Mistakes in Esports Betting You May Want to Avoid – and Their Solutions

Given the rapid growth of the eSports sector, and its increasing popularity around the world, it is not surprising that many of the best betting sites, according to Legalbet.UK, are now offering a variety of markets on eSports events.

As an eSports fan, you may be interested in betting on your favourite teams and players, but while this can be a fun pastime, and can even occasionally bring you a profit, betting successfully in the long term is hard work. The road to betting success is littered with traps and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can end up in a world of trouble. Here are some of the main mistakes to avoid.

Mistake One: Using Essential Money for Betting

Many eSports bettors go wrong here, right at the start, by betting money that they don’t have or can’t afford to lose. This is one of the worst things you can do. Even if you have hopes of eventually becoming an eSports betting expert, that process takes a long time. It also involves managing your finances correctly. If you are wagering your rent or grocery money, then you’re heading for disaster.

Solution: Set Aside a Betting Fund

Whether you want to take your eSports betting seriously or see it as just a bit of fun, you should never bet with essential money. Set aside a small amount that you can afford, and treat your betting like a leisure activity, such as going to the movies. If you can’t set aside a fund right now, then don’t bet until you can.

Mistake Two: Chasing Losses

Every bettor has felt the urge to chase losses at some time. No one likes to lose and sometimes when a bet or bets you were confident about let you down, the temptation is to pile in and make back the money that you lost so that you can finish the day with a profit. The end result can be a spiral of ever bigger, ever more foolish bets that end up turning a bad day into a disaster.

Solution: Have a Plan and Stick To It

One of the biggest skills in eSports betting is mastering your emotions. The best way to learn this is by having a structured plan for your betting. No matter what happens, don’t deviate from the plan.

It may also help to remember why you’re betting. If it is to have fun, then it doesn’t matter if you end the day with a losing bet. And if you want to be a serious eSports bettor, then remember that success is determined by your long-term profit and loss: how much you win or lose on any given day is irrelevant.

Mistake Three: Not Doing Your Research

This mistake applies to those who want to take their eSports betting seriously. If you’re betting for fun with money you can afford to lose, then it doesn’t matter. But you can’t take that mindset into serious eSports betting. Bookmakers leave no stone unturned when setting the odds, and there are plenty of professionals out there who put the work in.

Solution: Do the Work

There is no way around this. To succeed at eSports betting, you have to know at least as much as the experts. Focusing your energies on one game or a small range of tournaments can keep the work to a manageable size, but make sure you are as well informed as you can be on the teams, the players, the games, the rules, and every other aspect of your favourite eSport.

Mistake Four: Chasing Winners

This might sound counterintuitive. After all, aren’t winning bets the source of your profit? Yes, but only in a narrow sense. It isn’t actually that hard to find winners. In fact, all you need to do to find a bunch of winners is just bet on all the short-priced favorites in the next esports tournament. If you did this every day, you’d have a lot of winners and make a profit, right?

Wrong. The secret to betting successfully is to bet when the odds are in your favor. If a team is 5.0 to win a tournament and you think they should be 4.0, that could be a bet. This concept is known as ‘value’ and value can be found at all levels of the market, from short-priced favorites to underdogs.

Solution: Practice Setting Odds

Of course, no one can ever establish precisely what the ‘true’ odds are for any particular bet. You will only know that you are getting it right if you make a long-term profit. But you can get into the ‘value’ habit by trying to set your own odds for a market you are thinking of betting in. This can take some getting used to but by trying to quantify your opinion, you will be thinking like a professional esports bettor.