Doop's awping guide

A player can use various playstyles when using an awm: soloing, going for a lead pick, throwing a pick fake, and counter picking. The term pick is short for picking off another player.

Before I go into detail on the various types of play styles it is important for me to give you a general explanation of different types of picks. Here are some various methods you can use to get a pick.

Soloing
When soloing you can use varying levels of aggression to your advantage. The basic levels of aggression are aggressive, semi-aggressive, passive-aggressive, and passive.

Aggressive you are going straight to the opponent and your main goal is to frag out. Example: Taking your awp long-a on port right away and just pre-aiming top boxes and strafe peaking. If you don’t die you will continue moving up long a till you make contact and kill both of them and take the bombsite or you die. You can either flash or just go with surprise.

Semi-Aggressive you are going to start out the same way as full aggressive, but after the first kill you either: a) drop back towards teammates to use the advantage to get map control or b) use nades/flashes/smoke to give the idea that you are working up, and then sit on a pick/rotate.
Example: Jumping out hut on ceyhan and picking the GR mid player early round. You could fall back towards A bombsite and start working out sewer hall with teammates, or smoke/flash/nade mid and then move to the bridge and awp the rotate from halls or tower.

Passive-Aggressive you are going to move up on the map, but not cause the first contact. From your spot you can either peak on an interval, or wait for the enemy to flash/smoke, and then you counterflash and go aggressive.
Example: On port as a BL you move up to the start of the hut at b, but you do not peak the corner, rather you peak at an angle into the hut. From here you can randomly peak the entrance every 10 seconds or so, or you can just get ready to flash as soon as you hear noise.

Going for a lead pick
When going for a lead pick, your teammates will sit behind you and be ready to execute a strategy as soon as you shoot. Since most maps are played with a by the 2-1-2 (2 at A, 1 middle, and 2 at B) by the GR, you are trying to give your team a 4-1 or 3-1 advantage.
Example: On blackwidow, you can have 1 player work middle towards cat/doors, while you take your awm to long a. You are going to attempt to kill the player playing long. Whether you succeed or fail does not matter, as soon as you shoot your teammates are going to round the corner get smokes up, flash the site and push in with their assault rifles. If you do get the pick it is vitally important you move up with them and try to kill rotators as they take the site.

This split concept can be applied to any map, the guy going alone delays his action so he catches players off guard as they are rotating.

Throwing a pick fake
The concept is the same as going for a lead pick, but your shot will just be followed by 1 player executing instead of 3 or 4 others. You want to get the kill and have a player move up into the void created, thus forcing a rotate from the opponent and giving you map control. While the rest of you team gets read to use the numbers advantage to take the other site.
Example: We will use the same blackwidow example, but this time as soon as you shoot, you and the other player are both going to smoke and move up. The player middle will move to cat/doors just like before, but he will continue aggressing into ct spawn. As soon as the player middle starts moving in the other 2 will explode into b bombsite.

This works well if getting a lead pick works out successful for you 2 or 3 rounds in a row.

Counter Picking
Counter picking can be used effectively by both GR and BL. A counter pick is where you send your awper to battle the other awper early round, and then repositioning him mid-late round depending on the results of the first encounter.
Example: On factory BL have established a good A bombsite take on factory. To counter this you would move up to where you can awm up the hill towards BL spawn. As soon as you get there plan on being ready to shoot. If you get the kill you can either fall back into the bombsite, move into pillars, or repeak. If you decide to fall back there is no adjustment needed. If you move into pillars to pick towards mid connector, it would be wise to call for a teammate to rotate into the void you left behind in a halls. If you repeak and manage to keep holding the spot, you have effectively gained a third of the map control.