Is CSGO Betting Profitable?

The act of Counter-Strike betting is only possible due to the game’s thriving professional scene, also known as Counter-Strike esports. Watching professional Counter-Strike has become a regular form of entertainment for passionate fans, but most find it too boring to watch an entire series without money on the line.

As a result, these fans wager real money on the victory of their favorite teams on betting sites, also known as bookmakers. If the team they bet on wins, they will have their initial bet returned and receive additional funds which are their winnings. However, a loss will result in the disappearance of these funds.

How CSGO Betting Works

If you’re entirely new to the betting world, let’s briefly go over how CSGO betting actually works.  The process starts with choosing a bookmaker, in other words, a betting site. Players must select a reputable bookmaker, create an account, and deposit funds to the website. Money can be deposited through real-money payment methods, or through Counter-Strike skins and even CS2 E-Sport betting which can sometimes turn a profit.

Once the player has funds on the website, they can begin placing bets on various outcomes. Betting markets will be opened for live or upcoming Counter-Strike matches, and players can place bets on different outcomes such as Match Winner, Map Winner, Exact Score, Handicap, and more.

After placing the bet, the wager will be locked until the match is over. If the player wins, they will receive their money back with their winnings, and if the player loses, their money will be eaten by the bookmakers.

Counter-Strike betting is a unique method of gambling, as you are not relying on luck-based outcomes as you would in Roulette, Crash, or Dice, which are some of the most popular CSGO gambling games.

Instead, you are wagering money on real players and teams that have statistics to back them up. This allows you to conduct proper research and make informed decisions when placing bets. Here are some things to consider if you are solely betting to make money.

Knowledge of the Game and Teams

The Counter-Strike professional scene consists of players that make up a team. Since you will be placing bets on these players, you must have a good understanding of each team’s capabilities and skills so you can compare them with each other.

Researching Players and Teams

Before placing a bet on a match, make sure to do thorough research on the two competing teams. In a game like Counter-Strike, a team’s recent form is more relevant to their past achievements, as the game comes down to who can shoot better.

When collecting data on the teams, make sure to only look for recent results that are not older than three months. Take month-old results with a grain of salt, and focus on matches that ended days or weeks ago.

Analyzing Map Pools

Additionally, it is also crucial to research a team’s map pool. Every Counter-Strike series has a veto phase, where the teams will ban and pick maps. Each team will have the chance to pick a map.

Once the veto phase has ended, look at what maps are being played for the series and assess which team came out of the veto with an advantage. Some teams have naturally bad matchups against others due to map pools alone.

Understanding How Betting Odds Work

Every outcome will be given specific odds that are determined by the bookmaker. These odds are shaped based on previous results.

“High odds” refer to betting outcomes that are less likely to happen, such as an underdog defeating the favorites. Since the outcome has a low chance of happening, the payout will be massive, giving players multiple times their wager if it were to hit.

“Low odds” refer to the opposite. Bets with low odds are generally safe as the outcome is likely to happen. There is no “easy money” in this world, which is why bets with low odds only pay a fraction of your initial wager.

Another strategy to ensure stable profitability from CSGO betting is to manage your bankroll properly. A bankroll is essentially how much money you have set aside for betting, in other words, your budget.

Appropriate Budgeting

First of all, determining your bankroll depends on how much spare money you have. You should never put money you cannot afford to lose for betting purposes. Staking your rent money is never a good idea!

You should allocate a specific amount of money for betting, which will be called your bankroll. This will be your betting budget for a set amount of time. For example, two weeks or one month.

Determining Bet Sizes

Once you have determined an amount for your bankroll, it’s time to split that money into different bet sizes. The most effective way of bankroll management is to split your funds into units.

For example, your bankroll is $1,000. You can split this $1,000 into 40 units, meaning each unit is $25. You will use these units to determine your bet sizes. You can set a low bet to 1 to 3 units, a medium bet to 4 to 6 units, and a high bet to 7 to 12 units.

This strategy of sizing your bets will ensure you do not lose all your money in one go, and you will make slow and steady progress, whether it would be winning or losing. Using units will also help you track wins and losses easily.

Discipline and Betting Limits

Finally, it is important to realize that betting can be dangerous and threaten your financial well-being if not managed properly. So, it is extremely important to be patient and set proper betting limits.

