How to bet on CS:GO

CS:GO

The premier first-person shooter (FPS) game in Esports is CS:GO. The Counter-Strike series has had the most robust scene in competitive gaming since the first installment was released in 1999. There have been four iterations of this game, the most recent of which is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. CS:GO was released in 2012, and it is approaching a decade as the top FPS in the Esports community.

What is CS:GO?

CS:GO has a few different game types, but the only game type played in the competitive scene is Search and Destroy. This is played in a 5-on-5 format with one team consisting of “terrorists” that are trying to plant and detonate a bomb, and another team of “counter-terrorists” that are looking to prevent the other team from detonating the bomb.

Games are nominally comprised of 30 rounds. However, once a team wins 16 rounds, it wins the game. The only caveat to this is if two teams are tied 15-15 after 30 rounds, they advance to an overtime where a team must win by two rounds in order to win the game.

To win a round, a team must either eliminate all members of the opposite team or detonate/defuse the bomb. Many rounds are decided before there is a bomb plant as one team gets an edge through an early skirmish and then proceeds to use their superior numbers to wipe out the other team.

CS:GO Majors

The premier events in CS:GO are majors. These are S-Tier events that have at least a $1 million prize pool. There are generally a few majors each calendar year, and the best teams in the world compete in them. Recently, the field for majors was expanded to 24 teams with three stages (Challengers Stage, Legends Stage, and Champions Stage) over the span of two to three weeks.

The most decorated team in the history of CS:GO is Astralis. The Danish organization was the first to win the Intel Grand Slam for their dominant performance throughout 2017 and 2018, and they won both majors in 2019. Astralis’ four major wins are more than any other team in CS:GO history, and they are the only team to win three straight majors. This is considered the greatest team in the history of CS:GO and its hard to see them being surpassed.

Fnatic were the first team to win a major, and they have the second-most CS:GO majors with three to their credit. They were one of the best teams in the original Counter-Strike, winning multiple tournaments between 2005 and 2012. Fnatic boasted one of the game’s first great players in GeT_RiGhT, and the Swedish organization has one of the most impressive pedigrees in all Esports.

The team that GeT_RiGhT spent most of his career with made it to the finals of the first five CS:GO majors. Ninjas in Pyjamas were a powerhouse in their own right from 2013 to 2015, but they only managed to win ESL One Cologne during that stretch. They were originally founded all the way back in 2000, yet they didn’t find real success until CS:GO.

Luminosity Gaming became the first non-European team to win a CS:GO major in 2016. The Brazilians ruled the competitive scene for nearly all of 2016 and a good chunk of 2017 after SK Gaming bought the entire team on July 1, 2016, That expanded CS:GO’s footprint to Latin America, and the game remains very popular in Brazil.

Team Liquid was the second team to win the Intel Grand Slam, winning four straight events to claim the second $1 million prize. However, they have yet to win a major, as all of those events fell just short of the criteria required of a major. They were considered one of the favorites during the 2020 season, but there were no majors held that year due to COVID.