Esports betting sites

What you can bet

Most esports matches are played as a series of maps or games, often best of three, and the markets follow that shape. There is the match winner, which is a moneyline. There is the map handicap, where a team at -1.5 maps has to win 2-0 in a best of three. There is the total number of maps, the winner of each map, and props inside a map, like which side gets the first kill or the first objective. Live, the book reprices between maps and often between rounds.

The thing to understand is how the match price and the map handicap fit together, because it is where a careless book makes mistakes.

One map, three prices

Say a team wins any single map against this opponent 60 percent of the time, and each map is independent. In a best of three, it wins 2-0 with a chance of 36 percent, and it wins the match, 2-0 or 2-1, with a chance of 64.8 percent.

Bet	Chance	Fair price
Win one map	60.0%	-150
Win the match	64.8%	-184
Win 2-0 (-1.5 maps)	36.0%	+178

A book that prices the match and the handicap from separate guesses can leave them out of line with each other. I'd always check the three against each other before betting any one of them.

Limits and the information gap

The book is pricing teams whose rosters change mid-season, whose form can turn with a change to the game itself, and who may play with a stand-in at short notice. A player who follows one game closely can know more than the trader, and the book knows it. So limits on esports are low, lower still on the second-tier events, and a book that takes a reasonable bet on a top event is the exception.

There is a darker reason too. Lower-tier esports has had match-fixing cases, and books keep their limits small on matches where a few players could decide the result for money. I'd keep away from markets on events I'd never heard of, whatever the price. The general rules on why limits move are on the limits page.

Streams and the live line

Big events are usually broadcast with a delay, and the book's data feed is usually ahead of the stream you are watching. Betting live on what you just saw on a stream is betting on old news. I'd bet between maps, when nothing is happening and the number has time to settle, or not at all.

The rules page

Read how a book settles a match that is forfeited, replayed or played with a substitute. Some void, some stand, and the rule decides whether your ticket is worth anything. If a bet has been voided on you, why a sportsbook voids a wager explains the usual reasons.

Esports draws a young audience, 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 it at all depends on where you live. If you do, size it like any other market: 1 or 2 percent of your bankroll, and less on a market where the book admits by its limits that it doesn't know the number either.