Guide To Crosshair Placement In Counter-Strike

In Counter-Strike and other shooter games, crosshair placement refers to the positioning of your crosshair at all times. What this means is you want to aim your crosshair preparing for a potential engagement with an enemy player.

Headshots are the most efficient way of getting kills, which means you should ideally place your crosshair at head level everywhere you go. Players with excellent crosshair placements will also begin pre-aiming at common angles anticipating a gunfight.

Proper CS:GO crosshair placement will give you a massive advantage in aim duels, as your crosshair should already be aimed near an enemy player’s head. You just have to make micro adjustments with your mouse to get the job done.

The concept of crosshair placement is vital to improving as a player in CS:GO. There are some important things you must keep in mind.

Consistency

The most crucial factor to good crosshair placement is consistency. You must keep your crosshair positioned at head level at all times, wherever you are walking. You never know when an enemy player is going to show up, so you must always be prepared with proper crosshair placement.

Keeping your crosshair aimed at head level will give you the maximum chance of landing a quick headshot. If the verticality of your crosshair placement is correct already, then you only need to focus on the horizontal movements of your mouse.

Pre-aiming Common Angles

Following consistency, another key thing to remember about crosshair placement is pre-aiming common spots enemy players might appear from. In every Counter-Strike map, there are very strong angles that give players a lot of cover to take favorable fights. However, these angles are used so many times that they become very predictable.

When practicing crosshair placement, it is important to familiarize yourself with common angles and always anticipate an enemy player to be hiding there. You must take time to learn the maps and understand which areas will likely become points of contact.

Once you have figured these things out, place your crosshair accordingly and find that you’ll have a huge advantage in gunfights.

“Slicing the pie”

The term “slicing the pie” or “pie slicing” is relatively prevalent in first-person shooter games for clearing angles. When you’re looking to enter a bomb site, there are many angles pesky Counter-Terrorists could be hiding behind, so it becomes important to clear these angles methodically.

Just like slicing a pie or pizza, these angles must be cleared one by one. Make sure to clear these angles by moving in a way that only exposes you to one angle at a time, so you don’t get overwhelmed. While clearing each angle, you have to always be adjusting your crosshair placement.

Slicing the pie ensures that you are minimizing the risk of dying, as you are reducing the number of angles you are exposed to at a time. Once an angle is thoroughly cleared, you can move on to set sights on the next one. This concept allows you to control your engagements, facing enemy players one at a time instead of multiple enemies at once.

Jiggle Peeking

Jiggle peeking can be combined with crosshair placement to dominate your opponents. With proper jiggle peeking, you can make average players look like fools, but it also works against the best players as professionals can abuse jiggle peeking to its full potential.

In CS:GO, jiggle peeking is a movement technique that is used to gather information on the positions of enemy players. When jiggle peeking, you are baiting out enemy shots by exposing as little of their body as possible. Once an enemy fires a shot, you will have a good idea of where they are.

After information on an enemy has been collected, you can now place your crosshair accordingly, using the pre-aim concept we discussed earlier. Once you’re ready, go for a wide swing and get that headshot.

Coaches and experienced players can assess a player’s skill level with one glance of their crosshair placement. Here are some things to remember so you don’t look like a noob.

Aiming at the Ground

New players often display the bad habit of aiming at the ground. This is one of the biggest tells that the player is inexperienced. When a player’s CS:GO crosshair placement is always at floor level, they are already going into gunfights with a massive disadvantage.

Once this player sees an enemy and engages in a duel, they must spend time moving their crosshair up from the ground and then start tracking their crosshair to the actual player. By the time this is happening, there is a high chance the enemy player has already finished them off.

Placing your crosshair at the ground is undeniably a huge mistake, and should never be done! These bad habits must be removed, otherwise, you will never get good at the game.

Ignoring the Environment

The beauty about crosshair placement is players must always adjust it every single time they move around the map. When maintaining proper crosshair placement, players must take into account the current environment they are in.

For example, each map may have different elevations. Obstacles, such as boxes, ladders, or ramps allow players to appear from below or above. You cannot tunnel vision your crosshair placement into aiming at a specific “head level,” as this head level can always change.

Additionally, many new players forget about distance. Where an enemy player’s head will differ is if they are directly in front of you, or very far away from you. The further enemies are, the lower you must place your crosshair.

Now that we’ve understood what crosshair placement is and why it is crucial in Counter-Strike, it’s time to put in some work. Here are a few pointers that will help you improve your CS:GO crosshair placement.

Learn the Maps

As discussed earlier, every map has common angles. It is your job to figure out the most prevalent spots on the map that enemy players will likely hide behind, so you can prepare your crosshair on these angles anticipating a fight.

Additionally, maps have different elevations and distances. For example, Vertigo has ramps, ladders, and large boxes where players can play on varying heights, impacting your crosshair placement.

Areas such as Mid on Mirage and A Long on Dust II force players to take long-ranged duels. When enemies are further, player models become smaller, so you must move your crosshair downwards to adjust to the distance.

Try booting up all the Competitive maps in a private server and simply walk around the map. While exploring, try to move your crosshair at all times to simulate a real-game where your crosshair placement matters. As you are about to walk past a corner, try jiggle peeking and practicing the “pie slicing” technique, too.

Learn From the Best

If you don’t have the slightest clue of what good crosshair placement looks like, you can always go on YouTube or Twitch and watch professional players. While watching their gameplay, carefully look at how they are moving their crosshair and the way they are constantly adjusting it.

You will definitely see them pre-aiming common angles everywhere they go, and you might get to see them jiggle peeking or clearing angles methodically, like we covered earlier.

Use Aim Training Maps

Finally, it is also to take practical measures, as theory can only get you so far. There are dozens of aim training maps available for free on the Steam Community Workshop. These workshop maps are designed to help players improve their aim and practice proper crosshair placement.

You can download the most prominent workshop maps such as Aim Botz or Yprac’s training maps and practice there. Alternatively, you can also download Aim Labs, which is a popular game designed to help you with crosshair placement and aim. You can download it for free on the Steam Store.