Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Match Settings

This article covers the Match Settings for CS:GO. For the full rules please refer to the CS:GO Rules page.

Series Lengths

Matches are played as a best of 1 in the Regular Season, a Best of 3 in the Playoffs and a Best of 5 in the Finals.

Server Settings

A server owned by the High School Esports League may be provided for an official match, and will be provided for postseason/grand final matches. Server region and maps played must be determined in advance to the match and relayed to the High School Esports League administrator overseeing the server assignment. If a server owned by the High School Esports League is not provided, a server hosted on PopFlash.site server must be used. The higher seed will create the PopFlash lobby with the following settings:

• Location: To be determined by team captains before the match begins in accordance with rule 7.2.3.

• Map: To be determined by map veto in accordance with the tournament stage series length in 7.2.1. and the corresponding map veto procedure in the sub-rules of 7.2.4.  

No servers other than those hosted on PopFlash.site are to be used without prior written consent from High School Esports League administration.

Server Region Veto

The following server regions are available for use in official matches:

• NYC, NY USA

• Dallas, TX USA

• Los Angeles, CA USA (San Jose, CA USA on HSEL owned servers)

• Chicago, IL USA

If teams are unable to come to an agreement on a server region to play on, the following server veto will be used:

• The higher seeded team bans one server region

• The lower seeded team bans one remaining server region

• The higher seeded team picks one remaining server region on which the match will be played

Map Veto

The higher seeded team will have the ability to decide which team will act as Team 1 and which will act as Team 2.

Best of One

Teams will take turns banning until there is a single map left, starting with Team 1 (3 bans per team). A knife round will be used to determine starting sides.

Best of Three

Teams will pick/ban in the following format:

• Team 1 bans a map

• Team 2 bans a map

• Team 1 picks the first map

• Team 2 picks their starting side for the first map

• Team 2 picks the second map

• Team 1 picks their starting side for the second map

• Team 1 bans a map

• Team 2 bans a map

• The remaining map will be map three, with a knife round used to determine starting sides once on map three

Best of Five

Teams will pick/ban in the following format:

• Team 1 bans a map

• Team 2 bans a map

• Team 1 picks the first map

• Team 2 picks their starting side for the first map

• Team 2 picks the second map

• Team 1 picks their starting side for the second map

• Team 1 picks the third map

• Team 2 picks their starting side for the third map

• Team 2 picks the fourth map

• Team 1 picks their starting side for the fourth map

• The remaining map will be map five, with a knife round used to determine starting sides once on map five

Map Pool

The following maps are available for play in official matches:

• Dust 2

• Inferno

• Mirage

• Nuke

• Overpass

• Train

• Vertigo

Overtime

Best of One

All matches played in the Best of One format will be played with no overtime (i.e. matches can tie 15-15).

Best of Three and Best of Five

All matches played in the Best of Three or Best of Five format will be played with overtime in the following format:

• MR3 (Three round halves, win at 4 points in overtime)

• 10000 starting money