Aim is the sum of Muscle Memory, reactions and calmness.

Muscle memory comes with hours played, not much to say about that but to play, then play some more.
Reactions can be artificially improved by applying some simple positioning rules and angle snapping (Explained in the positioning part of this guide).

What I think is the hardest to perfect, and the most common flaw, is that people fail to stay calm when aiming.

To combat that, my theory is that you should play with as low a sensitivity as you can justify playing with.
Which means finding the lowest sensitivity that still allows you to do a 180-turn in a single large swipe of the mouse and that you feel comfortable checking all corners with (ie. not so low that you get lazy and forget to check corners because the sensitivity is too low)

If you, like me, have a jittery and shaky aim, you will need to lower your sensitivity so a full 360° turn takes between 55-65cm.
To find your cm/360° please fill out this form[www.notalent.org] and remember your Centimeters Per 360.
If, on the other hand, you have nerves of steel and calm hands like forest or get_right. Good for you, you have a slight advantage over the rest of us and probably don't need to read this guide, so screw you!

Most pros are between 40-60, below you can find some of them, for comparisons. Note that some pros like forest and get right have a very high sensitivity, simply because they can control it.

30cm or below takes extraordinary calm hands to control, whereas the upper limit of what can still be called 'playable' is around 70cm. Use the form to find out how low you should set your sensitivity to be around 60cm/360°.

Note: If you are used to a very high sensitivity (below 30cm/360°), it will take some time to get used to a low sensitivity, and it will feel wrong for several hours! Give it some time.


Another big mistake that is very common all the way up through the ranks, is what I call "alibi shooting", or just plain stressing while shooting.
As an example, everyone has done the "F*CK, he's shooting at me.. Better shoot back" without aiming properly and with no chance of actually killing the opponent. You all know the feeling, you immediately sit down and start spraying, you know you're gonna lose the engagement and even before it happens, you know you're gonna die. Sounds familiar?

What happens is that you think everybody else can one-shot you, and that you HAVE to kill him before he does so. Newsflash: THEY CAN'T!
You will be amazed once you realize how long you can stay alive just by doing some simple dodging moves from side to side. And by doing so, the following things happen:

• Opponent is screwing up his recoil.
  
• Opponent is gonna get stressed and start alibi shooting/rushing his shots
  
• You will have time to aim before firing the first shot, giving you an immense chance of killing him with the first burst while he has to either wait for his recoil to reset or keep spraying

To practice this elusive calmness while playing, go play some armsrace or deathmatch and see how long you can keep from dying just by dodging and not shooting back untill you think you can oneshot the enemy.
The only time you should stand still is when you are ready to shoot back.
Remember, it is only a matter of staying alive for about a second or till after the enemy has taken a shot at you.

• Lower your sensitivity significantly if you have a shaky/unstable aim.
  
• You don't HAVE to shoot first every time.
  
• Start playing the dodging game on DM so you don't stress the first shot in every duel.

I don't think there is any reason to reinvent the wheel as AdreN has made a wonderful explanatory guide to angle snapping and crosshair placement.
Make sure to give his youtube and twitch[www.twitch.tv] a subscribe and a follow!

I can't stress this one enough. This is the number 1 cardinal sin that people don't know about or havent thought about.

When going around a corner, ALWAYS GO WIDE! You should put as much distance between you and the corner that you can.
This will give you an edge in reactiontime as you will see the enemy before he can see you (Atleast if he is closer to the corner than you), you can hold your crosshair at the edge of the corner while clearing it and you will present a smaller target to the enemy because you are further away.

This one rule of thumb should help you out in any situation as it makes your routes self explanatory. Just go wide.

This is the big one. The one everyone has problems with. How to get consistent when playing Terrorist?

If you arent an aimstar, there is only one answer: Routines.
You need to have atleast a couple of different routines to go alone somewhere and eventually try to get the opening kill.
By 'routines' I mean knowing exactly which angles to spot at what times as you are methodically checking every corner and every angle as you move along.

Here is an example of how I usually go about as a T on dust2 (Notice how i'm using the angles and always going wide)

Some solo-routines like this can also depend on a smoke or flash, like this one for hallways on inferno:

In a place like the hallways here, there isn't really much room to apply the wide-angle technique, but it's still worth doing and other than that it is really just a matter of being very thourough and meticulous.

Standard situations is just after round start, you know where the enemies can be, you just have to pick your first position and await the attackers.

A common mistake that people tend to do, is to position themselves in 'kill or be killed' positions.
As the name suggests, you either go big and kill everyone that crosses your path or more likely, you kill 1 maybe 2 and then the opponent has opened your defense and force unwanted defensive rotations and repositioning.

Those ultimatum positions should only ever be used if you are 2 people covering the same thing and you HAVE to hold your ground.

Example of a bad ultimatum spot:





The far better choice would be a position that allows you to take cover and survive for atleast a couple of seconds, stall the oncoming attackers with nades, and most importantly, giving your teammates time to help you if needed.

Example of a position that allows you to take the first shot, fall back and repeat.

If you are relatively alone when defending, be in a position that allows for retreat.
Usually by putting distance between you and the attackers. This will allow teammates to give backup, and give you 1 or 2 'first shots' from the next couple of angles you retreat to. Or give you time to delay the attackers with a smoke/flash. Most important is to NOT die. You don't have to keep peeking over and over again.