Player study

A player study is one page about one opponent on one map, read from their last three matches on that map. It says who they are, where they are at each moment of the round, what their team does, how they open rounds, and the flashes, HEs, kill spots and force buys of all three matches put together. It's your match prep for that player: the page's small heading says Match prep and the map.

You open one three ways:

• Study on a player in your FACEIT match room, with the browser extension: the study opens on that player and the room's map. Study a player from your match room walks through it.
• Player study on the web app's home screen: type the opponent's FACEIT nickname, or paste their profile link, pick a map, and press Open the study. No match room needed.
• A player's name on any match in the web app: it opens their study on that match's map.

The three matches

Prefire goes back through the player's FACEIT history, newest first, up to their last 40 matches, and takes the last three on this map whose demo FACEIT still keeps.

A study reads all three, never part of them: one match is one game plan against one team, and Prefire won't read habits from it. Until every match is read, the page shows only a chip for each match and how far it's got - Matches read: 1 of 3 - and every section waits. The study is drawn once they're all read, all at once.

Getting them read. With the extension, pressing Study - and the study page itself, when it opens - opens the FACEIT room of each match Prefire hasn't read yet, behind the study, with Watch demo lit up. Click Watch demo in each one: the room sends its match's demo to Prefire and closes itself, and the study picks the match up once it's read. The Open room to add chip does the same for one match by hand, for a room you closed or one that didn't open.

When a match couldn't be read, the study is drawn from the others, and the line under the chips says so: Based on 2 matches: the rest couldn't be read. Too little to read habits from.

When FACEIT only has one or two. A player who hasn't played the map lately may have only one or two matches on it with a demo - FACEIT keeps a demo for about a month. The study is then drawn from those, with a caution: Only 1 match on Mirage with a demo: too little to read habits from. Read it as a hint, not a habit.

The top of the page says how many matches and rounds the study is built from. Each match Prefire reads for the first time counts toward your daily limit of new demos; a match someone already sent is free.

Getting around

• The section list - Player, Positions, Team reads, Opening duels, Flashes, HEs, Kill spots and Force buys - sits beside the study on a wide screen and above it on a phone, and marks the section you're reading. Click one to go there.
• One T / CT switch, at the top, sets the side for Positions, Team reads and Opening duels together.
• The map chips open the same player's study on another map.

Player

Their numbers over the three matches:

• Kills / deaths, and ADR (damage to enemies per round) on each side.
• Role on each side, with the figure that earned it, such as "Lurker · Away from the hit in 45%".
• AWP on buy rounds: in how many of their full and half buy rounds they had an AWP or an SSG 08.
• Opening duels: in how many rounds the first kill of the round involved them, and how many of those they won.

Roles

A role is a read from counts, not a title: it says what the player did often enough in these three matches, measured like this, in this order:

With fewer than 6 rounds on a side, no role is given for that side: the card says Not enough rounds.

Positions

Where the player is at each moment of the round. Pick a moment and the table lists the five places they were most often, with the share of their rounds on that side and the count.

Each round gives one place to each moment: the place they spent most of it in, alive. A moment they didn't live to see doesn't count.

Under the table, the heat of all three matches is drawn on the radar, one on top of the other: where they spent their time on that side, from the cold outer bands to the hot centre. The heat is the whole round, so it stays the same when you change the moment.

The places are the game's own place names, the ones the map gives every area, written out to read: "TopofMid" becomes "Top of mid".

Team reads

What the player's team did around them.

On T:

• Where the team hits, by buy: A, B or no hit, for each buy matchup - their team's buy against the other team's: pistol, eco or force, half and full. The site a round counts for is the first one any of them stood on for 2 seconds, or planted at. The four matchups with the most rounds get a row each, with at least 3 rounds; the rest are summed in Other.
• How fast they hit, by buy: Rush before 1:30, Mid by 0:45, Late after that.
• Their site vs the team's: where the player ended the round against where the team hit. A lurker ends away from it.

On CT:

• Where they start: the site they were on at 1:40, or no site.
• Whether they rotate: their site at 1:40 against where the round ended for them: Stayed, A to B or B to A.

