The AWP is a weapon that decides the match. You want to use everything about the AWP to your advantage, whenever possible. For example, it's pricetag. If you know you have no chance of winning the round, but a dead teammate's AWP is nearby, you can pick that up and run away, and give it to your teammate the next round. By doing this you have saved money in that A, you didn't die, giving up $1000 of armor, a $2500 or $3100 gun, plus grenades and possibly a purchased sidearm. And B, the AWP costs $4750. If you can give your teammate the AWP, he can buy you a rifle, and you just saved 2 or 3k. Another example is the fact that because of your double zoom, you can pick up on key details that your teammates may not. Ie, if you double scope and the enemy is pistol rushing somewhere (let's say long A on dust2), and your teammates are on A platform, pretty far away, they can just see the enemy with pistols. If you come up from CT spawn and double zoom, you can see if there are weapons on the enemies backs, indicating a surprise buy. (A good place to see this for yourself is to load up an AWP map, set bots to knives, then look at their back across the map with each level of zoom.)

1. This is probably the easiest pick to make. . A decent CT awper will probably prefire that spot, so you might wanna watch out.

2. Use this pick, if your spawn is closer to B then to A. Also risky, but a required risk to take, because you want to make sure how many CT's cross to B, and if there is an awp watching short A (you don't wanna find yourself in a situation where CT's stacked A and you thought they have 2 on B).


3. The last but not least, is the lower spawn pick. Probably my favorite, but also the toughest one. Only do this one if you have a good spawn (close to the boxes in spawn). With some decent gap shooting skills, you just might make a pick there.

Picking as CT is a tad bit harder, as the T's are higher than you, have a clearer shot (you have the double doors in front of you, but those are spam able so if the luck factor is high enough, you might bang one trough the doors), and almost always have the time advantage. If your team is overall a little bit worse than the other team, you'd be better off not trying to pick middle, and just watching short a.

The 3 basic picking positions are really commonly used.

The first 2 are risky, but again, a required risk to take. The 3rd is a brilliant position to pick off any T's pushing catwalk (aka short A).