On Vertigo, players like Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov anchor B with such aplomb it's barely comparable to the same bombsite on Mirage. This is a key reason the Vertigo box plot is so tight, as well as that fairly low average AWP rating we just mentioned.

The highest minimum value on any of the maps, however, is Ancient. Middle and donut lead the way, but cave is still a position players like Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard, Benjamin "⁠blameF⁠" Bremer and Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund make their own. Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač anchors B, while Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool anchors A.

On the other maps, however, there is a fairly big difference. This means that when you look at a list of the highest-rated Mirage players, say, it will nearly entirely be connector, mid, and short players. To solve that, we will create an all-star CT defence, based on the highest rated player in each position so far in 2022 on LAN.

On map one, Ancient, our 'all-star' CT set-up is fairly star-heavy, even with Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy outgunning NiKo to take the B anchor position after averaging a monstrous 1.45 rating in 2022 on LAN.

Over on Vertigo, Cloud9 dominate again with sh1ro and Ax1Le reprising their positions. We see how 'star' players can occupy any of the five positions on this map, however, by having blameF and Yuri "⁠yuurih⁠" Santos paired on A and Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi joining Ax1Le on B as the highest rated players in those spots so far this year.

Inferno, too, has a medley of roles within the same spots. The name that stands out is actually the AWPer, Alvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" Garcia; the Spaniard had the second highest rating on CT-side at IEM Cologne against top opposition, and his Inferno and Nuke performances were a key reason for that...

... which explains how SunPayus appears again on Nuke, outperforming s1mple, who defined AWPing play on the map, ZywOo, and Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants. Anchoring outside is rain, whose 1.50 rating on the CT-side of Nuke has included tournament-winning performances against Natus Vincere in Antwerp and Cologne.

s1mple returns to his rightful spot as the world's best AWPer on Mirage, joining Heroic's A-axis of stavn and the ever-reliable Rasmus "⁠sjuush⁠" Beck. In the hardest — so far in 2022, at least — spot in the game Jon "⁠JDC⁠" de Castro is the player who stands out, managing a 1.23 rating whilst anchoring the B apartments.

s1mple remains on Overpass, joined by Fredrik "⁠REZ⁠" Sterner on B after Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin became Ninjas in Pyjamas's toilets player. Speaking of toilets, the highest-rated spot on average was tightly contested between Valeriy "⁠b1t⁠" Vakhovskiy (1.49), blameF (1.48), Brollan (1.46) and rain (1.45). Yet, it was Adam "⁠NEOFRAG⁠" Zouhar, with a 1.65 rating (albeit over just five maps), who takes the spot.

Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic, one of those 'star' players who doesn't mind the odd anchor spot, makes his second appearance on Dust2, as does Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač. On A, we have the terrifying combination of NiKo and s1mple as well as the first IGL-proper on this list: Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella. Beating out Ax1Le (1.22) and Boris "⁠magixx⁠" Vorobiev (1.20), nitr0's 1.24 rating from the second hardest spot in the game is nothing to sniff at.

For similar deep-dive articles, check out the links below:

Is the modern AWPer really too passive?

When do Counter-Strike players peak?

Expert take: Age and motivation in Counter-Strike

Why are modern IGLs so aggressive?

Is double AWPing worth it?

Who are CS:GO's map specialists?

Very intresting, keep up these kinda articles!

2022-07-25 21:59

14 replies

You didn’t even read

2022-07-25 22:00

5 replies

2022-07-25 23:57

2022-07-26 14:12

2022-07-26 15:27

2022-07-26 16:33

2022-07-27 12:29

True

2022-07-25 22:02

Ax1le got best on his spot in 4 out of 6 maps he plays. And he got 2nd best on Dust2 after nitr0. Probably is in top3 on overpass too, NEOFRAG is there with only 6 maps, Ax1le would outperform him on the long run.

2022-07-25 23:05

2 replies

interestingly, karrigan has the worst positions as well

2022-07-26 04:19

1 reply

Reply needs to have actual content

2022-07-27 20:47

Yeah these are sick

2022-07-26 03:18

You opened, read and commented all within 1 minute? Man you must be superman.

2022-07-26 08:01

yeah i read fast :))))

2022-07-26 15:21

2022-07-26 21:21

Very interesting, will check it out l8er B)

Imagine show match with all those lineups the dust 2 one could for real be a G2 Lineup

2022-07-26 00:43

It's actually interesting, they even have IGL and Nitro as second caller. Complete and competitive team

2022-07-26 09:38

B train..