Opening duels

How the player opens rounds on that side: in how many rounds they were in the first duel, and how many of those they won. Then each duel, in the order they happened: the time, won or lost, the weapon, where they stood against where the other player stood, and the round. Click the round to replay it under Force buys. Six are shown; a button like Show all 9 lists the rest.

Top flashes

The flashes that did the most. Each match's best flashes are picked first - ranked by what they earned per throw, plus the one they used most - then the three matches' picks go together and the three that blinded enemies longest are shown. The one they used most is marked Most used when it makes the three.

What one flash earns in its match:

• every second an enemy was blinded counts for it, and each flash assist (a kill it helped with) adds 3 seconds;
• every second it blinded a teammate, or the thrower, counts against it;
• a blind shorter than 1 second doesn't count: that's a glance, not a flash.

Within a match a lineup is ranked by what its flashes earned per throw, blended with one of the player's average throws. That way a lineup that works every time beats one lucky flash: four throws at 5 seconds come out ahead of a single one at 5.2.

The best throw is drawn on the radar: the player's path from pulling the grenade out to throwing it, coloured by how they moved (rose running, green walking, violet dots crouched, sky dashes in the air), then the flight. Under it, How it was thrown replays the throw with the keys they held lit up, their speed and a one-line summary such as "Running W, left click".

Point at the ring where they let go to copy a setpos line: paste it into the console on an empty server and you stand where they threw from, looking where they looked. It can't carry a jump or a run-up; the replay shows those. Save keeps the lineup in your library.

Top HEs

The three HE lineups that did the most damage to enemies across the three matches.

• A lineup is the HEs thrown from about the same spot that burst in about the same place, both within a few metres.
• Ranked by total damage over every throw in its match. A lineup that never hurt anyone isn't listed. The same lineup thrown in two matches shows once, with its better match.
• The card shows the damage, how many times it was thrown and how many enemies it hit, then the damage per throw, the best throw's damage and its round.

The throw, How it was thrown, setpos and Save work as they do for flashes.

Kill spots

Where the player stood when they got their kills, on each side, with the guns they used, from all three matches. Kills a few steps apart count as one spot, and a spot needs at least two kills; the same spot in two matches is one spot with both matches' kills. The five hottest are shown. Point at a spot, or at its line in the list, to see how many kills it had and with what.

Force buys

What the player does when their team can't afford to buy, over the three matches.

• The read, for example "Forced 3 of 4 times his team was short": how many of the rounds their team was short they forced, and whether they forced with their team or bought while the team saved.
• Short means the team's average money at buy time, theirs included, was under $3,500. A pistol round never counts.
• Forced means they left spawn with $2,000 or more of new equipment, or spent 60% or more of their money. They forced with their team when most of their side spent big too.
• Every round is a cell in a strip, one strip per match: pistol, eco, force, half buy or full buy, with a bright rim on a force made while the team saved.
• What they buy on a force, and what they bought for a teammate, listed apart.
• Rounds to watch: up to three of their forces, from any of the matches, replayed on the radar in 2D: the whole round with all ten players, the grenades, the kills and the bomb.

What a study can't tell you

• Three matches is a small sample. A read like "B in 4 of 7 rounds" is a habit worth checking, not a certainty. The tables give their counts, and the top of the page how many rounds the study has, so you can judge. One or two matches is less again, and the page says so.
• No role under 6 rounds on a side. With fewer, the card says Not enough rounds.
• A role is a count, not a job. It says what they did in these matches, not what their team calls them.
• The team isn't tonight's team. On FACEIT the four players around them can change every match, so Team reads say how the player fits into a team, not a plan the people beside them tonight will run.
• Places are the game's own names. They're the names the map gives its areas, not the callouts your team uses, and a broad one, like the middle of a map, doesn't say which corner.
• The heat doesn't follow the moment. It's the whole round; the moment's table is where the timing is.
• Only matches FACEIT still has a demo of. About a month back, up to their last 40 matches.