Tips for Betting on Esports In 2024

While reading the content we offer at Esports Betting Sites, one can likely easily deduce that what we focus on are the types of bets you can make on Esports via quality sportsbooks, not necessarily on the games themselves that constitute Esports. This is because we’re gamblers, not gamers, and we love things like sports betting. And since Esports have been catapulted to that level, a few quality sportsbooks out there today actually allow you to place bets on Esports competitions.

However, this is a genre that’s not well known outside of the gamer world, and the fact is that you probably know a lot more about betting on sports than following and betting on games. Well, we want to help you change that. Learn about some tips to help you bet on the games themselves, and you will be in a much better position to win money in the Esports genre.

Top 5 Tips to Help You Win At Betting E-Sports

1: Make Gaming Distinctions

One of the first things you should understand here is that not every type of game is the same within the Esports genre. For instance, the gaming structures of a game like League of Legends, where you’re looking more at smaller battles, are different than a game like StarCraft 2 or Dota2, where you’re looking at legitimate team play and real-time strategy goals and entire battle plans. These distinctions between gaming styles are as important as they are in any type of sports betting.

After all, you wouldn’t use your knowledge of baseball and statistics on Red Sox players to bet on the Patriots in the NFL, would you? Use this same principle here. While technically in the same league as the same sport, you need to approach different games as different sports, and this is particularly true in the realm of fantasy, where you will have to learn different rosters for each team and different lingo, etc. You have to make these distinctions to cut your risk factor down.

2: Learn the Positions

If you’re betting on fantasy and are thus selecting a roster for your league play, then you definitely need to know the positions in each particular style of play (read: tip #1). Though it will still help you greatly when betting on Esports in general to understand the positions. We make it a point not to type in an encyclopedia style format here, so no 5,000 word articles from us.

Suffice to say that you need to go learn about positions in these tournaments like Junglers, Mids, AD carries, Support players, the Flex position, alternates, and other unique positions. Positions will vary per game played, and perhaps even tournament style. You need to learn to distinguish between the players themselves to put yourself in a better position to win a bet.

3: Focus on Those Stats!

Stats may remind you too much of math class, but the difference between a winning gambler and a losing gambler isn’t so much luck; it’s that the winner understood their statistical likelihood of winning. This means you need to focus on the numbers. For instance, let’s just say that KillaFool is playing on a team in a tournament, and the stats suggest that he’s the #1 killer on map X.

With this type of stat, you can eliminate some of your risk by knowing that he’s likely to do well on that map, and thus his team is more likely to win. Extrapolate this with any type of stat: Wins vs. losses for players/teams on entire maps, how well a team does under pressure, how well a team does with a lead, etc. It might seem like work, and that’s because it is. You don’t want to rely on luck here; you want to put in the work so that you’re statistically likely to win a bet you make.

4: Learn the Betting Structures

While betting structures for Esports aren’t entirely foreign, meaning they aren’t necessarily that different from those of regular sports, you will still need to know the structure in any particular tournament on which you can bet via a sportsbook. This means looking at which structure acts in which fashion, and also which is a better prospect for you. You want to understand a straight-bet structure like a match win, and a structure like a basic handicapped odds system.

The goal here is to figure out which type of bet puts you in a better position to win. You’re not going to do well betting unless you know the structures specifically.

5: Use Your Risk-Management Principles (ala Principles of Common Sports)

Not to get too general here, as we do want to aim this specifically at Esports, but there are quite a few principles you can use from common betting to help you. For instance, tips like never betting more than 10% of your stake come to mind. This will help you minimize your risks when betting on Esports. Leveraging bets also works well here.

For instance, let’s say you put down $50 on team X to win the entire tournament. Now it’s the semi-finals, and they’re down 4-2 in a race to five. You see on the board that there’s a live bet you can make, and that’s that team Y will defeat team X. It isn’t paying 1:1, but still you can leverage against your previous $50 here so that you still end up winning.

Putting more money down doesn’t seem intuitively as if it’s minimizing risk, but when the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor, that’s exactly what a leverage bet is.

Hopefully these tips are enough to guide you through the process of betting on Esports. Of course, you still have to put the work in on your end. You have to do the homework. You have to learn about the genre. You have to look up stats relevant to the bets you want to make. We cannot do these things for you. However, we can point you in the right direction and help you get started.

Check out our reviews of the most trusted esports betting sites to get started.