3 replies

is not in the map pool

2022-07-26 00:39

It’s not in a map pool anymore, but I’d obviously be ropz

2022-07-26 09:03

+1000

2022-07-26 09:41

A mirage

apex worst rotator in the game

2022-07-25 22:04

idk man, hes pretty good at flanking and closing rounds out

2022-07-26 14:54

I Play Palace Camp for my A main teammates bait them.

Really nice article. "Ax1Le has bad numbers", "he's not that good", but imagine if you can put him on all maps as rotate player. And mirage is perfect example, maybe it's what Colud9 need? Put their best player to more active positons? At least on CT side

2022-07-25 22:05

4 replies

Ax1Le shines in all the roles that he has currently, he has 3 Anchor spots and 3 Rotator Spots. nafany is an IGL who plays star roles on some maps, His underperformance is the main reason for C9 Dip.

2022-07-25 22:14

Then shouldn't you give Ax1le those star roles and put nafany in the difficult spots? I think they need to change their approach anyways, because the way it's going now, it seems like they're pretty much figured out.

2022-07-26 00:47

Ax1le plays short on mirage

2022-07-25 22:18

>>> "Ax1Le has bad numbers", "he's not that good" No one says this, especially not in 2022. He's been a top 5 player all year.

2022-07-26 18:27

I enjoy these stats articles the most recently, great job Sometimes its funny to complare team by team and see how good and bad positions are distributed among the players. I thought about G2 a lot in this context, Hunter and NiKo have like all of good positions except A vertigo for NiKo I guess. Makes the life of their 4th and 5th players harder =)

2022-07-25 22:06

Article just said NiKo is a anchor on Ancient lol (B)

2022-07-26 00:07

But ye, beside these two maps he gets better positions, which makes sense, since hes by far the best player in the team, the 4th and 5th player arent supposed to have 1.2+ rate like NiKo, their job is to be around 1 on rating

2022-07-26 00:09

True, just hard to find such players who are good in all of bad positions and don't struggle mentally from having bad stats contantly. Especially igls, most of them are used to play (or still play like apex) rotations to be close to the action

2022-07-26 00:14

A on Vertigo is even more of a star position than in many other maps if you look at how it's played. A lot of action goes that way and you get a lot of chances to get kills.

2022-07-26 00:49

Agreed also its pretty common to have 3 cts in A so its easy to get set up for boosts/entries with utility or plays by pushing ramp. A ramp is the most important part of the map in vertigo and ct/t are both trying to get the control of it.

2022-07-27 12:36

rain gigachad

NERF AWP

2022-07-26 15:51

JDC best B Anchor

2022-07-25 22:07

Very weird indeed

2022-07-26 16:30

Rain making it pour on the CT side

2022-07-25 22:08

How do they measure rating at specific spots, is it kills/deaths and related stats but only when the player was near that spot or was it just the rating of the player who generally has that position on CT side

It's just their rating on the CT-side of that map. I manually sorted players into spots using Leetifys new God mode, then filtered it

2022-07-25 23:04

i didn't expect ct ratings to ever be that high, T side rating probably doesn't go beyond 1.15+ for same maps there's also t side more being role-based than position based

but how do you account for the round where the player does not play their own spots, due to a tactic called by the IGL, such as S1mple starting on b apps and perfecto on b short. Would it possible to integrate data about the position of kill/death from the heatmaps to find out which player plays on which position

2022-07-26 11:49

At the moment its not that advanced. But over a wide enough sample size rounds like that filter out

2022-07-26 13:20

Hmm yeah, the amount of rounds might be not be significant but still would be interestinig to confim this hypothesis

2022-07-26 13:45

What is anchor?

7 replies

If IGL does not call a 5 stack A and you are a B anchor, you just sit on B site 99% of the time

2022-07-25 22:10

he probably means Anker, at least in German. hope i could help, gl.

2022-07-25 22:26

you're the last to rotate out of your bombsite, as a measure against fakes and to catch the enemy lurker, usually only getting out once you kill the enemy lurker and the enemy team is executing another bombsite or once the bomb goes down, which limits a lot the impact you can actually have on the rounds, as the retake either loses a lot of time (if they wait for you to get there) or is already over (as your team started the retake before you getting there, which leaves you in a 1vX normally without valid info of where the enemy team is)

2022-07-25 22:31

Profesor

2022-07-25 23:58

its one of the hardest roles because if you fuck up most of the time its round done

2022-07-26 00:21

you're right, you can screw up if: a. as the first point of contact, you don't hold strong enough b. as the first point of contact, you don't stay alive, thus losing map control c. as not the first point of contact, you fall to the enemy lurker d. as not the first point of contact, you rotate prematurely, thus prompting the enemy lurker to take map control and call his team back e. as a retaker, you arrive there too late f. as a retaker, you don't catch the enemy lurker, and he proceeds to disable the retake altogether

2022-07-26 00:25

Good summary of how difficult it is to be an anchor. Not to mention that a lot of the times, when they come your way, it will be full-force, while a mid-take will often leave some resources and man-power behind for later in the round. This makes points a and b even harder to do.

