CS2 Glossary

Average damage per round — how much damage you deal in a typical round.

ADR divides your total damage by rounds played, which makes it a fairer read on impact than kills alone: the player who does 90 damage to three enemies before dying created the round their teammate finished. It rewards consistent contribution and punishes the pattern of doing nothing for four rounds and getting a lucky triple in the fifth.

What Is ADR in CS2? →Your CS2 Stats →KAST

The share of rounds where you got a Kill, Assist, Survived, or were Traded.

KAST measures how often you contributed something to a round rather than dying for free. A high KAST with modest kills usually means a disciplined player who trades well and survives lost rounds; a low KAST with high kills usually means feast-or-famine play.

Your CS2 Stats →ADRTrade kill

How many centimetres of mousepad it takes to turn a full circle.

cm/360 is eDPI expressed as a physical distance, which is often more intuitive: it is literally how far your hand travels for a 360° turn. Lower means faster and twitchier, higher means slower and more precise, and it is the number to match when moving between games with different sensitivity scales.

cm/360 Calculator →eDPIDPI

Tapping the opposite direction key to stop instantly before shooting.

Moving in CS2 wrecks your accuracy, and releasing a key alone leaves you sliding for a moment. Tapping the opposite key cancels that momentum almost immediately, giving you a fully accurate shot far sooner. It is the mechanic that separates players who can peek and hit from players who spray while drifting.

Movement Guide →Peeker's advantageSpray transfer

Keeping your crosshair at head height on the angle an enemy will appear from.

The single highest-return habit in Counter-Strike, because it converts a hard flick into a small adjustment. It is a discipline rather than a skill: walk every corridor with the crosshair already where a head would be, and most duels are half-won before they begin.

Advanced Mechanics →Preaim

Dots per inch — how many counts your mouse reports per inch of movement.

DPI is a hardware setting on the mouse itself, independent of the game. On its own it tells you nothing about how fast someone turns: pair it with in-game sensitivity to get eDPI, which is the number worth comparing.

Sensitivity Converter →eDPIcm/360

Effective DPI — mouse DPI multiplied by in-game sensitivity.

eDPI is the only fair way to compare sensitivity between players, because 400 DPI at 2.0 and 800 DPI at 1.0 feel identical in game while the raw numbers look nothing alike. Across the pros tracked in our database the median sits around 800, with most between 600 and 1,200.

Best CS2 Settings →eDPI Calculator →DPIcm/360

Briefly stepping into an angle and back to bait information or a shot.

A jiggle peek trades a sliver of exposure for information: whether the angle is held, roughly where, and sometimes a wasted AWP shot. Done properly you never stop moving, so you are not trying to win the duel — you are trying to learn something and survive.

Advanced Mechanics →Peeker's advantage

The attacker sees the defender before the defender sees them.

Because your position is sent to the server and then to your opponent, the player moving around a corner sees their target a fraction of a second before the stationary player sees them. It is a consequence of latency, not a bug, and it is why holding a tight angle beats holding a wide one, and why re-peeking the same spot repeatedly gets you killed.

Jiggle peekCounter-strafe

How far your crosshair sits from an enemy at the moment they appear.

Preaim is measured in degrees of angular error, and lower is better. It is the cleanest measurable proxy for crosshair placement: a player with good preaim has already done most of the aiming before the duel starts, so their "reactions" only need to cover the last few degrees.

Advanced Mechanics →Your CS2 Stats →Crosshair placement

Moving a spray from one enemy to the next without releasing the trigger.

When two enemies are close together, stopping and re-aiming costs more time than dragging the existing spray across. It requires knowing the recoil pattern well enough to compensate while also moving the crosshair horizontally — which is why it is a late-stage mechanic rather than a starting one.

Advanced Mechanics →Counter-strafe

Firing one shot, a few shots, or holding the trigger — chosen by range.

Accuracy decays the longer you hold the trigger, so range dictates the mode: tap at long range where every shot must count, burst at mid, spray at close range where recoil matters less than volume. Picking the wrong one for the distance is one of the most common reasons duels feel unwinnable.

Advanced Mechanics →

The CT who holds a bombsite alone or in a pair until help arrives.

An anchor is not expected to win outright — they are expected to survive long enough, and cost the attackers enough time and utility, that a retake becomes possible. Utility that buys seconds is worth more than a kill in this role.

RetakeRotate

Winning a round as the last player alive against multiple opponents.

Clutching is mostly information management, not aim: isolating duels so you fight one enemy at a time, using the clock, and knowing that on CT side the bomb timer is fighting for you while on T side it is fighting against you.

