“But I did well that one time!”

The element of surprise is an oft-under-utilised, misunderstood piece of game theory that can be misconstrued as a ‘gimmick’ at times, and at others misconstrued as optimal.

When you set up a double AWP for the first time in a game, and the terrorists run straight down your throat and your second AWPer picks up the easiest 3k of his life, you start to think that maybe this is the best way to play.

It worked for MOUZ back in the day.

It of course, isn’t the optimal way to play. Not least because it’s expensive, but it’s also really static and easily countered. A bunch of smokes, SMGs, or aggressive riflers, and a metric ton of flashes, and your second AWPer all of a sudden becomes the world’s most expensive crash test dummy.

Actually, I have no idea how much crash test dummies cost. They might cost more than $4750.

It’s similar to how running the four-man boost on Overpass might get you a free kill once in a while, but do it every round and you’ll lose the game faster than coldzera’s career collapsed.

It’s rarely a big issue, though, as most IGLs are trying to win games and will quickly realise that relying on a double AWP is counter-intuitive to that desire. The issue only comes when the ego of the second AWPer is bigger than their desire to win.

“But he’s a good AWPer!”

No, he’s a decent secondary AWPer (he actually isn’t, but humour me for a second).

All of us have felt the pain of a long-term friend and queue partner getting a quad with the AWP and deciding they should ‘go an on AWPing arc’. The awkwardness in the call as your AWPer tries to disagree without sounding like a child saying “No! This is MINE!”. The quiet re-buying of the AWP when the second AWPer inevitably dies next round without a kill.

Second AWPing is easier than AWPing because it’s generally in spots where you’re not expecting it, and you catch people off-guard, at least the first time. This leads to second AWPers generally having an excellent average with the gun, despite not actually being that good with it.

When that person tries to be the big dog, you learn that teams actually normally flash and smoke you out. It looks great fun playing Window when you see s1mple do it in FPL, but it’s a miserable experience when you’re not really an AWPer and you don’t have the balls to do the short jump.

In Senzu’s case, he’s not even that good at it, either/

I probably could have just put that at the start of the Senzu bit and gotten this out of the way, really.

Mr btrams even has him as a worse AWPer than MAJ3R in the first half of the year, and amusingly, a worse AWPer than bLitz in the second half of the year. That’s despite, quite obviously, not being a bad player, and rating higher than both of them (1.12 vs 0.88 vs 1.00) overall.

I’m not even sure why he wants to do this. Only 7% of his kills last year came with the AWP, and he only got an AWP kill once every 20 rounds, or once a game-ish, on average. You’re not an AWPer, fella.

btrams suggests he had 241 rounds with the AWP last year, and HLTV suggests he had 185 kills with it, which means he gets roughly three kills every four rounds with it. That sounds good enough, but according to btrams, his win probability with the AWP (WPA, as it turns out) is pretty bad.

As in: when Senzu AWPs, The MongolZ are straight up less likely to win the round. There’s no other regular AWPer who does that.

“Okay, Mr. Smart Mouth, what if it’s a player who’s actually good at AWPing? Like coldzera in his prime?”

Nearly every great ‘secondary AWPer’ is just a great rifler, and most of the time, they are best left as a rifler.

Why on Earth would you want a player who can be elite with a more difficult weapon to move to a role where they’re a bit worse, making both roles worse?

It smacks of England fans suggesting Trent Alexander-Arnold should play in midfield because he can pass. Like, yeah, great, most midfielders can pass. What makes him special is his ability to playmake from right back. You remove another passer, weakening the midfield and right back at the same time. Genius.

To put it simply, having an elite rifler AWP generally doesn’t improve over the specialist AWPer while weakening the rifle roster. Yes, you can then get another rifler, but elite riflers don’t grow on trees.

There are exceptions; in regions where there are no elite AWPers, or in super rare cases - basically just s1mple and device - where they actually level up with the AWP.

That can happen; the ceiling of the AWP, at least we thought before donk, is probably a little higher than the AK47. It’s near-impossible to be consistently elite with the rifle, whereas the point-and-click nature of the AWP makes it naturally more consistent.

I don’t mean in terms of rating, here. Obviously, donk, NiKo, and others have been consistently elite, but on a kill-to-kill basis, the AWP is more consistent because you don’t have to connect a series of bullets or rely on a more precise single shot. If you play - or at least, position yourself perfectly, the AWP will always get the kill. The rifle has a little inaccuracy, or you can position perfectly and miss a bullet on the spray. It’s that chasing of perfection that makes the AWP so alluring.

It’s what made device more consistent. He stopped missing out on kills he should have gotten, and instead relied on his god-tier positioning, and voila, free kills 24/7. The issue is that most elite aggro riflers aren’t actually standing in the right place a lot - they rely on their instincts, movement, and ability to win duels, all of which are diminished with a more stationary gun. You can’t donk slide into a duel with an AWP in the same way, or swivel around and spray two down like he seems to always do.

I don’t mind (well, I can’t really stop them) truly great riflers giving it a go once or twice, but I mean truly great riflers, just in case you are device, but it’s usually a bad idea; if I have to watch NiKo tilt-AWP again, I might claw my own eyes out. You’d be better off just rifling 99% of the time.

A waste of talent

The worst bit about seeing someone like NiKo, donk, or god forbid, b1t AWPing is that these are players with extraordinary first bullet aim that basically gets wasted.

When you think of NiKo, your first thought is either the Deagle miss on Nuke or it’s the Deagle ace on Cache. Either way, it’s him using a Deagle - a gun that famously requires you to aim at the head, and he’s bloody brilliant at it. Why would you want him to AWP?