2022-07-26 00:53

csgo's hardest postion is to defend brazil cs teams in 2022

interesting read, very nice

2022-07-25 22:11

Great article

Sad not to see zywoo anywhere. Vitality have really had some terrible ct-sides recently

if this was about T sides then zywoo would be everywhere

2022-07-25 22:20

apex's playing all the rotator positions in CT how do u expect vitality having good ct sides with this bot playing the most important positions?

2022-07-25 22:41

one of the reason could be cause zywoo is more hybrid compared to awpers like sh1ro, he uses a lot more riffles, zywoo has 36% of frags with awps, main awper like sh1ro it s more than 55%

2022-07-25 22:58

B- Anchor Dust 2 and Mirage be like: Retake A and die or "I'm flashed" ->Dies A anchor vertigo be like: Time to retake my bombsite for the 1000th time. Inferno Anchors: I'm saving.

Neofrag toilet god

2022-07-25 22:16

ax1le god

Sex1ile GOAT

2022-07-25 22:21

Even if a position is easy you are still going to need the player who is in the best at that particular position. No position is “easy” when you are trying to be the best player in the world at playing that spot.

2022-07-25 22:22

yea it's very subjective because as you said what is a good or a bad Position is irrelevant it's how you use that Position it requires alot of practice in movement Utility execution crosshair placement for example A site Mirage you can't effectively watch Ramp if you have no one watching Palace and vice versa i know rotations happen in a round but i am a huge fan of the basic CT formation of 2 A 2 B 1 Mid with one of the B Players moving short to support Mid and back to Short looking B

2022-07-25 23:15

That's why you should probably compare all the players too each other based on position and map those out. They only showed who performed the best, but that doesn't tell much of the story. Right now you see only rain in 3 spots and ropz in 1, but what about the rest of Faze? They are the best team in the world right now, and I wouldn't be surprised that once you dived deeper into it, you'd find that the top 5 on most positions would include a Faze member. If not, it would show that they actually play really well on T-side, which would show karrigan's impact as the IGL.

2022-07-26 01:00

If it was the top 5 players in each spot on each map the article would be too long (even for me!) but you can look at the data here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eAmk__iu..

2022-07-26 01:46

My idea was that you wouldn't list the whole top 5 for every position, but you could use generalized graphs and analysis and write your conclusions rather than the entire data. But thanks for the data! I was looking for this, but couldn't find it. Now I might spend some time analyzing it.

2022-07-26 10:51

interesting

Very interesting!! More stats like this :DD

2022-07-25 22:23

respect for ax1le

2022-07-25 22:30

2022-07-25 22:44

thx for advice now i will never play these positions

2022-07-25 22:45

Real xd i play b anchor mirage + dust and top frag

2022-07-25 23:17

Exit frags dont count

2022-07-26 00:31

nah i dont get exits, i rarely save too

2022-07-26 08:37

2022-07-26 10:42

paparain

2022-07-25 22:46

Ez for Stavn best Connect player

2022-07-25 22:47

good article

2022-07-25 22:52

Karrigan on b = free side

2022-07-25 22:57

plz more stats like this

2022-07-25 23:10

+1, analysis like this is very interesting

2022-07-25 23:22

NEOFRAG toilet cleaner (according to this article)

2022-07-25 23:13

Turns out many hltvers played difficult positions and never knew about it

2022-07-25 23:16

This morning, I was arguing with a fellow HLTV user about why I think broky is overrated. This makes it pretty clear, I hope

2022-07-25 23:21

chad

thats actually a cool article wtf never seen this type of data

2022-07-25 23:25

Where is Flusha

2022-07-25 23:28

oh shit, it is now time to play these spots for the rest of my life.

2022-07-25 23:33

ax1le show that he stole.

2022-07-25 23:39

Well turns out I pretty much play the most difficult position on every map, didn't see that coming.

2022-07-25 23:49

same lol

2022-07-25 23:53

Nice

no wonder my stats are so shit when i play b anchor on mirage, overpass, and d2

2022-07-25 23:52

Interesting stuff

Ask godf

2022-07-25 23:56

Ax1le insane CT player

2022-07-26 00:03

easiest position: baiter

2022-07-26 00:19

This is some BIG article. perfect job. Axile CT side is fucking insane.

