Counter-Strike has arguably the most illustrious history in all of esports. The franchise itself is over 20 years old, and the latest release, CS:GO, has been kicking around for about a decade. With a history that old comes plenty of big records.
Billions of bullets have been shot across the last two decades, but it can only take one to swing the tides of a game, a tournament, and even a career. From the big clutches to the huge fraggers, there’s plenty of exciting moments to regale on in CS:GO’s history.
However, who can claim the accolades as the most lethal player? Who was involved in the longest game in CS:GO history, and just how many times has a single map been played? We’ve broken down all the major CS:GO pro play records, leaving no stone unturned.
Most kills (total): Kenny ‘kennyS’ Schrub (36,895 kills)
The total kills list is dominated by veterans of Global Offensive. The gods from the early days, who still play to this day, have had the chance to rack up plenty of points for their StatTrak, and there’s none more so than kennyS.
The French AWPer has been at the top of his game for years. He’s won a major and he’s got almost a dozen MVP awards. While he might be out of a team for now, it surely won’t be long until he finds one.
- Read More: What Next for CSGO’s AWP God kennyS?
When it comes to total kills, kennyS has a fair distance on the competition. Swedish veterans Patrik ‘f0rest’ Lindberg (36,710) and Nathan ‘NBK-‘ Schmitt (36,387) round out the podium, having also been around with kennyS since the start of CS:GO.
Most kills (AWP): Kenny ‘kennyS’ Schrub (19,228 kills)
If he has the most kills full-stop, it’s unlikely a rifler will have kennyS beat for most AWP kills in CS:GO history. He has been one of the best AWPers, if not the best. While his teams might have had their ups and downs, for the most part, kennyS has consistently fragged out, even as newer blood filters in.
With over 19,000 kills with the magic stick, kennyS knows the weapon inside and out. It’s been nerfed and adjusted over time, but the Frenchman has always been the first to adapt and dominate — patch after patch, year after year.
Across history, though, he isn’t in a class of his own — at least stats-wise. Ladislav ‘GuardiaN’ Kovacs joins kennyS at the top, around 1,000 kills back, with 16,214. However, the fall off from the French and Slovakian snipers to the rest of the field is massive.
Highest average rating: Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut (1.28 rating, 808 maps)
From veterans to young blood, ZywOo is, in a sense, kennyS’ spiritual successor. It’s rather fitting that the young French AWPer follows in the footsteps of his predecessor in claiming the highest average rating in CS:GO history.
ZywOo has only been on the scene since late 2016, but he’s quickly risen to become one of the best players of all time. The Vitality AWPer has always punched above his weight, even when his team has crumbled around him.
- Read More: The biggest upsets in CSGO history
His 1.28 rating across his over 800 career games is testament to how often the 20-year-old star shows up in the server. He might be quiet in interviews, but he lets his mechanics do the talking, often hauling his team over the line by collecting frags and clutches from seemingly nowhere.
It’s obvious ZywOo’s a once-in-a-generation talent for French CS, and the hopes for the future of the scene rest on him to keep his amazing form up.
Most MVPs: Nicolai ‘dev1ce’ Reedtz (18 medals)
The HLTV MVP medal is regarded as the single-biggest individual accolade to receive in CS:GO, aside from a place in the Top 20 every year. It recognizes the big players who come up huge in the most clutch moments at the high-pressure events.
If there’s one team that has done that time-and-time again, it’s Astralis, and their AWPer dev1ce is the ice cold man behind that. Astralis have won a lot of tournaments in their time, with four majors under their belt, and plenty more big events, and dev1ce has been the star man in 15 of them.
- Read More: Can Astralis survive without dev1ce?
He picked up his first in 2015 at the PGL CS:GO Championship Series while still playing under the TSM banner, and hasn’t stopped since. He picked up seven medals in 2018 — more than every player bar seven have earned in their entire careers, as Astralis took hold of Counter-Strike.
