IMHO - a cheater.
and here's why:
Tournaments - yeah, we have played those too back in the day. There were non-visual hacks which people standing behind your back and watching your every move wouldn't recognize. They would think you were a PRO. Many of you young people do not even remember CS 1.0 ( and its many betas ) even though I am going to recall on CS 1.3 and the most famous OGC cheats back in the day. Those were used across all sorts of tournaments and were one of the first multi-hacks ever made for CS. You would press a home/insert button while playing at home and set up a configuration to your needs. The configuration would then get saved as a .cfg file with all your favorite settings. Later reuse of those would guarantee an instant non-visible hack if it was set up properly. All it took later was a simple .dll based injection (hook) into the cs.exe and you were good to go.... Back then there was no VAC and no Steam. If I remember correctly there were forum-based blacklists where people who 'got' cheating IPs were listed etc. Most busy server administrators would download and load the .cfg on their servers preventing caught cheaters from joining their servers. That system didn't really work as many people were accused of cheating but were clean. Around the same time the first PunkBuster was introduced and if the linux/windows server based had that installed all the clients (windows only) were required the client version to be running in parallel in order to play on that server. It was successful for a while but obviously hackers found ways around it.
In 1999, We have had a few internet-cafes around the town I used to live in. I would spend hours there daily playing CS with friends. At one point my parents rented out a commercial property to a guy who opened an internet-cafe in there. Having always been great with computers I was helping out quite a lot with general maintenance of the machines (around 10) and mainly CS! It was the game every kid in school played after school - back in the day not everyone had their own computer at home so literally all the kids were hanging out at internet-cafes. Some, who couldn't afford to rent a machine were just watching others play ( yeah, sort of like today's streams and for the same reasons - to watch better players have a go and learn and improve from even just watching ). We have had a lot of local tournaments, clans, a lot of competition in general. Those are the times when the internet wasn't as fast it's today that's why everything was happening locally at the beginning. People were not cheating back then. It was easy to tell who was good and who was bad from just the scoreboards and watching the players play...
Some people were extremely good. Fast reactions, lots of headshots, sometimes shooting through walls at common spots, great hearing and sense of direction etc. but you know what --- they weren't any close to what you see today's PRO do... It's a totally different level and you know what's funny - my old friends would have also spend 10+ hours daily to play CS. Yeah it was a different game back then - but the whole thing is very similar. What people do now the older people have been doing years ago - yeah, it repeats - shooting through walls, the same spots to hide, the same tactics... come on people - the same maps! D2? haha The graphics are different and mechanics too but the new CS besides what I have mentioned is the same old CS.
The thing is that what is happening today is unreal... it's unbelievable to watch those PROs demos or watch them live. Some people just take the fun out of the game... drastically... Unreasonable actions like changing the direction of running, always knowing who is where exactly, "random" but exactly on point shots, 50% accuracy? Are you out of your mind!? There used to be HLXSTATS on public servers and even the TOP TOP players weren't any close to 50% accuracy or 50% headshots rate.
I am not saying everyone cheats, not saying every PRO cheats....
The bigger problem is that PROs are being defended by the community of proper noobs. Forget the VAC for now. People who have been playing this game for a month, two, a year have no clue about who is cheating and who is not - who is a pro and who is a noob. Seriously, I don't understand why those people engage in discussions having no idea 1. what makes someone a PRO 2. what's it like to play on cheats and 3. how many different cheats there are available, what do they grab off of the memory and what do they modify and how the post back the results etc.
Now, having played CS since 1999 and its first ever version let me tell you how I finally got pissed off and started cheating myself and then how I gave up on this game after so many years. Yeah I am a cheater and I am not ashamed of it - it gives me a greater sense of judgement on cheaters. Cheating thought me a lot of lessons - both in playing and real life. I have been cheating for years and it's very obvious even by watching random demos and I can make an instant judgement on a cheater having the knowledge 1. what's it's like to cheat and 2. being a programmer and understanding how cheats are made and how they work and 3. having over 10 years experience with CS and game engines. I have had at least 20 - 30 steam accounts VAC banned before. 1 of the accounts I had in good standing for 3 years !!!! I have had other accounts banned anywhere from 2 days even up to a few months playing on cheats. I have been recorded loads of times, overwatched etc while playing on pure WH and people couldn't even tell if I was cheating or just good. I got away with so many suspicions from other players - some admins would offer me an admin access on their servers even after I was accused of cheating. After watching demos they would just say "Sorry, you are really good". It's a truly exciting and funny experience.
The funniest thing of all is the CS community - it's how they go about you, how they go about suspected cheaters. These days if you call someone a cheater everyone in the community will just call you a noob, tell you to stfu and get a life. It's so funny how many people have no clue what cheating is. How many cheaters just sit in front of their computers laughing at this dumb community who protects them. I have been watching youtube videos (cs demos) and reading some of the comments here and I just can't resist to say that 95% of all the people engaging in these cheater-related discussion are purely the funniest and dumbest idiots on the planet. Some people in the overwatch area put up videos asking the community if someone is a cheater while they obviously are.. it's like dude ask yourself what you are doing at the overwatch if you can't decide if an obvious cheater is a cheater...
This whole pseudo-PRO CS scene is what put me off of playing CS...Most of your idols - CS PROs should be sent to VACations soon... but it ain't happening for a simple reason - marketing. If Valve suddenly banned 50% of the CS Pro scene this whole community and game would die instantly.