Trade kill

A spread-out opening that takes map control before committing to a site.

A default is the opposite of a rush: players fan out to gather information and control key areas, then convert whatever they learn into a hit. It keeps options open, which matters most in the middle of a half when neither side has read the other yet.

ExecuteEntry

The player who takes the first duel going into a site.

Entry fraggers trade certainty of survival for tempo — their job is to make first contact so the rest of the team enters against a known, damaged, or dead defender. A good entry who dies having traded is not a failure; an entry who dies without their team following is.

Trade killExecute

A rehearsed, utility-backed hit on a bombsite.

An execute is a set piece: specific smokes and flashes at specific times, with players entering in a specific order. Its value is that it does not depend on winning duels fairly — the utility removes the defenders' advantages before anyone steps out.

Grenades & Utility →Grenade Lineups →DefaultRetake

Playing away from your team to catch rotations and take map control.

The lurker deliberately separates from the group to threaten the space defenders leave when they rotate. It only works with timing and communication — a lurker who is simply somewhere else is not lurking, they are missing.

RotateAnchor

Taking a bombsite back after the bomb has been planted.

A retake is played against a clock as well as an enemy: you must clear the site and defuse before the timer ends, which forces coordinated utility and simultaneous entry rather than trickling in one at a time.

What Is Retakes in CS2? →AnchorExecute

Moving from one area of the map to another in response to information.

Rotating early wins rounds when the information is right and loses them when it is a fake. The cost of a rotation is the space you give up behind you, which is exactly what a lurker is waiting for.

LurkAnchor

Killing the enemy who just killed your teammate.

Trading turns a lost duel into an even exchange, which is why spacing matters so much: stand too far from your teammate and you cannot trade, stand too close and one grenade kills you both. Most rounds are decided by whether the losing side traded, not by who won the first duel.

EntryKAST

The round where you are fully equipped against an opponent who is not.

Anti-eco rounds are lost more often than they should be because the equipped side takes close-range fights where pistols and SMGs are competitive. Play at distance, avoid clumping into a single grenade, and treat their kills as the real cost — every rifle they pick up funds their next round.

Economy Guide →EcoForce buy

Deliberately not buying, to afford a full buy next round.

An eco sacrifices the current round to guarantee the next one is played with full equipment. The discipline is in doing it as a team: one player buying a rifle on an eco both weakens the next round's buy and rarely changes this round's outcome.

Economy Guide →Economy Calculator →Force buyAnti-ecoLoss bonus

Buying with money you cannot really afford, because this round matters more.

A force buy accepts a weaker next round in exchange for contesting this one — correct when losing this round would break your economy anyway, or when the enemy is on a weak buy and beatable with armour and SMGs.

Economy Guide →EcoAnti-eco

Escalating money for consecutive round losses.

Losing repeatedly pays progressively more, which is what lets a losing team rebuild. It also means breaking a loss streak with a won round resets that escalation, so the timing of when you force and when you save is really a question about the bonus.

Economy Guide →EcoForce buy

The red rarity tier — the rarest normal weapon skins in a case.

Covert is the top weapon rarity below the gold "exceedingly rare" knife and glove pool, and drops from a case at 0.64%. Since the 2025 trade-up change, Coverts also became inputs to the knife route, which permanently changed how their floors are priced.

Trade-up contractStatTrak

A hidden 0–1 wear value that decides how worn a skin looks.

Every skin has a float that determines its wear tier, from Factory New to Battle-Scarred, and its exact value moves price within a tier too. The boundaries matter more than the decimals: a skin sitting just inside Factory New can be worth far more than one just outside it.

Float Value Guide →Float Checker →WearPaint seedTrade-up contract

The number that decides how a skin's pattern is laid out.

Two skins with identical float can look completely different because the paint seed positions the texture. For a few finishes — Case Hardened blues, Fade percentages, Marble Fade layouts — specific seeds command enormous premiums entirely separate from wear.

Case Hardened & Blue Gems →Blue Gem Explorer →FloatPattern index

Another name for the paint seed.

Used interchangeably with paint seed. Trading communities catalogue desirable indices per skin — the "blue gem" tier lists for Case Hardened are exactly this.

Paint seed

A tournament-stamped skin from a souvenir package.

Souvenir skins come from packages dropped during majors and carry stickers of the teams and players from that match. They cannot be produced any other way, so supply is fixed forever at whatever dropped during that event — which is why some souvenir items are among the most valuable in the game.

