As an aspiring player, csgo streams are one of your best sources of knowledge and inspiration. They’re a way of being a part of the community and getting to know some of its most iconic figures. The purpose of this article is to give you some insights into the best csgo streams for 2019 as well as the utility of stream watching.
Why should you watch CSGO streams?
CSGO streams allow you to become fully immersed in the world of this beautiful esport and study it from some of the best. It’s also a strange form of bonding for a lot of people, even though it’s not strictly speaking a social activity. And yet, they feel like they belong to this group. In turn, this provides motivation for playing more and getting better.
From a technical perspective, watching a top player stream gives you a chance to watch them make decisions. You can literally take notes while watching and try to understand why he or she played a round the way they did.
Another thing to be learned and this is perhaps one of the more important ones, is how the player responds to certain situations. We often don’t realize how poorly we act ourselves during a game, and just how much we sabotage our chances with our own attitude. Watching great csgo streams is often a medication for that problem, simply because you get to see how a much stronger player approaches the game. And they often do it way better than you because they have a better attitude.
Doing anything regularly leads to increased motivation and a better capacity to do it more and better. There’s a reason why people who want to learn how to play the piano take piano classes with tutors. It’s a systematic approach to mastering this activity and it’s one that keeps you focused and motivated. If you’re just by yourself, you might skip a day of practice or think that you’re good when in fact you’re making a lot of errors. You’re just not aware of them.
Watching great csgo streams regularly may not be as valuable as having your own csgo tutor, but you do learn a great deal by immersion. After watching s1mple play from his own view for 50 hours, if you’re a student of the game it’s impossible not to pick up some patterns. They can be related to anything: angles, weapon choice, map movement, passivity/activity level, interaction with his teammates and so on.
When you watch csgo streams you’re doing the same kind of thing that chess players do when they watch chess videos or read chess books. It involves a conscious effort that leads to significant improvements in your play. Right now, the way in which you approach the game is limited by your understanding of it and the patterns you’ve formed since you first started to play. Improvement is not always a matter of better mechanical skill. Just as often, it’s a matter of tactics, strategy, map knowledge and individual psychology.
So it’s not just how well you can aim. It’s knowing what to do each round before you actually get to shoot a single bullet. The great chess grandmaster Savielly Tartakower once said that tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do, while strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.
Great players know exactly what to do when nothing seems to be happening and they think, plan and gather information at all times, trying to get the most detailed diagnosis of a situation before making a decision. They do not randomly run around the map. They gather data, analyze it, assess the situation, make a decision or come up with a solution for whatever the case may be and then act upon it.
Watching csgo streams allows you to see all of these processes in action. They often happen in subtle ways, but the more you watch the more you get to notice them. And the more you learn. Just pay attention for instance just how often a player will watch the minimap during each round. Then ask yourself: how often do I do this? And why do I spend so little time gathering information, when information is crucial to good decision making?
The big step you need to make when transitioning from Silver to anything above that is learning how to gather information, analyze it, assess the situation, formulate a plan and then act upon it. It’s a fairly standard process that you need to follow, and you need to do it continuously, as the round progresses. At every important beat of the action, you should reassess.
Top CSGO streams to watch
With that in mind regarding the value of watching csgo streams, let’s talk briefly about some of the best csgo streams available for you to watch. All of them are excellent but different types of players have different types of lessons to teach you. And furthermore, by watching more than one you will be able to start seeing patters of play and behavior that almost every good player follows. These are the universal lessons or the fundamentals of what it takes to be good at the game, and assimilating them instantly transform you into a much better player.
summit1g - https://www.twitch.tv/summit1g
Summit is perhaps one of the world’s most famous streamers and he used to play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive professionally. Right now, he streams full-time and plays a variety of FPS games, being watched by a total number of 3.5 million followers.
Freakazoid - https://www.twitch.tv/freakazoid
This is another guy who has played csgo at the professional level and can teach you a great deal about attitude and how to react in every situation. He’s a very creative guy with some unique ways of approaching the game. Whether he does it for fun, show or actual effectiveness is another issue, but you will get to see new things by following him.
shroud - https://www.twitch.tv/shroud
This guy is the real deal. With over 5 million followers in total and a former professional career that included some very good times with Cloud9, shroud is a master of FPS games and csgo. He’s also a very genuine and very compassionate streamer who often showers much smaller streamers with attention and unexpected raids. Which basically means, he’s simply directing his audience to click on a stream and ideally subscribe to it. The victim generally has a huge emotional reaction and can’t understand what’s going on. It’s very fun to watch.
s1mple - https://www.twitch.tv/s1mple
This guy is hands down the best csgo player of all time. Still playing of course for Natus Vincere and just 21 years old, s1mple is the guy to watch if you’re interested in flawless executions, tactics, map knowledge and pretty much everything else apart from communication and attitude. He’s known to be a very demanding player who often expects his teammates to show the same level of skill and dedication, which rarely happens by the way, and who gets triggered by stupid mistakes. This can often lead to chaos. But it’s all fun to watch.
Other Streams
Apart from these 4 streams, you should also take a look at JASONR, m0e_tv, ceh9, GODaZeD, SovietWomble and AnomalyXd. They’re all good streamers with their own unique style.