You must establish and stick to betting limits to prevent excessive losses. These limits can be daily, weekly, or monthly. Think about how much time and money you are willing to spend on betting, and strictly adhere to them. Failure to comply can fuel a gambling addiction and result in more losses than expected.

Now that our bankroll and budgeting is settled, let’s try making the most out of the money we’ve set aside for betting. Here are some highly effective strategies that can be used to make CSGO betting profitable.

Conducting Prior Research

All in all, the most important thing to do before placing a Counter-Strike bet is to do some research about the match. This research could literally be about anything, and can take you even a minute or two.

Use available resources to see the current form of both teams in the match. Look for their recent results that are no longer than two months old, as data over three months do not matter as much. We are seriously focusing on how these teams will show up today, so we should ignore past achievements and glories.

Momentum plays a key role in Counter-Strike betting. If a team is on a hot winning streak, they are likely to replicate their success since they have a lot of good momentum going for them.

Betting on Live Matches

Live betting is one of the most popular forms of Counter-Strike betting which involves placing bets as the match is being played out. There are several strategies to implement in live betting, as we will have additional information about the game, namely the map picks.

In Counter-Strike matches, there is a veto phase where teams ban and pick maps. Each team has the right to pick a map of their choice, which is usually one of their best maps or a bad map for the enemy team.

You can play around with the veto information to make better decisions on which team will win the series or a certain game. Visiting resources such as HLTV.org will help you educate yourself on the win rates these teams have on the selected maps.

Hedge Betting 

If you’re a person who likes taking things slow with safer betting options, hedge betting becomes an attractive choice. Hedge betting is when you place a second bet on a series that goes against your initial bet, so you are betting on both outcomes for a guaranteed victory.

For example, your initial bet is looking great, and your team is leading by five or six rounds. Things are looking good, until they start playing sloppy, and you don’t think they can get the job done anymore.

So, you would place a bet against your team by betting on the enemy team at higher odds. So now, you have essentially secured a guaranteed victory. However, you would have lost a lot of the potential profit.

Arbitrage Betting

Arbitrage betting is the act of abusing numerous bookmakers who are offering different odds for guaranteed profit. This strategy requires you to have accounts and balances on several different websites.

On some rare occasions, bookmakers do not agree on odds and might give you an arbitrage opportunity, where the odds are severely different on both websites. The difference in odds could allow you to place a bet on either team on two websites.

Before placing the bets, make sure to run the odds on an arbitrage calculator to see if profit is guaranteed. These opportunities do not come up as often, but are always nice for some free money from time to time.

Unfortunately, Counter-Strike betting isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. When betting on matches, you are essentially going against the house, which is the bookmaker. Just like a regular casino, bookmakers also have a “house edge,” which is how they make a profit and keep their services running.

Understanding Betting Margins

For bookmakers, the house edge is called “betting margins.” These betting sites always set odds in a way where they will always receive a profit by setting aside a margin.

For example, let’s say there is a dead even, fifty-fifty matchup about to be played. You would expect that the chances of either team winning is 50%, but you will be greeted with betting odds that are 1.88 to 1.88, instead of 2.0 to 2.0.

You might be thinking, where is the remaining 0.12 on either team? The simple answer to this is the house edge. These betting sites are essentially eating up 12% of your potential winnings to ensure they make steady profit.

With this in mind, you must understand that you are going into every bet losing around 10 to 15% of your potential winnings, which makes it much tougher for you to come out with a profit.

Even if you are betting with a 50% win rate throughout 100 bets, assuming you are betting similar sizings, you will still incur a decent loss. Therefore, you must have a 55 to 60% win rate to actually come out with a profit, as you must defeat the house margins on top of getting your predictions correctly.

Use Website Promotions and Bonuses

Sadly, the only way to reliably counter the house edge is to have a very high win rate in your bets. Other than that, another way to cover the margins is to utilize offers for promotions and bonuses provided by the website.

Some of these promotions come in the form of risk-free bets or cashback and bonuses that will help reduce some of the money lost to the house edge.

Compare Bookmakers

Different bookmakers will set different margins depending on how profitable their business is. Most leading bookmakers generally have lower margins, making it more generous for players. This is because they have a steady number of players which generates them enough revenue to meet their profit goals.

