CSGO player gets an ace with one bullet, and we explain how

A clip showing off a spectacular AWP ace recently made the rounds, showing what might be the only single-bullet ace in recorded Counter-Strike: Global Offensive history. The fact that it even happened at all is pretty amazing. Several factors all came into play at just the right moment to produce this legendary shot.

An AWP ace like this is incredibly hard to pull off in a live setting. Popular CSGO content creators WarOwl and 2kliksphilip have both explored the possibility of a five kills with a single AWP bullet in their videos. 2kliksphillip has even witnessed a five-kill AWP shot during his testing, but said that he was only able to kill four bots himself on further attempts.

We even tried it ourselves, and after a few attempts managed to pull off the single-bullet ace. This was with bots, of course, and plenty of angle checking to make sure the shot was lined up perfectly. The player in the clip, however, didn’t have that kind of time. He was playing in a live game.

In addition to the player’s solid mechanics, there was a level of luck to this shot that is rarely seen in CSGO, and other factors at play also helped the shooter out. To understand exactly how this happened, it’s important to look at the kill feed.

CT grenades had a huge effect on AWP ace

WIN.gg managed to find the original Twitch clip of the shot.

The killfeed show exactly what happened. When the player “Dark_Moon” rounds the corner, he sees “CrazyCount” moving towards him and takes a shot with his AWP. The bullet goes through CrazyCount, into “LadyFamily” for a headshot, then through “makcigo”‘s head, before killing both “MAJKEL” and “Blytor.” One bullet, one ace.

Since all of the game’s terrorists die to the single AWP shot, its not outside the realm of possibility that the AWP could have done this on its own. What’s more interesting is that no matter how hard we tried, we could never get the AWP to take out five targets by shooting them anywhere but directly through the head. That’s where two other critical factors come into play.

Dark_Moon’s final two kills aren’t headshots. That means that banana’s infamous grenade spam played a huge roll in one of the coolest clips to show up in CSGO.

The clips starts in Round 25 with the Terrorist side on a pistol armor buy. The call is a classic B rush. All Ts except for the first and last turn to avoid a flash when Dark_Moon peeks. There are two grenades then thrown into banana, one by Dark_Moon and one by teammate “altfelllllllllll.” We know that because two grenades explode, but only one player is given an assist. Dark_Moon’s HE grenade did damage to the last three T players in the rush. Without the grenade’s help, it’s highly unlikely that the AWP bullet, after having passed through one body and two heads, would have had enough penetration left to kill both Blytor and MAJKEL.

The T economy probably played a factor in this ace

The second factor is the state of the attackers’ economy in general. We know that the Ts are on a pistol-armor buy, and we know at least one of them didn’t buy a helmet. It’s likely that they knew they would be up against a sniper at B, and that would also explain the quick B rush meant to overwhelm Dark_Moon and his AWP. The real question is if lead rusher Maksijo had bought a protective helmet, would that have saved the lives of the players behind him? It’s definitely possible.

What we do know for sure is that this short clip has more going on in it than some pro games. Counter-Strike is a game where a lot of things happen, and all of them can have an impact on the outcome of another. CSGO’s only known single-bullet AWP ace is the perfect example.

WIN.gg also managed to get ahold of Dark_Moon’s point of view, so fans can experience the moment for themselves in first-person.