Hello eSports and gambling fans! In this article, we’re going to discuss and analyze some strategies you can employ while betting on eSports matches. Before we head on, a few things to keep in mind:
- Only bet with the amount you can afford to lose! Don’t go broke wagering on your favorite teams or players
- Choose the site you want to bet on wisely (Hint: We discuss this topic on one of our previous articles, go back and read it in case you haven’t already!)
- No bet is ever a guaranteed win, no matter how big the odds! So don’t hop on the train expecting this to be a get rich quick scheme.
With those things out of the way, we can start talking some strats now.
General betting strategy approaches
- After you deposit your bankroll to the sportsbook you chose, divide it up into 20-100 units. Choose a lower number for higher risk and higher reward (recommended for more aggressive bettors), or a higher number for lower risk but also lower reward (recommended for the more conservative people).
- Never risk more than 5% of your entire bankroll in a single bet, no matter how “good” or “guaranteed win” you judge it to be. Betting is unpredictable, and even more so in eSports where the odds are sometimes heavily skewed towards the favorite and upsets frequently happen.
- Diversify your wagers in different types of bets (match win, map win, first to X frags, etc). You can also pick different games and events to place money on.
Maximizing your esports betting profit
Just the same as regular sports wagering, to succeed and have a good return on investment (ROI) in the eSports market, you must know what you’re getting yourself into. You don’t want to fall into one of the traps below because they will eat away at your profit and eventually make you go broke:
- Don’t bet on matches you haven’t thoroughly done your research. If you don’t know the teams and its players in an in depth way, avoid wagering on the outcome match.
- Be very careful when betting on big favorite teams when they’re playing online cups with a smaller prize pool – upsets happen a lot in this type of scenario because the favorites might not be entirely focused on the match or don’t care too much about the result, while the underdog is playing the match of their lives. A lot of people go for the decisions like this and end up having to redeposit more funds or even quit betting for good.
Now that we’ve listed a couple of things to avoid in order to preserve your bankroll, let’s head on to the focus of the article: esports betting strategies to maximize your stack. Let’s go through talking a bit more in-depth about things that were left implicit above in the article.
First of all, you have to research and study hard. Making profits with online wagering on Electronic Sports isn’t easy, and most people fail because they are not willing to put in the time and the work to excel in this market.
Don’t blindly bet on any team or player, ever. Before placing money on you must be confident you have the necessary information about a team’s recent performance, strategies they use, the way they match up against different teams (style of play matters a lot in most games). You have to ask yourself:
- Is one of the teams using a stand-in player for the match? This usually means it is a good idea to bet on their opponent, as most stand-ins don’t perform on the same level as the main pro.
- How much does the team value this event? If there’s a world class team playing in a small tier online cup, you shouldn’t expect them to perform at their highest level – this opens the door for some very profitable underdog wagers since most sites still leave the odds very skewed towards the favorites.
- Are the odds good? Sometimes you might think a team is going to win a game but in order to profit you need to consider the odds being offered. If a team has 1.1 return on a win, you have to estimate (based on your study and research) if that team would really win more than 9 out of 10 games – otherwise, you’re burning through your money.
Another good piece of advice if you want to win is to control yourself. You have to be extremely rational when dealing with gambling. Don’t let your emotions get in the way of your decision making – things such as your “favorite team” or “favorite player” shouldn’t cloud your judgment when deciding which outcome of the game to bet on. Letting your emotion talk also leads to overbetting trying to recover losses (a lot of people lose their bankrolls like this when they go on tilt) and makes you disregard all your prior experience with researches and study.
Learning to keep your emotions in check in a hard skill to master, but one that can pay off hugely once you manage to do it well. It’s also something you have to be constantly reminding yourself of, otherwise, you might get distracted and falter. Some people even seek professional help regarding this issue (professional poker players, for example).
And last, but not least – pick a game (or more than one, it’s up to you and how much effort you want to put into your project) and delve deep in its scene. Read various forums, twitters, reliable news sites –basically just stay tuned to everything surrounding the game and its players, the competitive meta and trends. Knowing all this information will help you greatly during your decision-making process.
Conclusion
Online esports betting can be a very profitable endeavor, but it can also be very costly if you get into the market thinking it’s an easy way to make a great amount of money. You have to be prepared to face downswings and put in a lot of time and hard work to consistently make good picks and good decisions.
Hopefully, you found this article to be of help, and see you in the next article!
