dude...
"The best players may not be good teachers because they literally donGÇÖt know what they are doing."

This is true. I always tell people that I learned how to play drunk. That my sober gaming is only a reflex left over from my drunken night gaming. People always laugh but in all honesty idk what I am doing lol. I am just a guy who likes to drink a beer, kick back, and shoot at some people. I was good at chess once but I am not some strategist mastermind. I have no idea how I would always get #1. Outkill people. Out WP people.

okay, so WTH is figure-8 strafing, and why is it more effective?

I am down to play a game.

haha I didn't mean now. I am expecting company soon. I realize an intellectual man who participates in vigorous sports like chess is sexy and all but I wanna keep it casual.

I will definitely make time for you tomorrow.

or you could just masshole them

Imagine your character from above, and you are watching. A figure-8 strafe is where you are literally tracing the number 8 on the ground with your movement. There are two methods of this - one is to poisition yourself so that the opponent is as at the "top" of the strafe, and the other places you opponent to the "side" of the strafe. At greater distances, a smaller figure-8 is needed, at closer, a larger figure-8 is needed.

The reason this works is that you are doing two things - you are moving side to side, forcing your opponent to react to the sideways movment, and you are moving forward and back, forcing them to react to new distances (i.e. close the gap, pull back, etc). Either way, they are REACTING to you, and you are controling the engagement. Because you do this, you can better predict where to aim, as you know where your opponent will be in relation to you before and as you are moving, whereas they have to predict (often inaccurately) the right place to shoot. They will often shoot where you were, or falsely predict where you will be.

Changing the pattern so that they are alternately at the "top" or "side" during the same encounter adds complexity to the dance, but also can frustrate your opponent even more.

As much as I hate to add to the derailment of my own thread, I think that the figure 8 is a way of adding another layer of complexity to trick your opponentGÇÖs subconscious while still being easy enough to do without thinking about it, once you have practised it that is.

Circle strafing is common enough that many people have learned to compensate for it. Their subconscious is going GÇ£ok, they were going left, now they are backing up, they are about to go right now...GÇ¥. This causes them to shift their aim to the right just as you continue left again in your figure 8 pattern. This should happen at least once before they realize that you are doing a figure 8 strafe and not a circle strafe, and that gives you at least one good chance to brake their aim assist lock. If they are more used to seeing circle strafing than figure 8 strafing, you may trick them several times.

And as you say, with it being a more complex pattern there is likely going to be more variance, making it less predictable.