Importance of the first pistol round, A story from VCT:Berlin
Tags: Gaming, Data Analysis, Valorant, Esports, Riot Games

Pistol rounds in VALORANT are similar to salad in a full course dinner; some may dislike it or believe it is unnecessary, yet it is vital and gets the ball rolling on the server. The pistol rounds establish the president for the match and, more crucially, present a picture of the economy for the teams that is to come in the following rounds.

There are always two pistol rounds in any game of VALORANT, one for each half. That begs the question: what distinguishes the first pistol round from the second? What strategies do teams use to address each of them? Is the second one approached any differently than the first?

I won’t go through the fixed starts for each side or which pistol is best for winning your pistol rounds; instead, I’ll try to shed some light on which of the two pistol rounds is more essential for winning the game, and if so, by how much. The data I will be using for the article will be from VCT Masters: Berlin which was held in September of 2021. So, let’s get started.

venn diagram of the two pistol rounds.

So, we can see right away that there was a total of 66 maps played throughout VCT: Berlin, which translates to a total of 132 pistol rounds played in the entirety of the tournament. From the above Venn diagram, we can see that there were 17 instances were the team that won the first pistol round (Pistol 1) ended up winning the map while there were 14 instances were the team that only won the second pistol round (Pistol 2) ended up taking the map home.

Meanwhile, there were a total of 29 cases where the team that won both pistols ended up winning that particular map, which is understandable given that anyone with even a basic understanding of VALORANT’s economy system can see why that number is so high.

pistol round win cases to map wins

However, those six occasions in which the team lost both pistol rounds but still won the game are not included in the Venn diagram. Such occurrences are uncommon, but there is something unusual about these six cases, which we need to address.

The icebox anomaly

Among those six double pistols round losses to map wins that occurred all though VCT: Berlin, FOUR of them were on the map Icebox:

1. Crazy Racoons vs Gambit Esports (W)

2. Gambit Esports vs 100T(W)

3. Vision Strikers vs Gambit Esports (W)

4. Vivo Keyd vs Team Envy (W)

Icebox is known for being a particularly attacker-friendly map, with a 61 percent win percentage for the attack side in the competition and saw some incredible comebacks on his very particular map all through the tournament. Perhaps it has something to do with the map’s layout, which has a plethora of issues in my opinion, or perhaps it was just a coincidence, but it’s definitely worth noting.

Returning to our original question, which pistol round is more crucial? To answer this question, we’ll go back to our original classification of pistol rounds in the previous graph.

· Won Pistol 1 but lost Pistol 2 and won the map (26%)

· Lost Pistol 1 but won Pistol 2 and won the map (21%)

· Won both Pistol 1 and Pistol 2 and won the map (44%)

· Lost both Pistols but won the match (9%)