2022-07-26 00:23

Amazing stats!!

2022-07-26 00:33

I can play any position on any map that's why I have 18 avg

Hltv please teach me statistic, especially how to read that boxplot

2022-07-26 00:35

Stavn and Ax1le nice dúo

2022-07-26 00:42

Ax1le best player and S0mple fraud then?

2022-07-26 01:04

insanely well written article, fantastic stats and the best comment section i've ever seen on hltv +1

2022-07-26 01:15

In which universe rain is a B rotator on inferno because surely not in ours. Karrigan plays ratoation while rain anchors. Such small mistakes destroy whole credibility of these articles

2022-07-26 01:26

The top line is the maximum, top of the box 75th percentile, line in the middle of the box the median, bottom of the box 25th percentile, line below the box the minimum For this where there's only 5 data points each line is a spot on the map

2022-07-26 01:51

ax1le in almost every map is crazy

2022-07-26 01:44

very nice

2022-07-26 01:49

now i will top frag in match making

2022-07-26 01:53

Yeah yeah cool now show me reshuffles

2022-07-26 02:03

Breaking: +junior -s1mple

2022-07-26 02:15

I ded net ecpect that

2022-07-26 02:19

i wonder if ivy on train wouldve placed on here if it were still in the map pool, i feel like it is one of the hardest positions to play

2022-07-26 02:30

Ax1le best rifler this year and top 2 player overall so far

2022-07-26 03:17

I didn't even know people anchored A site Vertigo wtf haha.

2022-07-26 03:50

Wow that's golden. Kudos to the author.

2022-07-26 04:53

After reading this article. All of a sudden I want a All Stars Games. Top 8 players picking up a team of their choice from the entire Csgo community, throw in a lucky HLTv user for fun sake ....pros, non pros, streamers. Just going crazy. No economy Constraints just pure mayhem.

2022-07-26 05:00

lovely article <3

2022-07-26 05:18

dust2 long is the hardest spot,,, and then mirage B... like a paper...

2022-07-26 05:20

Vervy very nice article! GOOD JOB.

2022-07-26 06:55

Apex bot plays position with highest ratings and get lowest ratings.

2022-07-26 07:18

he plays A anchor on vertigo bruh only outside rifler nuke instead of outside awper (zywoo) on nuke because zywoo feels uncomfortable there. He also plays B Inferno which is highlited as medium position where nothing is rewarded and nothing given, most of the time he also commited to A long, he also plays B overpass which only highlights that he was given the high spot only because of zywoo not willing to commit to it

2022-07-26 08:45

PERFECTOOO

The two takeways ? - ax1le best CT player - CSGO has become a CT game

2022-07-26 09:30

gigachad

2022-07-26 09:35

dust 2 long is unusually hard

2022-07-26 10:58

but to push its also hard as well so balances out

Amazing stuff!

2022-07-26 11:08

pam pus

2022-08-14 09:36

wow, that was interesting !

2022-07-26 11:33

xd what this actual fuck I must be alive to see such shit thread ¬¬

2022-07-26 12:16

Great article, lovely read!

2022-07-26 12:24

Still waiting for the B anchor to rotate A at 16-10

2022-07-26 12:48

What an interesting read! Love articles like this

2022-07-26 12:51

rain wow

2022-07-26 12:56

hardest position is holding A on mirage

2022-07-26 13:00

i play the all worst pos... but i feel good with them :D

2022-07-26 15:31

love this article, now i know what demos to watch, underrated ax1le too much

2022-07-26 15:38

cool article

2022-07-26 16:04

Nice article, gj NER0cs.

Nice article

2022-07-26 16:45

good read

2022-07-26 17:12

insanely well put

2022-07-26 17:40

didn't read but people put their best players in certain key positions like nuke yard, if you put some useless pleb there it will ruin your entire ct side so people who play there are more likely to put up good numbers

2022-07-26 19:25

nitr0 is a pleasant surprise lol

2022-07-26 19:48

Nice article. Keep 'em coming!

2022-07-26 21:03

really interesting thx

2022-07-26 21:43

fkn joke of a thread

2022-07-26 21:45

You need to stop overthinking a game that is based around camping spots and rotating when you don't see anyone.

2022-07-26 22:31

Reading is for educated people so no one on hltv read that

2022-07-27 01:00

that post impact is 100000000

2022-07-27 16:10

these numbers are really skewed, of course places where players can have more impact will be higher because the best players are going to be playing in them. im not saying positions dont matter, but im saying they dont matter nearly as much as these numbers say. would be interesting to see these stats in random pugs, though they would probably be somewhat skewed too

2022-07-28 13:43