Dev1ce’s contemporaries in Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev and ZywOo are far behind the Dane with 12 and 11 medals a piece, showing just how key dev1ce was for Astralis.
Highest headshot percentage: Adil ‘ScreaM’ Benrlitom (68.1%, 27,501 total kills)
In CS:GO, there’s one player who has mastered the art of the headshot greater than everybody else — ScreaM. We all know that player who is ‘all aim, no brain’ in matchmaking, but ScreaM is the living embodiment of that subject at the pro level.
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Sure, to get to the top of Counter-Strike requires a good amount of game sense. However, that’s not what Benrlitom was good at. He was good at tapping heads, and spent hours upon hours honing his lethal ‘one-taps’. His kills were so clean, and his skills so dirty, that the one-tap became synonymous with ScreaM.
Across his 27,501 kills (26th-highest in history), 68.1% of them were by headshot. He still holds the highest total amount of headshots at 18,724, and the highest headshots per round (0.5) average to boot, even though he hasn’t been on a top team in years.
Sander ‘Grusarn’ Iversen and Johannes ‘b0RUP’ Borup round out the podium with 64% and 63.9%. However, they still have a long way to go to topple the master of one-taps himself, and it’s unlikely anyone will.
Most clutches won: Richard ‘shox’ Papillon (732 1vx rounds won)
When it comes down to the death, having a cool head on your shoulders helps. Being able to put the pressure aside and get the job done is easier said than done. Well, that’s if you aren’t shox.
The French rifler has pulled out plenty of clutches in his time, keeping his teams in the game when all hope seemed lost. He’s won 732 rounds as the last man standing, which is over 45 games worth of clutches across his career.
- Read More: Top 10 clutches in CSGO history
These round wins have led to major titles for the 27-year-old Frenchman, who after almost 15 years as a professional Counter-Strike player, still manages to keep his cool at the end of every round.
Only one other player has more than 700 clutch rounds won — Janusz ‘Snax’ Pogorzelski (701). Given how much success the two have seen in CS:GO, it proves that sometimes it’s not always mechanics, but good mental, that’s the key to winning.
Longest game: XENEX vs. exceL (88 rounds on Inferno, ESL UK Premiership Season 1, 2015)
16 rounds to win. It’s a concept as old as time in Counter-Strike. However, after the 30 rounds are up, some teams can’t seem to sort it out and we head into overtime. Getting one or two overtimes to finally determine a winner is pretty common, and makes for pretty exciting CS.
However, for XENEX and exceL, they needed six overtimes, and an extra 58 rounds, to finally break the deadlock. During the ESL UK Premiership in 2015, the two squads faced off in a best of three that went for over four hours.
On Inferno, they traded blows for 88 rounds to make for the longest game of professional CS:GO to this day. Every player in the server picked up a 50-bomb as both teams just couldn’t close out on each other.
They also played a game of Cache straight after which went to double overtime before XENEX managed to take the series 2-0. One can only imagine how map three would have played out.
At a major level, 60 rounds were played between Astralis and CR4ZY at the StarLadder Berlin Major in 2019 on Dust 2. CR4ZY managed to take down the four-time major winners 31-29, breaking the record Astralis tied with just the day before against NRG with a 59-round game.
Most played map: Mirage (18,237 games)
While Dust 2 might be the map most synonymous with Counter-Strike, it’s far away from being the most popular map in a competitive sense. That record goes to Mirage, with over 18,000 listed games on HLTV on the map.
Mirage is the only map to feature in every major map pool, so it makes sense that it’s the most played. There’s been periods where maps like Nuke (8,986), Inferno (15,820), and Dust 2 (10,713) have been rotated out, so they’ve fallen well behind Mirage.
If we limit to maps in big events only (majors, other big tournaments), Inferno (730) does reign supreme over Mirage (715) — barely.
Either way, both Mirage and Inferno are decisively more popular than some of their counterparts, and between them make up for 35% of all professional CS:GO games played.
Has a record we’ve recorded been broken? Let us know on Twitter @Dexerto, and we will update the list.
