Esports Guide: Understanding How Odds and Betting Lines Work

Betting on esports nowadays has become easier than you think. With the help of online channels, you can now enter various betting schemes that make esports betting much faster, broader, and most importantly, more profitable.

It’s a simple concept - you choose a bookie, you enter the games, you put your money on a team you think would win, and repeat the process. It’s just like the old times, but better.

However, the new times bring an entirely different experience that involves more than just a three-step process. Many esports betting guides will tell you to go beyond this process and dig deeper, just as how this guide will prompt you to. Being able to successfully place winning bets on esports games takes studying how the lines actually work, and what the odds are telling you to do.

How does esports betting actually work?

If you’re one to engage in traditional sports betting, then you’ll get the hang of betting on esports pretty quick.

The most basic form of betting on esports is match winner or match win, which is also called a moneyline bet. This type of betting is usually participated by esports betting starters as the format only requires you to simply pick the outright winner of a match.

Betting odds show the probability of a team winning a particular match. They are numerical representations which bookmakers generate according to their view on the teams and tournaments set to take place.

Betting odds can vary according to which country or bookmaker you are betting from; they can come in the form of fractional or decimal, with the latter being the most commonly used.

To avoid confusion, keep this in mind: the higher the odds, the lesser chance a team has of winning the match. The lower the odds, the higher chance a team has of winning the match.

The opposite can be misleading at times, but you’ll learn your way around it once you engage in esports betting more regularly. And when you’re ready to take it up a notch, there’s esports betting guides here that will take you to a more in-depth analysis of what to do with them in a more complex way.

Basic types of esports bets

Many esports betting sites have opened newer betting lines as more betting niches are being formed, but let’s stick to the basics before we dive in to the complex ones. Engaging in various esports games you can choose to bet on:

• Outright Winner - which is essentially choosing which team would win

• Draw - you are betting on the outcome that match results in a draw

• Over/Under - you are betting on whether the team’s score lies below or above the perceived score which the bookmaker predicts

• Total Rounds - you are betting on whether the match will go over or under a specific number of rounds

• Handicap betting - this betting is a little more complex than the usual. Often, bookies would ‘handicap’ a highly-favored team by lessening their odds and adding it to that of the weaker team. It’s a way of leveling the playing field. So you would bet on the team with the handicap advantage or the one with the disadvantage. It takes research to successfully engage in handicap betting, and there’s lots of esports betting guides here that will teach you how to do it.