The match flow

How Romish works

Romish is a matchmaking platform for Counter-Strike 2 (CS2). Ten players, two balanced teams, one map that the teams choose. Here is what happens from the moment you press Find Match to the moment your Elo changes.

  1. Find Match

    Sign in with Steam, then press Find Match. You can queue alone or with a party of up to 5 friends. A party always plays on the same team. When ten players are waiting, we start a ready check.

    • Solo or party
    • Up to 5 friends

  2. Ready check

    Everyone gets 25 seconds to accept. If all ten accept, the match is created. If someone declines or lets the timer run out, they get a short queue cooldown and everyone who accepted goes back to the front of the queue with their original wait time.

    • 25s to accept
    • 10 of 10 must accept

    Someone declines or times out: a short cooldown for them, everyone else goes back to the front of the queue.

  3. Teams

    We build the teams for you. Parties stay together. The other players are split so both teams are as close in Elo as possible, with a little randomness so you do not get the same teammates every game. A 8 second reveal shows you which team you are on and who is on both teams. Then the veto starts.

    • Elo balanced
    • Parties stay together
    • 8s reveal

  4. Map veto

    The teams take turns banning maps until one map is left. Each ban is a vote: everyone on the team that is banning picks a map, and the ban closes as soon as three players agree or all five have voted. You get 20 seconds per ban. If your team does not vote, we ban a random map. The last map is the one you play. The pool is on the map pool page.

    • 20s per ban
    • Team votes
    • Last map is played

  5. Server setup

    We set up a dedicated CS2 server with MatchZy, load the teams and the map, and send the connect details to the ten players. If setup fails, we try once more. If it still fails, or takes longer than 3 minutes, we cancel the match with no penalty for anyone and put all ten players back in the queue.

    • Dedicated CS2 server
    • MatchZy
    • 3 min limit

    Setup fails: we retry once, then cancel with no penalty and put all ten players back in the queue.

  6. Live match

    You connect to the server and MatchZy runs the knife round, warmup, the match and overtime. We follow the score live. Other players can watch a live match from the Play page. If your team wants to give up, three teammates can vote to forfeit.

    • Knife, warmup, match, overtime
    • Live score
    • Spectate from Play

  7. Results and Elo

    When the match ends, we update the Elo of all ten players. We compare the average Elo of each team, work out how likely each team was to win, and move ratings by that gap with K = 32. Beating a stronger team earns more than beating a weaker one. Results also update the leaderboard.

    • K = 32
    • All ten players updated
    • Leaderboard

Fair play

Declining a ready check, missing one, or abandoning a match puts you on a queue cooldown. The cooldowns are 5 min, 15 min, 1 hour for the first, second and third offence in 24 hours. Leaving a match counts as an abandon after 5 minutes away. Each abandon also lowers your Trust Score (-5, -10, -20 for the first, second and third in 24 hours). Trust Score is your reliability rating. Server problems on our side never count against you.

Questions? Read the Romish FAQ or go back to the home page.