StatTrak

A counter on the weapon that tracks your kills with it.

StatTrak versions drop far more rarely than their plain counterparts and usually carry a premium, though the size of that premium varies enormously by skin — on cheap skins it can be most of the price, on expensive ones it is often a rounding error.

CovertSouvenir

Valve's reversible-trade window introduced in July 2025.

Since 16 July 2025 recent trades can be rolled back for up to seven days if Steam determines an account was hijacked. It protects theft victims but means received items sit in a protected state, which is why marketplaces hold payouts and instant cash-outs got slower.

How to Trade CS2 Skins Safely →Trade-up contract

Exchanging ten same-rarity skins for one of the next rarity up.

The output comes from the collections your inputs belong to, and its float is derived from the average of the inputs, which makes trade-ups a calculable gamble rather than a blind one. Since the October 2025 update there is also a Covert route: five Coverts from one collection produce a knife or gloves from that collection's pool.

Best CS2 Trade Ups →Trade-Up Calculator →FloatCovert

The named condition tier a float falls into.

Factory New, Minimal Wear, Field-Tested, Well-Worn and Battle-Scarred are labels over float ranges. Because buyers shop by label, the price gap across a boundary is usually much larger than the visual difference.

Float Value Guide →Float

The weekly drop you pick from after your first rank-up of the week.

Each week Prime accounts earn one drop, chosen from a handful of options mixing containers and skins from the active pools. The reset happens on Wednesday, and it is the only free route to current-pool cases.

How to Get Cases in CS2 →Prime

Your numeric Premier skill score, shown openly and adjusted every match.

CS Rating runs from 0 to 30,000+ and is grouped into colour bands the community names ("blue", "purple", "gold"). Unlike the old skill groups it shows the exact points gained or lost per match, which makes progress legible.

Rank Distribution →Premier

The server-side recording of a match from every perspective.

GOTV demos are recorded by the server, so you can spectate any player and see the whole map. They are larger than POV demos but far more useful for reviewing team play and positioning.

Demo & Replay →POV demo

Maximum rounds 12 — the current format, first to 13 with a half at 12.

CS2 shortened matches from MR15 to MR12, which compressed the economy: there are fewer rounds to recover from a bad start, so eco decisions and the loss bonus matter more per round than they used to.

How Many Rounds in CS2? MR12 Explained →Loss bonus

Community review of suspected cheaters from recorded demos.

Trusted players review anonymised demos of reported accounts and vote on whether the behaviour is cheating. It supplements automated detection for cases a machine finds ambiguous.

VACTrust Factor

A client-side recording of one player's own view and inputs.

A POV demo captures exactly what one player saw and did, including their raw mouse movement — which makes it the right tool for reviewing your own aim and crosshair placement, where GOTV's smoothed view is misleading.

Demo & Replay →GOTV

The flagship ranked mode with a numeric CS Rating and a map veto.

Premier runs in multi-month seasons on the Active Duty pool with a pick-ban phase, and gives you a visible CS Rating rather than a hidden skill group. Ten placement wins set your starting number.

How to Unlock Premier →Rank Distribution →CS RatingPrime

The paid account status that unlocks the main matchmaking pool and drops.

Prime separates paying accounts from free ones for matchmaking purposes, which is the main lever Valve has against cheaters making new accounts. It also gates weekly item drops and Premier.

Is CS2 Prime Worth It? →PremierTrust Factor

CS2's input timing model — actions are timestamped, not snapped to a tick.

In CS:GO your input took effect on the next server tick; in CS2 the server records precisely when between ticks it happened. It removes the old 64-vs-128-tick argument for shooting and movement, and it is why the CS:GO rate and interpolation commands no longer exist.

Counter-strafe

A hidden score Valve uses to decide who you get matched with.

Trust Factor blends account age, playtime, reports, bans and general Steam behaviour into a hidden signal that pairs you with similar accounts. It is why two players at the same rank can have very different lobby quality.

CS2 Trust Factor →PrimeOverwatch

Valve Anti-Cheat — the automated ban system.

VAC detects known cheat signatures and bans permanently and irreversibly. A VAC ban on CS2 also makes the account's items untradeable, which is why it is the single most expensive mistake available in this game.

OverwatchTrust Factor

Ranked 2v2 on a single bombsite, first to nine.

Wingman is a separate ladder with its own rank and its own small map pool. Because rounds are short and duels constant, it is unusually good practice for aim and clutch decision-making.

What Is Wingman in CS2? →