How Valve’s coaching rules have impacted two of America’s best teams

Last year Valve rocked the competitive Counter-Strike world by severely restricting what coaches are allowed to do at LAN events. Previously some teams were using their coach as a sixth player, getting them to make the in game calls, and point out anything the players may have missed. This allowed players to purely focus on the mechanical side of the game, as the coach could speak to them at all times, adjusting tactics on the fly and giving them more information than they could ever need. This created a scene where teams with top coaches were rising to the top, whereas those that gave their coaches a lesser role started to loose ground fairly quickly.