CS2 team practice

The idea

Teams rarely fall behind for lack of practice hours. They fall behind when scrims, the practice games against other teams, become games played for the score, demos, the recordings of those games, go unwatched, the same mistake costs the same round every week, and a strat reaches an official, a match that counts, because it worked once in practice. Coaches describe the cure in much the same terms: decide what each game is for, play it, review it by the next morning, and change the plays and habits from what the review found.

A Strat is one play the team owns: a T side default, execute or fake, a CT setup or retake, or a pistol or anti eco plan for either side. Together the strats are the team's strat book; each moves from idea to theory to testing in scrims, and none reaches an official by accident. Every map played, scrim or official, is a Game, with a focus before it and a review after. Each call of a strat in a game is a Strat run, won or lost, so the book knows what works. What a review finds is a Review point, open until it stops happening. Each Map of the competitive pool carries the team's stance on it for the veto, where the two teams remove maps in turn before a match. Before each Match, an official series, the analyst preps against the Opponent, any team the team scrims or plays. Four roles run it. The coach runs the loop. The IGL, the in-game leader who calls the strats, keeps the book. The analyst reviews and scouts. Each of the five players owns their review points.

In any work tool, this becomes several kinds of linked records: strats whose workflow runs from Idea through Testing to Match ready, games planned with focus strats and reviewed round by round on a tab of their own, review points that reopen when the mistake returns, and a board of the strat book that shows green only the strats with the runs to show for it. It's a practice system, not a stats tool: the demo tool counts the kills, and this is where the team decides what to practise next.

How it runs

Follow one strat, Palace split, from an idea to an official.

1. An idea is written down. After watching another team's demo, the IGL adds a strat in Idea: Palace split, a Mirage A take through palace and ramp at once. It has its map, its Side, T, and its Form, Execute. The IGL is its Owner and keeps it current.
2. It's drawn up and walked through. The IGL writes it in the Description under five headings, Setup, Utility, Timing, Calls and If it fails, and moves it to Theory. In the daily theory hour the five players walk it through on an empty server until the smokes land on time.
3. The week is planned. The coach gives every opponent a Scrim rating, Good, Fine or Avoid, the last for teams that cancel, and on Monday books the week's scrims with good and fine ones. The coach adds each map to be played as a game in Planned, with its date, its Kind and its Reviewer, usually the analyst. An Improvement scrim tests new things and may well be lost; a Result scrim, near an event, is played like an official with ready strats only; an Official is a map of a match. Tuesday's Mirage scrim against Kestrel is for improvement, and its Focus strats, what the game is for, are Palace split and two CT setups; three is the most a game can test. A scrim that falls through, the coach moves to Cancelled.
4. The scrim. At Tuesday's morning meeting the team opens Today, the day's games with their focus. In the scrim the IGL calls Palace split three times. Kestrel now has the demo, as every scrim partner does, and a play spreads fast once it's been shown. That is why the IGL ticks Pocket on some strats: walked through, but kept out of scrims until an official that matters.
5. The review. The reviewer opens the game's demo and Round review, the app on every game, with the team. They set the Starting side, CT, so rounds 13 to 24 are the T half, and enter both scores; Round review moves the game to Played. Then they tag the rounds where a book strat was called: Palace split in rounds 14, 18 and 21, won, lost, won. Each tag is a strat run, and the first one makes the Testing starts rule move Palace split to Testing; had Palace split been a pocket strat, the Pocket shown rule would untick Pocket, because Kestrel now has the demo. The reviewer presses Done in Round review, which moves the game to Reviewed; a game still unreviewed at 10:00 the next morning sends its reviewer the Review reminder, every morning until it's reviewed.
6. What the review found. In round 18 the jungle smoke landed late. The reviewer adds a review point, "Late jungle smoke on Palace split", with its strat, its Players, the support who throws it, and its Area, Utility; the other areas are Positioning, Timing, Comms, Economy and Mechanics. The support drills the lineup as homework and moves the point from Open to Working on. When it happens again two days later, the reviewer adds that game to its Seen in, so it has now been seen in two games; at three it turns red on the board, because recurring mistakes matter more than one-off misplays. After a clean week the coach moves it to Fixed, and the Seen again rule reopens it if it comes back. A point not worth the time, the coach moves to Dropped.
7. The strat earns its place. Two weeks later Palace split has Runs 7 and a Win rate of 57 percent, and on the Strat book, every strat by stage, map by map, its card is green: at least five runs with at least half of them won is the bar for a proven strat. That bar is a common choice, not a rule of the game; teams set their own. Once the coach agrees, the IGL presses Clear for officials, and the strat moves to Match ready with its numbers in a comment. The button checks nothing; the green card is the check, and a pocket strat in Theory is cleared without runs on purpose, the one deliberate exception. A strat that keeps losing, the IGL sends back to Theory; one that opponents have read, or that leaked through scrim demos, the IGL moves to Retired.
8. An official is prepared. The analyst adds Thursday's match against Ironvale in Scheduled, with its date and Format, Bo1, Bo3 or Bo5, the most maps the series can run to; this one is a Bo3. Three days out the analyst, its Prep owner, moves it to Prep and writes the prep in its Description: their maps and veto habits, their T and CT sides on the likely maps, and our bans, pick and strats. The analyst also adds what's learned to Ironvale's own Description. The day before, the analyst moves the match to Ready.
9. Match day. After the veto the analyst adds each map as a game of Kind Official, linked to the match and its opponent, with a reviewer. Mirage is our pick, and Palace split wins both rounds it's called in. The next morning the reviewer logs both runs, as after a scrim, and the analyst moves the match to Played.
10. Every Monday, the map pool. The coach sets each map's Veto stance: Pick, Playable, Learning or Ban. In a Bo3 each team removes two of the seven maps under Valve's veto rules, so a team needs five it can play. After asking the players, the coach sets each map's CT confidence and T confidence, Green, Yellow or Red, beside its Scrim win rate over the last 30 days. Two weeks into Palace split, Mirage's T side turns green.

