When people think of gaming competitively, they think of gamers such as fatal1ty or Thresh, who spend hours each day perfecting how a game is played. However, those professionals constitute only a tiny portion of the community. After a while playing a game such as CounterStrike or Quake, many players turn to gaming at a more competitive setting. The players who have gotten tired of beating everyone in regular servers often look for a new way to play the game. It gives the game a fresh, new feel and greatly adds to the depth of the game. It is almost an entire new game; for example, CounterStrike 5 on 5 is much different from 16 on 16-each player matters, placing emphasis on team coordination that almost never seen in public servers.
For players who are looking to get into competitive gamemodes, the single way to get better is practice. For more customizable games such as Team Fortress 2 or Quake, there are training maps specifically designed to help players improve. For other games, there are always stock maps. Either way, the levels of competitive play usually follow a certain format:
Low: The player who just made the switch over to competitive play. Has little to no experience in playing in a competitive setting, but can topfrag in almost all public servers. Mid: A player who has been playing competitively for some time, but does not have enough gamesense or skill to move up into the High bracket. High: A player with a substantial amount of competitive experience and enough gamesense or skill to be distinguished from the Mid players. Usually very close to the Professional level. Pro: If you are one, you don’t need to be reading this.
To go into further detail, the low and mid players are the vast majority of competitive gamers and the higher brackets usually have a noticeable gap between them and lower-skilled people. These brackets are by no means objective, and it is usually up to the gamer to evaluate himself. Of course, people can lie about skill levels, but it will become apparent in actual games.
The biggest jump in brackets is between Mid to High. There is nothing definite that separates the two; just that the High players’ greater skill or gamesense allows them to win much more easily. Most player peak at High, as only a few are good enough and dedicated enough to make it all the way to the professional stage. Usually, High players are able to compete with Pros, though at a slight disadvantage. But you can’t become a pro just by reading articles, go out and start fragging!