He has an ability to one-shot people with a $700 - or $2700 - gun that very few other people have, so giving him the gun that lets him one-shot people for more money and be less dynamic is simply nerfing him.

I watched b1t AWP once and it enraged me to the point I’m writing about it about four years later. It’s like signing James Ward-Prowse and not putting him on free kicks. Choice Scarf Volcarona. Lewis Hamilton in a Vauxhall Corsa. Rell Jungle. Ron Zacapa with Aldi cola.

Hopefully at least one of those references rings a bell with you.

He’s arguably the purest headshot aimer ever to grace tier one, and we’re giving him a gun that actively discourages you from aiming at the head. It gives up the one thing he’s incredible at to do something other players do better.

“So why do they do it?”

There are three reasons why riflers all want to AWP.

Secretly, no matter what we all say, everyone lowkey thinks AWPing is easy and that they could do it. Be honest with yourself. Deep down you think you could AWP at a pro level, or at least at a decent level. You secretly think you’re better than your mate who AWPs all the time.

Don’t lie to me now. We’ve all been there.

Everyone thinks they can AWP, and when they get a bit annoyed or see somebody being a bit lax with their peeks, they reckon they’ll just get the free kill. Then they think ‘this is easy’ and believe they’ll just do it full time.

If you ask frozen in private, I’d put money that he thinks he’s better than broky. He’s probably right. If you ask Spinx, he definitely thinks he’s better than torzsi. If you ask donk, he probably thinks he’s the best AWPer of all time. At least he thinks he’s the… #2 AWPer.

AWPing obviously isn’t that easy, otherwise they’d all do it. Every team in the world needs a top tier AWPer bar about four, and yet none of them are grabbing XANTARES or blameF and making them the main sniper.

The second reason is that sniping is just really fun. It’s fun in pretty much every FPS game. MW2 quickscope montages. Chamber on VALORANT. The Tiger on Gunfire Reborn.

Hell, there’s a reason everyone wanted to play ADC on LoL for years.

Being a glass cannon is just extremely fun. Dancing on the line between life and death and being able to affect the round more than anyone else - good or bad - is exhilarating. There’s no better feeling than multikills with the big green.

AWPing is just fun. There’s not much more to it. Doing more damage and being more vulnerable is something people pick in a lot of situations. A football fan would always rather their team sign a star striker than a solid defender, and you always take more damage over durability on any roguelike.

The third reason is that being a good AWPer will just make you more valuable.

Even though people say AWPing is dead on CS2… well, it kinda isn’t. Okay, it’s not as crazy overpowered as it was in CS:GO, but they’re still the second-highest rated player on the team, and the ones who are most likely to stop an opener running rampant.

Nothing stops a wide swing quicker than a sniper bullet.

There are fewer great AWPers, but that just means the ones who exist become more and more valuable. In theory, if Senzu, or anyone else for that matter, could become an elite rifler, they’ll probably put their stock into the stratosphere. There’s literally about five good AWPers in the world.

“Should I not AWP, then?”

AWPing is like goalkeeping; you can’t half arse it.

There are players who transition to and from AWPing, but it’s rare to see it work all that well. It’s a bit more fluid than something like goalkeeping, but it’s still the only true specialist role in CS.

We have defined roles better than ever, and some players are simply only good at their role, but within a round you could still see your lurker entry if needed, your entry might end up in a clutch, and some of it gets lost in the chaos of the round - but the guy with the AWP will always be the AWPer, except in Bogdan’s law cases.

You can be a guy who entries on one map and lurks on another. You can be a star on Inferno and a support player on Ancient. You generally aren’t an AWPer on Dust 2 but not on Mirage.

Well, you might be. But not many people are at the pro level.

AWPing is harder to quit than heroin, and even when someone quits AWPing to rifle, they still end up doing loads of AWPing and coming back to it eventually. chrisJ, mixwell, cadiaN, deko - it happens every time.

If you’re going to do this, you have about three months to decide if this is something you want to dedicate your life to, or just have a fling with. After three months, the venom is deep within you, and the urge to AWP will never go away.

This is why players like Senzu, NiKo, ropz, and co shouldn’t AWP. They aren’t AWPers. It’s not in their blood. You can play Havertz up front, but he’s not a striker. He might even be pretty solid at it, but he’s not a striker. It doesn’t look right, it doesn’t feel right, and it’s not right.

They generally don’t perform as well with the AWP past the first surprise round, and in Senzu’s case are a straight-up negative with the AWP. It limits the team, wastes their best qualities, and ruins the vibes.

“Will it ever end?”

Unfortunately, you can’t stop the allure of using the most fun gun in the game for some of the best players in the world. They will always think they can use it as well as anyone else, even when the evidence suggests they shouldn’t, and quite frankly, I think elite players should think that.

They should also have an IGL to tell them ‘no’.

Put it this way: if you are a rifler and think you should be a secondary AWPer and maybe a primary AWPer, remember that NiKo, coldzera, and olofmeister have all tried, and none of them could do it to an elite level. You’re not better than those three.

It won’t stop you trying. It won’t stop you failing. But like when your mate tells you that ‘she’s not good for you, bud’, you’ll figure it out for yourself later and realise I’m right.

Senzu held a unique position as the only elite rifler in his region. He had a spot for life on The MongolZ and would be desired by nearly anyone if they ever fell off a bit. As an AWPer, he might be able to convince Liquid or FaZe to give it a go, because they’ve got nothing to lose. Would you rather be challenging for events with The MongolZ, or trying to stop EliGE from typing ‘kill’ in console mid-game, or carrying karrigan’s mobility scooter to and from the stage?

Next time you consider switching to a full-time AWP, just imagine having to play for Team Liquid - it’s like thinking about Theresa May to stop yourself… never mind.