Twistzz, one of the most mechanically gifted CS:GO players, thinks there’s almost no difference in terms of skill between the best players in the world and those who have still yet to reach the highest echelons.
“At the end of the day, Counter-Strike is about aiming,” Twistzz said in an interview with Pley.gg at BLAST Premier Fall Final on Nov. 22. “It relies a lot on mechanics, and when young players are grinding the game, they obviously catch up pretty fast. I used to feel before that there was a skill gap between tier-two and tier-one players—but not really anymore. It’s more on who’s having the better leader or the most experience.”
In the past few years, the difference in terms of raw skill between the top 10 teams in the world and teams who are in the top 30 has declined considerably. The competitive CS:GO scene is packed with online and LAN tournaments during the entire year, and although lots of tier-two teams don’t receive invitations for the biggest events, they can still get game time in smaller tournaments.
What Twistzz said in the interview matches the results at IEM Rio Major, the latest Valve-sponsored CS:GO event. Tier-one teams like FaZe, Natus Vincere, Cloud9, and Vitality got knocked out earlier than analysts predicted, while dark horses like MOUZ, FURIA, and Outsiders—who end up winning the $1.25 million tournament—made deep runs.
We’ll see if this pattern repeats at BLAST Premier Fall Final, an ongoing tournament featuring S-tier teams such as FaZe, NAVI, and Team Liquid together with underdogs like Fluxo.
