How to bet on esports
An esports match is bet like a short tennis match: a series of games or maps, each with its own price, and a match price built from them. The markets are familiar. What isn't is how fast the games change, how little the book knows, and how small the events at the bottom of the board can be.
Series, maps and rounds
Most esports matches are a series: best of one, best of three or best of five. The match winner is a moneyline. Under it sit the map handicap (a team at -1.5 maps has to win a best of three 2-0), the total number of maps, and the winner of each map. Then come the bets inside a map, and those depend on the game.
The format is the first thing I'd look at, because it changes who wins more than people think. Say a team wins any single map against this opponent 60 percent of the time.
| Format | Chance the better team wins | Fair price |
|---|---|---|
| Best of one | 60.0% | -150 |
| Best of three | 64.8% | -184 |
| Best of five | 68.3% | -215 |
The longer the series, the less room luck has. A best of one is where the upsets live, and a favorite at -250 in a single map is a price I'd be very slow to lay. The esports betting sites page works through how the match price and the map handicap have to fit together, and how to catch a book that has them out of line.
League of Legends
In League of Legends each game is played on the same map, two teams of five, and a game ends when one side destroys the other's base. So a best of three is three games on the same ground, and the bets inside a game are about what happens on the way: first blood, the first tower, the first of the big neutral objectives, the total kills, how long the game lasts.
Those props are where I'd look hardest. Kills and game length depend on how a team likes to play, slow and careful or fast and bloody, and a player who watches one league closely can read that better than a model pricing every league in the world. The limits on those props are tiny, as you'd expect. The book is telling you it knows less there.
The other thing to watch is the patch. The game is updated regularly, which changes which characters and plans are strong, and teams adjust at different speeds. A team's results from before a big update can say less about its next match than its price assumes.
CS2
Counter-Strike is played on a pool of maps, and before a series the teams take turns banning maps and picking them. That veto decides a great deal. Some teams are very strong on two or three maps and ordinary on the rest, so a match price set before the veto is partly a guess about where the match will be played. When the veto comes out, the map prices can be checked against what you know of each team on each map, and that is when I'd bet a CS2 match, if at all.
Inside a map, the game is played in rounds, with the teams swapping sides at the half. The markets follow: a round handicap (a team at -3.5 rounds has to win the map by four or more), total rounds, the winner of each half and the pistol rounds at the start of each half. A map that goes to overtime pushes the round total up, so check whether the total counts overtime rounds before you bet the over or the under.
Live betting CS2 and the rest
CS2 live betting is popular because the game has a rhythm a bettor can follow. Teams buy their equipment each round with money earned in the rounds before, so a team that loses the pistol round usually can't afford a full kit for the next one or two. Everybody watching knows that, and so does the model. The live price on the next round already has the money in it, and you are not going to beat the book by knowing the round after a pistol loss is hard.
You are also watching a delayed stream. Big events broadcast behind the real game, and the book's data feed is ahead of what you see. The live betting page covers the wider prices and the bet delay. I'd bet between maps, when the number has had time to settle, and leave the round by round betting to people who enjoy losing quickly.
The risks that are esports' own
Every sport has risk. These belong to esports more than most.
- Match fixing in the lower tiers. A small event with little prize money and five players on a side is the easiest kind of match to fix. Books keep limits tiny on those events for that reason, and I'd keep away from events I had never heard of, whatever the price.
- Rosters and stand-ins. A team can play with a substitute at short notice. Most books let the bet stand when the team plays under its listed name, so check the rule before you need it.
- Forfeits, replays and technical restarts. Some books void a forfeited match and some settle it as a win, and a map restarted for a technical fault can be graded either way. The void wager page covers the common reasons.
- Who you're betting with. Some sites take in-game items as stakes instead of money. I'd ask who regulates a site like that, and I wouldn't like the answer.
Esports draws a young crowd, and you have to be of legal betting age where you live to bet on it, whatever the game's own rating says. Whether you can bet esports at all depends on where you live.
I like esports as a market for one reason: it is one of the few left where a bettor who follows one game closely can know more than the book. Bet small enough that you find out whether that's you without it costing much, 1 or 2 percent of your bankroll a bet, and less on the events the book won't take much on either.