The Matchmaking System

Understand Counter-Strike: Source's matchmaking system. Learn how wins, losses, and MVP awards determine your rank, not individual stats.

In order to make sure you have a decent game, Valve has implemented a matchmaking system to help you pair up with players on a similar level of experience and skill as you. This makes sure your team isn't completely crappy or that the other team isn't full of pro players. Here's how it works:

When you start your first competitive game, you enter the arena rankless. If this is the case, your job is to win 10 competitive matches. After which, the game then assigns you one of the following 18 ranks:

Silver I, Silver II, Silver III, Silver IV, Silver Elite, Silver Elite Master, Gold Nova I, Gold Nova II, Gold Nova III, Gold Nova Master, Master Guardian I, Master Guardian II, Master Guardian Elite, Distinguished Master Guardian, Legendary Eagle, Legendary Eagle Master, Supreme Master First Class, Global Elite.

The ranking system is an elo system (much like chess): your skill group is determined by how many elo points you have to your name, and you can gain points by besting your opponents. There are two big ways you earn points in game.

The first one is whether you win or lose each round (not game, ROUND) you play. Pretty much, you'll gain points for winning a round and lose points for not winning a round. Exactly how many points you gain or lose depends on how many the other team has total. You'll gain more points if you win a round against a higher ranked team, and lose less points for losing a round.

The second factor is the MVP award at the end of each round. One of the winning players gets an MVP award at the end of the round, which provides a nice bonus to their elo rating.

What does this mean? KDA, headshot percentage, ADR, acurracy, bomb plants and defusals, and almost every other statistic in the CSGO world does NOT affect your elo rating in any way. That's right: even if you get completely shut out of kills in a game and die every round, it's still possible to rank up even after that.

If you're interested in reading more about this, you can copy-paste the following link into a new tab. This author goes WAY in depth into the sytsem, and if you're interested in the inner workings of your rank, definitely give it a read: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/639768-counter-strike-global-offensive/faqs/72264