There are a few economic strategies for CS:GO rounds. Not only do they depend on the sum on your account but also on your plans for the rest of the match and your appetite for risk.
- Full Buy — it’s an ideal situation when you have enough funds to purchase everything needed for your team. Every player has their perfect weapon and all the equipment. The deal is costly, and if you die in the round, you lose everything and might not have the resources to repeat the Full Buy strategy in the next round. That’s why it’s safer to use Full Buy when you still have some reserve after it. The risk might also be reasonable as you have effective means to succeed.
- Quasi Buy — your team still has funds but can’t afford Full Buy or doesn’t want to risk it. Teammates should divide their roles in such a situation. Someone gets a rifle and armor. Someone invests in SMGs for higher kill bonuses. And someone might even take better pistols to keep the money for the next rounds.
- Force Buy — when your team has trouble with its money balance (for example, you lose everything after Full Buy), you can take risks and put your money on the most rewarding weapons. The guns for Force Buy are often SMGs, as they are not too expensive but still give you real winning chances. Depending on your preferences, you might be interested in purchasing better-than-default pistols. The outcome of such a strategy totally depends on your success. After winning Force Buy, you might “update” your CS:GO economy strategy to Full Buy. But losing such a round will force you to downgrade to Eco/Full Save and stay there for longer.
- Eco — the choice when your budget is destroyed, but you still hope to earn more than the losing round bonus. For an Eco round, players purchase pistols and probably some utilities (grenades). It’s ok to just lose Ecos without any additional bonus. But still, every kill here is super-rewarding. The history of CS:GO esports features examples where teams have won an Eco round and turned the match to their favor.
- Full Save — this is a pretty desperate strategy, so use it only as a last resort, when even an Eco round is not an option. You buy literally nothing, so the chance of getting any bonus is rather illusionary. Still, Full Save is not a disaster, and the team has a chance to recover (it mainly depends on the general situation in this particular match).
As a game, CS:GO is awesome because of its strategic freedom. You have different economic scenarios for the rounds, and you shuffle them to build your successful match strategy. This aspect is worth discussing within the team to coordinate your actions. Esports professionals have trainers to be their economic mastermind. In amateur teams, one of the players can take this role.