CS2 Ranks and Premier Ratings Explained

If you’ve just returned to Counter-Strike, you might feel confused when you start looking around for the competitive game mode. Everything’s changed, and now everyone is playing the Premier mode, which doesn’t have the standard ranks, but instead, a numerical elo. Here are some explanations of the Premier Ratings.

What is the Premier Rating in CS2?

Premier rating is your so-called “elo” in this new competitive CS2 mode. It should reflect your skill level and match you with players of similar skill levels. The bigger your rating – the better your rank is. However, there are obvious problems with the calibration of the Premier rating right now, and it should take a while for it to settle. At the start of the match and during halftime, you will see how much rating you will lose if you lose the match or gain if you win the match. This depends on a variety of factors, the most important being the Elo ratings of all players in the match.

Here’s an example of my rating so you can crack a good joke:

• Under “Rank,” we can see that I am 930,137th, making me one of the best million players in this game.
• The “CS Rating” shows that my rating is 13,049 at the moment.
• “Wins” shows the amount of wins I had so far.
• “Win %” shows the percentage of wins. If you strive toward the higher ranks, you should definitely have more than 50% of wins, unlike me.
• Finally, “% Rank” shows the percentage of players that are ranked above me. Let’s see how I will improve this year, and we’ll have an update at some point.

CS2 has a cheating problem far worse than in CS:GO, which also causes the Premier rankings not to reflect the true rankings of many players. I have yet to receive a notification about my rank adjustment because I’ve caught and reported a lot of blatant hackers (even on my team!).

Valve, please fix. Can we have the Overwatch system back in the meantime, please?

How do Promotion and Relegation Matches Work in Premier Mode in CS2?

“Borders” for promotion and relegation matches are at:

• 4,999/5,000
• 9,999/10,000
• 14,999/15,000
• 19,999/20,000
• 24,999/25,000

When you are supposed to go above the “border”, your rating will stop at the promotion border (4,999, etc.) and you must win your next match if you want to reach the next rating bracket.

Analogous to this, if your rating drops below the relegation border (5,000 etc.) then your rating is halted at the relegation border, and if you do not want to drop in the previous rating bracket, you must win the next match.

What is the Lowest and Highest Possible Premier Rating in CS2?

The lowest reported Premier Rating in CS2 is 1,000, and once you reach the “bottom,” that’s it; you can only go up from there. When it comes to the highest, however, the sky is the limit. The highest rating at the time of writing this article was 30,070, held by Shooruk. I’ve seen slightly higher ones, but truth be told, some of these top players can’t gain much when they win, and they might lose a lot if they lose or even draw a match. A lot of them probably focus on third-party matchmaking services most of the time.

Here are the best radar settings in CS2. You’ll need them if you’re still playing the default.