Handicap Betting in eSports

Whether you bet on CSGO, Dota 2, LoL, Overwatch or any other game, you’re bound to encounter handicap bets. But first off…

What the heck is a handicap bet?

Handicap (or “spread) betting is essentially a way of making a match, where there is an apparent winner, more interesting.

The general handicap betting means giving or taking round wins to one of the teams involved before the game even starts, making the odds higher and allowing you to have more fun. And eat more peanuts, of course.

So, to confirm: a regular handicap bet involves giving or taking advantage to one team, making the game more even.

You may encounter a handicap-type bet on a variety of sites and you can recognize it by seeing a (+) or (-) sign next to each team. By clicking on the corresponding odd, you can give or take an advantage to one team and boost your odd value.

Here is an example of a CSGO handicap bet. This game is played in the best of 3 maps format. Therefore, if you want to bet on NiP and take away 0.5 map wins from them, you will have an odd of 2.87. If you’re betting on EnvyUS with a handicap, you’re giving them 0.5 map wins and therefore, the odd is lower.

What about Asian Handicaps?

Something that we will see pretty soon in eSports betting is the good old asian handicap bet. With Asian handicaps, there is no such thing as a tie game, meaning that your team can either win or lose, which makes for a more exciting bet. Like in the regular handicap game, you just give your team a sufficit or a deficit before the match starts and then pray to God that they know what they’re doing and they’re not running around the map like headless chicken.

But what makes the Asian handicap so unique is that, when you give the favorites a deficit, their opponents get an equal sufficit, which means the game will be super exciting to bet on, and also pretty even.

There are many variances in this handicap and we’ll try to go through the most common ones.

Asian Handicap 0

The asian handicap 0 is used when teams are pretty even and you would like to take a draw out of the equation. Here, you would just bet on your favorite team to win and wait until the end of the match. Nothing fancy, move on.

Asian Handicap -0.5

This means that the favorite team starts with a deficit of -0.5 round wins while the underdog team starts with a sufficit of +0.5 round wins. If you bet on favorites and they win by 1, you win your bet.

Asian Handicap -1

Is it starting to get any clearer? Good, we can now move on to the -1 handicap. Following the same principle, if you bet on your team with a -1 handicap, they need to win by at least two rounds for you to win your bet. That’s right, two rounds, obviously because you gave them a -1 round before the beginning. How could you do that to them?

Besides these 3, there are several other similar handicaps that can be used for different purposes. Also, you can use Asian handicap for live in-play betting if you are feeling confident enough.