When you are making a bet on a competitive match, it’s important that you understand which CSGO maps each team is the strongest on. Every team has a separate map pool with different strengths and weaknesses and you can use this to predict the outcome of a match up.
Firstly, let’s take a look at the map pool in competitive CS:GO, then we’ll take a look at how you can learn about each competitive team’s map pool.
Why Are There So Many CSGO Maps?
There are many CSGO maps in current circulation because more maps means more variance. For players, this keeps things interesting and for teams this gives more chances to perfect their performance on each individual map.
Every team has a different set of strategies for each map. Newer teams often start with a core map pool of 3-5 maps, then as they play for longer, they start to improve their strategies and branch out to more maps.
The competitive map pool in CSGO occasionally changes. However, throughout CSGO history, there has always been a total of 7 maps in circulation. Right now there are 8 official competitive maps but each event will only have 7 available. Here is a look at the current eight maps.
- Dust 2
- Train
- Mirage
- Inferno
- Nuke
- Cobblestone
- Overpass
- Cache
Right now, it’s up to the tournament organizers on which maps are picked. Most tournament organizers are leaning toward using all maps besides Cobblestone. In the past, maps have been taken out of circulation so that they can be updated.
Most recently, Train, Dust 2, Inferno, and Nuke have had major reworks. It looks as if Cobblestone and Overpass may be the next maps to get a new lick of paint.
How to Find a CSGO Team’s Map Pool For Betting
Each CSGO team will have different maps they are the strongest on. The best teams in CSGO have practiced on every map and whilst they may not prefer some maps, they can still put up a good fight on them.
However, it always remains true that in any single match up, one team will be stronger than the other on certain maps.
You can use that knowledge to your advantage when making bets. Usually, you won’t know which maps are picked for the match until the match actually starts. This means that you’ll need to bet on a game live for the best chance to win.
But how do you find out a CSGO team’s map pool and their strengths and weaknesses?
You’ll need to use tools online such as Liquipedia or HLTV. Both of these allow you to search for teams and see their past performance.
The latter option actually shows you the win percentage for every recorded competitive match. For example, a quick search for FaZe revealed that at the time of writing, FaZe is strongest on Mirage, Dust 2, and Inferno, with 70%, 71.%, and 66.7% win rates, respectively.
If FaZe goes up against an opponent and their matchup is weak on these maps, but these are the maps that get played, you’ll know that FaZe will have a higher chance to win.
There are other variables to consider such as past matchups, current team performance, and overall ranking. For example, even though FaZe has a 25% win rate on Train, they’d still be likely to win a Train match up against a low tier team with little competitive experience.
To make smart bets, you must take all of the information you can find and take it all into consideration. The map pool is just one of many variables.
Another thing to consider is that teams are given the option to pick and ban maps. In a best of three, for example, the first team gets to ban a match, followed by the second team banning a match.
Next, team 1 chooses a map, then team 2 chooses a map. Then, the teams get to ban one more map each. The third map is whichever map has been left over.
Many teams will already know their opponents map pool, so they will actively ban each other’s best maps and pick their favorites.
Usually, this system makes sure that each team has a favorite map to play on, but it’s often the case that the map pool can lean in the favor of one particular team. Smart bettors will always pay attention to the pick and ban phase so that they can find out who has the edge.
Understanding The Competitive Nature Of CSGO Maps
If you’ve played CS:GO casually, you may not quite understand the lengths that teams go to be competitive on a map at a high level. There are some tools out there that help you to grasp just how much hard work and effort goes into preparing and learning strategies for each map.
For example, the Betway CSGO map lets you test a number of different core mechanics that are often present in competitive games that you may not use so often in a standard matchmaking game.
You can test your own time against other players to see how effective you are at mastering these core mechanics.
Conclusion
That concludes our look at the CSGO map pool. We hope that this article has been informative.
