The real "onliners" of CS:GO

No matter how well you play from your home, or even from a boot camp, you will never, ever win a Major online. In a game where milliseconds matter, the pinnacle of competition happens on LAN with zero ping. You cannot lift up a trophy online.

On LAN, teammates sit together shoulder to shoulder. They can boost each other up, or they can bring each other's morale down. For emotional players, a fist bump with their teammate or a shoulder rub from their coach could be what brings them back into the game.

To players unseasoned to an arena environment, the crowd's roar can be startling and nerve-racking. Experienced players can draw on the energy of the crowd, but the set ups are different. The lights are right in their faces. The small webcams they have are now replaced by the giant cameras shoved just feet away. Photographers are snapping thousands of pictures right at you, looking for any reaction to get the perfect shot. Strangers file in and around you as you try to focus on the game at hand. Players can step to their feet after an immaculate play and feed off the energy of the audience, or they can cause a mistake and let the crowd tear them down.

However, an idea has permeated through the Counter-Strike ecosystem. This is the idea of the "onliner", a player who abuses the fundamental constraints of playing online, namely higher ping, to play aggressively. Onliners use peeker's advantage, an edge only obtainable with higher ping, to win aim duels. Critics of these players claim that on LAN, they would never perform as well due to the loss of their unfair advantage online.

Nobody is hit with the "onliner" accusation more than Ismailcan "XANTARES" Dörtkardeş, whose peeks are so well known that the Steam group "XANTARES peek" has well over 300,000 members. You can find FPL compilations of his swings followed by an instantaneous headshot on YouTube readily. Previously in BIG and now on Eternal Fire, he was supposed to be the star rifler, the one to propel to team into the top tier of Counter-Strike. Yet time and time again, his teams were unable to create any consistent performance on LAN.

The only time his team has ever ranked #1 on HLTV was during his time on BIG midway through 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic which forced all events to be played online. This did not help XANTARES' "onliner" reputation, quite obviously. But is this stigma rightfully applied to the Turkish player?

To find out the biggest onliner, we compared every player's statistics all the way from 2020 to the present day to see which of them performed better online than on LAN, and if such a thing were possible, vice versa.

The Rules

To begin, let's make our constraints. We should only count players who have at least 30 maps on LAN and online since 2020, so as to make sure there's a reasonable sample size from which to form conclusions. In addition, to make sure we're only measuring the best players, we will also only count maps that are played when both teams were in the top 30 in the world, so our data isn't skewed by the best players in the world boosting their ratings playing against some third-rate team which only plays national tournaments.

At the end of all this filtering, we are left with a total of 141 players from which we can determine their online versus on LAN play and the percent difference between the two. Using that method, we can mathematically determine who is the biggest onliner of all, at least in matches that matter.

The "Onliners"

At the top of our unfortunate list is Ádám "torzsi" Torzsás, MOUZ's newest AWPer. As you can see, his online performance is stunning, netting an average rating 2.0 of 1.19. However, his LAN play is dramatically lower, down 12.6% from his online level. This statistic partly helps explain why MOUZ never seem to make it deep at any particular tournament but win enough online qualifiers to appear onstage with the best of them.

Next up is Complexity's very own Johnny "JT" Theodosiou, who performs decently for an IGL in American qualifiers against barely top-30 competition. However, his performance completely falls off a cliff once Complexity is forced to play against the best in the world.

Moving down, we see Ismail "refrezh" Ali and Jayson "Kyojin" Nguyen Van, two players who were kicked from their top ten teams who just couldn't find consistency in big tournaments. As you look at the teams these eight players are on, you'll notice that a lot of their teams are consistently winning tier-two online tournaments and qualifiers, but not translating that into victories on LAN against better competition.

These names might not be the ones you were expecting. Looking at the chart, we can see that XANTARES doesn't appear on it at all! In fact, he sits all the way in 110th. With an online rating of 1.13 and LAN rating of 1.15, he actually performs 1.8% better on LAN than online, the exact opposite of what his "onliner" stigma might lead you to believe. It's curious to see just how far XANTARES' "onliner" stain has perpetuated considering its blatantly incorrect nature.

With this interesting development, we can also turn the question on its head: who is the worst "onliner"? That is, who performs better on LAN than they do online, or as I like to call them, the "onLANers"? Who shows up to games when it counts?

The "OnLANers"

The answers are rather surprising, with Robert "Patsi" Isyanov ahead of the pack by a mile. Spirit's rifler dramatically overperforms on LAN versus his online gameplay, on average holding a 17.9% higher rating. Why he is so much better on LAN than online as compared to his peers has no satisfactory answer, but the difference is astonishing. Perhaps the CIS squad has a star in the making on their roster.

If you asked me who overperforms at LAN the most before I did the calculations, I would probably answer Håvard "rain" Nygaard, who shows up second on the list. With his average rating increasing 10% on LAN, rain always seems to show up when it matters, giving big performances in big games. He is the motor that has kept FaZe a top team since his addition in early 2016.

Nico "nicoodoz" Tamjidi was the driving force that took Copenhagen Flames to two Major Legends stages, so while a bit counter-intuitive to see him so high, he definitely has the ability to pop off in the biggest of games and under the most strenuous of circumstances.

Moving down the list, we see two NAVI players as well as two additional FaZe players. NAVI and FaZe have been extremely strong the last year, coinciding with the renewal of LAN play as coronavirus restrictions were lifted. Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy, so new to the tier-one scene, has made waves with his impact and consistency in big games. Perhaps his headshot-heavy aim is more effective with no ping, or perhaps he is just built for the stage, nonetheless, his LAN performance is simply superb.

The players above will be the reason their teams perform well at the largest tournaments of the year. When the clock strikes midnight, these eight players will be there to propel their teams to glory.

In Counter-Strike, you aren't remembered by your incredible gameplay in online qualifiers. You are remembered by how many trophies you lift. Important tournaments are played on LAN. Impressive players are forged on LAN. In CS, your LAN performance matters more than anything else. Destroying your opponents mere yards away from them will make a crowd roar, while being an "onliner" condemns you to the appendix of the history book.