CS:GO is a very popular FPS games with a player base of around 20 million. Each esports tournament is watched by numerous fans from around the globe, who want to see professional players like s1mple and ZywOo in action. And during such tournaments, apart from the thrill you get by watching the action, there is crypto esports betting to participate in.

If you want to bet on CS:GO, the first thing that you must understand is the game’s betting markets. CS:GO has around a dozen different betting markets that you’ll encounter for almost any match.

High level matches, such as Major Grand Finals, will feature even more. But for typical matches, you will get the same set of options. Good bookmakers will seek to provide as many options as possible but you can generally expect to get the ones listed below.

Match Winner

If you want to predict the winner of a match, you can do it by betting either on team A to win or on team B to win. In CS:GO, the match format will always be best-of-one, best-of-three, or best-of-five. In other esports, like Dota 2, matches can also end in a draw because the format can be best-of-two. But not here.

The odds for a match depend upon the competitors’ perceived likelihood of winning. A team that’s regarded as a clear favorite might give you just a 20% return on your wager, while an underdog might give you a 200% return.

It all has to do with the level of risk associated with your prediction. Riskier predictions are better rewarded. But keep in mind that the risk isn’t necessarily real. Just because a team is regarded as being much stronger than the other doesn’t mean it actually is. This can create an ideal opportunity to bet on the underdog sometimes. 

Map Winner

CS:GO matches consist of maps. If they’re best-of-one, they only have one map. But if they’re best-of-three, they must have at least two maps.

When the match has 2 or more maps, you can bet on each individual map. Let’s say you can’t predict who will win the match itself because the two teams are too close to each other in strength. But if one team has a record of 10 W – 0 L on a given map and that map gets picked, it doesn’t hurt to bet on that team to win that map because it most likely will.

This betting market is probably the most profitable if you have deep knowledge of the game’s professional teams. The statistics of each team are available to you, so you can research every competitor and then bet accordingly, based on the data.

Another thing that you can do here is to always bet on the second map of the match. If your assessment says that the two teams are even in skill and team A has won the first map, betting on team B to win the second map gives you a higher than usual chance of winning your bet. Especially if team B picked it!

Betting on who will win a particular map offers lower returns than a standard bet. But it’s also considerably less risky. With enough knowledge, you can minimize the risk even further, to the point where your predictions will succeed quite frequently.

Over/Under

If you want to predict that a map will have over or under X rounds, or that a match will have over or under Y maps, you can often do that. Some bookmakers will always give you that betting option, while others will give it to you only for important matches.

Pistol Rounds

The most important rounds in a CS:GO match are the pistol rounds. These are the first rounds of each half. A map is divided into two halves. After the first 15 rounds are played, the teams swap places and everything is reset, except for the score. The Terrorists become the Counter-Terrorists and vice versa.

The pistol rounds are always the 1st and the 16th rounds of the map. And they are called pistol rounds because the players only have enough funds to buy pistols. They get pistols by default, but they can choose to buy better ones or to invest their initial funds into a kevlar vest.

Handicaps

This CS:GO betting market is perfect for those situations in which you feel confident about a team’s ability to either win without losing a single map or to not lose without winning at least one map. The handicap can be positive or negative and it is always added to the final score. 

If you bet that team A will win while having a handicap of -1.5 maps, their final score will be modified by -1.5. So if they won with a score of 2 – 0, they’re still the winners because the modified score is 0.5 – 0. But if they won with a score of 2 – 1, they actually lost. Because the modified score is 0.5 – 1.

The same thing is true for positive handicaps. A team whose handicap is +1.5 only needs to win one map to be the winner of a best-of-three match. Because in such a case, the modified score will be 2 – 2.5, even if the team lost with a score of 2 – 1.

Handicaps can also apply to the number of rounds. Very often, bookmakers will let you bet that team A will win the map while having a negative round handicap of X. Or that it will win it while having a positive round handicap of Y.

Crypto Betting

These days, an important esports betting option is crypto betting. You can place bets on CS:GO using cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, and so on.

The big advantage of betting with crypto is anonymity. There are far fewer restrictions on crypto betting than on regular betting, which means you get more freedom to do what you want.