Make sure to visit several websites and have a look at their betting margins. The best way is to find a fifty-fifty matchup and see what the odds are for that match. Or, you can also run through some calculations to come up with the margin.

You’ve probably understood that you have to be very careful when placing bets. You will need all the resources possible to make informed decisions. Here are some of the best websites you can use to gather relevant information on your bets.

Statistic Websites

As we’ve discussed earlier, it is highly recommended to base decisions on statistics. The best website to use is undoubtedly HLTV.org.

HLTV.org is a news aggregator website that provides users with all upcoming and ongoing matches. On these match pages, you will be greeted with lots of vital information such as a team’s recent results, as well as their win rates on each map in the past three months. The website ensures that all the data you see is recent and as relevant as possible.

There is also a comment section on every match page, so you can scroll down and read the thoughts of fellow Counter-Strike fans and their takes on the matchup. You can gather valuable insights from these comments and use them as a second opinion.

Live Ccore Websites

It is important to note that most Counter-Strike tournaments, especially ones held online, have live stream delays. So, even if you are watching these matches live, what you are seeing on the screen is usually delayed by one round.

There are several websites that display the real-time scoreboard and kill feed. These websites are extremely useful for live betting, as the betting odds are shifting depending on what is happening in real time.

These delays are usually only applied for online tournaments to prevent teams from stream sniping. The most prestigious events that are held in venues in front of a live crowd do not have delays, so there is nothing to worry about there.

Betting Communities

If you’re not too confident in making decisions for yourself, you can always join free betting communities on forums or social media platforms such as Discord. There are numerous CS2 betting servers you can join to meet other bettors.

There are chat rooms made for discussing professional matches. You can read through what people are talking about, and also raise your own questions. Everyone here is trying to achieve the same goal, which is extracting as much money from bookmakers as possible!

There is no reason for these people to lie to you and make you bet the opposite side, as there is no benefit for them at all for deceiving you. However, not everyone who chats in these communities is an expert, so do your own research and do not blindly trust anyone.

To ensure your Counter-Strike betting journey is profitable, you MUST not make these mistakes when betting! Avoid these common mistakes that often result in players losing more than they expected.

Do Not Chase Losses

Chasing losses is when you attempt to recover the money you just lost by placing more money on riskier bets. Most of the time, people are not thinking straight when they chase losses, which can lead to larger losses.

Make sure to accept losses and take a break if you are frustrated. Stick to the betting limits and budgets you have set to ensure you don’t make impulsive decisions.

Do Not be Overconfident

A common mistake inexperienced bettors make is getting too overconfident. You might think your prediction is going to be correct, and decide to bet more money since you are so sure.

However, a loss will not only shatter your bankroll, but also your confidence. You must base your decisions on statistics and data over your emotions and understand that losing is still an option even if you’re confident.

Do Not Bet Without Conducting Research

We’ve already discussed how important research is to make informed decisions on your bets. So, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to not do any and bet blindly with zero information or data.

The main difference between luck-based gambling games and betting on professional matches is that you collect as much data as possible to choose the more favorable outcome. Without conducting research, you are essentially gambling based on your luck.

Do Not Bet Under the Influence

Betting under the influence can mean you are under alcohol, drugs, or most importantly strong emotions. We don’t have to explain why being under the influence of alcohol or drugs will reduce the chances of making educated decisions, but the biggest issue bettors face is rage betting.

Rage betting is when someone is on a losing streak, and they are frustrated enough to continuously bet until they win. As you can probably guess already, they are not betting with a clear mind and making impulsive decisions that could incur more losses.

Unfortunately, we have to bring you the harsh reality that most Counter-Strike bettors incur a loss from betting in the long run. As discussed, bookmakers have a house edge with their significant betting margins that are very hard to beat.

Their betting margins essentially cut 10 to 15% of a player’s potential winnings, so a 50% win rate is not good enough to make a profit in the long term. Bettors must maintain a 60% win rate or higher to make really good money throughout the years.

Most bettors understand this and only partake in such activities as a hobby. They are looking to add a layer of excitement to watching their favorite teams play by staking some money for fun. So, we think CSGO betting should be done as a hobby, not depend on CSGO gambling income as a primary revenue stream.

Betting has its ups and downs. You might be on top of the world after a winning streak, but all that progress can disappear if a losing streak begins and you cannot control your emotions. Be very careful when diving into CSGO betting and expect to lose money!