Play Counter Strike 1.6, with full multiplayer, in the browser

Met what ended up being a great friend in real life somewhere in some random IRC room looking for a 5th member to join my friend's group

He had a special CRT monitor to get the best refresh rate to be as competitive as possible for the game

Feels like a lifetime ago

"He had a special CRT monitor to get the best refresh rate to be as competitive as possible for the game"

People like that always trying to compensate for a lack of skill

Bad monitors are just a gimped setup. Ungimping your setup doesn't mean compensating for a lack of skill. 60Hz LCDs are extremely hard on the eyes because of the large amount of motion blur inherent to displaying something at 60Hz without strobing. They also had very bad pixel response in 1999. They also had medium-high input lag depending on the model and what colors are being displayed on the screen. You also wanted a high end CRT for both better still image sharpness and better refresh rate (lots of them only did 60Hz or 75Hz, and anything that maxed out at 75Hz probably had bad focus, because focus decreases as you raise the refresh rate). Once you start fixing your system (changing mouse polling rate from 125Hz, disabling mouse acceleration), the monitor is just one more thing to fix. All of this is needed just to be able to game competently with the top say, 50% of players (unless your play style just avoids aiming).

I remember in UT99 for years always running into situations where my aim was slightly off in situations where I was dead sure it should have hit. Turns out it just used the mouse acceleration feature in windows: the speed at which you move the mouse influences how far the crosshair (or cursor) moves. Once I disabled that I became about 5x better. The next big jumps were turning off vsync (and making sure it doesn't turn itself back on) and going back to CRT from LCD.

Yeah that's a lot of "gold wire gives better sound" vibes.

Yes, all of that stuff can make a slight difference, but at the end it's not going to be a determining factor in your skill.

you're skeptical but you had to have been there! cheap 90s hardware was jank, and characteristics you take for granted, because they are on standard issue hardware today, were only available on high end expensive machines.

in Eastern Europe we had computer clubs, which were like internet cafes, but without internet. you went there to play lan games, paid by the hour. they were usually packed, and people were usually decent. you had computer club rats, and I was one of them. I played q1, q2 and then cs for money. you show up to a club, strike a pose, "your club's cs fu are that of a dog, I challenge any one of you lamers to de_dust 1x1 deagle only", and then sometimes if you met your match you'd put cash up. even working, well maintained hardware ranged in quality to the point of making significant difference to a game. you always carried your own mouse at least (and sometimes a keyboard), and a config on a floppy disk. but the one thing you learned to spot were monitor makes and brands, for the reasons guy you responding to stated. in fact, occasionally computer club admins in collusion with their house teams will put you on a machine with poor monitor. if you had big team vs team match planned, you'd schedule an outing to a downtown club with known high refresh rate monitors and quality hardware (they were never "the club next door" and their hourly rate was usually higher) to both level the playing field and provide peak possible playing experience.

You don't get it: I WAS there. I'm almost 40. I was playing CS from the very start.

I maintain that the people spending tons of $$$ to try and get an advantage in CS are mostly trying to buy skill, and it never works.