What people look at

• Every morning — Today: the day's games in order, with kind, map, opponent and focus strats. What are we playing, and why.
• After every block of two or three maps against one opponent — Round review, the app on each game: the score, the strats called round by round, and what the review found. Until the app is built, Review queue does the job: the games waiting for review, oldest first, with strat runs added in place.
• Every Monday — Map pool: which maps are we ready for, with each map's stance, lights and scrim win rate side by side. Strat book: every strat by stage, map by map, proven ones green; what can we call. Week plan: who we play, and when.
• Before an official — Match prep: is the prep done, match by match. Opponents: what we know about each team, and whether its scrims are worth booking.
• Any time — My review points: a player's own open points, most seen first. Points board: where the mistakes cluster, recurring ones red. The Strat success report: which strats win when called. The Map form report: results by map over eight weeks.
• How to run team practice — this process on one screen, kept where the team works.

The rules

These are all the automations; everything else in the story is done by people.

• Clear for officials (a button on a strat): moves the strat to Match ready with a comment recording its Runs, its Win rate and whether it is a Pocket strat. It checks nothing: the Strat book shows green the strats that have the runs, and clearing one that isn't green is a visible choice.
• Testing starts: when a strat run is created and the strat it calls is still in Idea or Theory, that strat moves to Testing.
• Pocket shown: when a strat run is created and the strat it calls has Pocket ticked, Pocket is unticked: the demo of that game now has it.
• Review reminder: every day at 10:00, the Reviewer of each game dated before today that is neither Reviewed nor Cancelled is notified, one message per game.
• Seen again: when a Fixed review point gets another game in Seen in, it moves back to Open, with a comment that it was seen again; the newest game in Seen in is the one.

No automations in your tool? Then a person does each of these at the same moment, and the promises they keep below become practices.

What must stay true

Whatever anyone edits, adapts or corrects, these hold; each says what keeps it so.

• ★ A strat is Match ready only with at least five runs and at least half of them won, or as a pocket decision made on purpose. Shown on the Strat book, where a strat with the runs is green; Clear for officials records the numbers in its comment and checks nothing, so clearing only green strats, or a pocket on purpose, is a practice.
• ★ Every scrim is played for something: a game has its focus strats before it starts, three at most. A practice; the coach sets them when planning the week, and Today shows them at the morning meeting, so a game without any is seen before the server starts.
• ★ Every game is reviewed by the next morning. A practice; the Review reminder asks the reviewer at 10:00 each day a past game stays unreviewed, nothing enforces it.
• The strat numbers come from tagged rounds and nothing else. Kept by the formulas Runs and Win rate: they count the strat's runs, so a run changed or removed in Round review changes the numbers with it, and a round nobody tagged doesn't count. A win rate on fewer than five runs means little; the bar in Clear for officials is there for that.
• ★ A fixed mistake that comes back is open again. Kept by Seen again. A point's Seen in keeps every game, before and after the fix, so the count on Points board is its whole history.
• A game is Played once both scores are in and Reviewed only when its reviewer presses Done. Kept by Round review; a reviewer working in Review queue moves the game by hand, a practice. A score corrected later changes the win rates, and the state stays.
• ★ The map pool is set every Monday from the scrim win rates and the players' confidence, not from memory. A practice; Map pool shows the numbers beside each stance, nothing enforces the Monday.

Making it yours

Decide these before you set it up; each has a default if you shrug.

• No analyst: the coach reviews and preps, tags only the rounds where focus strats were called, and keeps the prep to the veto plan and three things per opponent.
• Two rosters, one strat book, a main team and an academy: add a Roster field on Game and Review point, and filter Today, Review queue and Points board by it.
• Bootcamps: the same model with more games a day; the bootcamp's theme becomes every game's focus strats, and reviews happen the same evening.
• Valve rotates the pool: set the departing map's Veto stance to Out of pool and keep its strats, because maps come back; Overpass returned in 2025, Anubis and Cache in 2026.
• Pushed too far: tagging every round turns review into data entry, so tag only book strats. More than three focus strats in a game, and none gets tested properly. A win rate on fewer than five runs is noise.

Sources

• Scrim Culture in Counter-Strike: How Pro Teams Improve Faster, Maikil "Golden" Selim, Skin.Club, 2026: the pro practice day, scrims with a goal, the debrief, and recurring mistakes over one-offs.
• The CS Major Supplemental Rulebook, Valve: the best of three map veto.