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Force buys: know when they'll come at you on a broken buy

Prefire reads every round of your CS2 opponent's last match to show if they force buy when money is short, what they buy, and replays those rounds.

· 2 min read · The Prefire team

Prefire's Force buys view: a force round from Vitality vs FURIA replayed on the Inferno radar, all ten players, smokes and the timeline
Round 8, a Galil force with the team, replayed on the radar. From the public demo of Vitality vs FURIA; the players have no connection to Prefire.

The rounds after a pistol loss, and every round after a lost gun round, turn on one question: are they saving, or are they coming? A player who always forces with a Tec-9 and a vest plays those rounds differently from one who saves.

What it shows

Prefire reads every round of your opponent's last match on the map and sorts how they spent their money: pistol, eco, force, half buy or full buy.

A round counts as a force when their team couldn't afford a full buy (an average of under $3,500 each at buy time), but they spent big anyway. Prefire tells you:

  • How often they force. "Forced 5 of 5 times his team was short."
  • Who they force with. With the rest of the team, or alone while the team saved. The second one is a player to watch.
  • What they buy. "Galil AR, Tec-9, full armour ×3." You know what's coming before they leave spawn.
apEX forced 5 of the 5 times his team was short on money, 4 times with his team and once while it saved
apEX on Inferno: 5 forces out of 5 chances, and what he bought on them.

Watch the rounds

Knowing that they force is half of it. The other half is how they play it. Pick a force round and Prefire replays it on the 2D map: all ten players, their weapons and health, smokes and molotovs, every kill and the bomb, with play, pause, speed and a timeline you can drag. It's like watching the demo, without opening it.

Round 15 replayed on the Inferno radar: apEX with an SSG 08 while his team saves, most of them on knives
Round 15: his team saved, and apEX bought a Scout anyway. That's the player to watch.

How to get the most out of it

  • Watch where they go. Forces are often fast. The replay shows which site they hit and how early, and that's where you stack.
  • Take the lone forcer seriously. A player who buys while the team saves is looking for a pick with a rifle or an SMG where you'd expect a pistol.
  • Count the chances. It's one match, so the page says how many rounds the read is based on. Five out of five is a pattern; one out of one is a coin flip.
  • Use it for your own buys. If they always force the second round, an anti-eco buy with SMGs pays off. If they always save, it doesn't.

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