CS:GO

CS:GO placed a much stronger emphasis on competitive gameplay and this has lead to it developing into an extremely popular e-sport played by millions of people, both at home and in tournaments across the world.

It now has much as 9 million unique players per month and major tournaments receive as many spectators as the likes of League of Legends and DotA 2. For example, the ESL One Cologne 2015 tournament had 27 million unique viewers. Prize pots are often in the region of $500,000.

This makes CS:GO an exceptionally popular e-sport with huge interest and great betting opportunities.

The counter-terrorist side will win the round if they manage to defuse the bomb planted by the terrorists, kill all the terrorists, or run out the clock. Though if the terrorists have planted the bomb before being killed off, the counter-terrorists must still disarm the bomb to win.

This gameplay leads to a clear offensive/defensive scenario, with the terrorists being offensive and the counter terrorists being defensive. This opens the game up to a wide variety of strategies and tactics that can be witnessed in competitive play.

An important aspect to CSGO gameplay and a key way it differs to how more casual online FPS games are played, is that Individuals do not win in CS:GO, your number of kills or score is irrelevant. Either your team wins or it loses and this is based on achieving the team objective, not on how many individual kills you achieved personally.

An additional aspect to how CS Global Offensive is played is the use of money. Players are awarded money for killing enemies, completing objectives, winning rounds or losing rounds. You use this money at the beginning of each round to purchase weapons & equipment for that round.

The first round of a competitive CS:GO match is known as the pistol round as all players will not have enough to purchase anything other than pistols & equipment, no rifles.

This round is extremely important as the winners will gain a big advantage in money at this early stage and will be much better equipped in the following round allowing them to potentially gain an unassailable advantage.

If you’d like to learn some more about competitive CS:GO gaming then check out this introductory video:

The Match Format

Due to the wide variety of major CS:GO esport tournaments that are available there is some variation in the format of these tournaments.

However, it is very common for it follow a format of a group stage made of best of 1 matches followed by a knockout playoff made of best of 3 matches.

Maximising betting success during the group stage

The group stages in a CS:GO format are played in a series of best of one games between usually four teams, with two teams being eliminated and two going through.

As we looked at earlier, one game of CS:GO involves potentially 30 rounds, with the winners being the first team to win 16 rounds.

This makes the outcome of a match slightly more consistent and free from random chance than other formats, as a poor early start might lead to losing a few rounds, but this can be recovered from.

There is still greater risk in best of one matches as the first round can affect the equipment for the rest of the early rounds and can give a real advantage to the team that wins that round.

So a weaker team who get’s off to a fast start and win the first round, might be able to use that opportunity to press home a victory against a normally stronger side.

This will normally only have an impact where there is only a small difference in quality though and these early stages can be a good time to put a bet on and make some quick gains.

Betting on the knockout stage

The later knockout playoff stage that follows the group stages will normally be played with a best of 3 games format.

These stages of the tournament will see the informed punter able to make good bets as the best of 3 format, along with the 30 round games, means that the result of the match is unlikely to be affected by luck and random chance.

You can often make a handicap bet in these matches. The handicap bet would mean the team you bet on would need to win the match 2-0.

This type of bet will lengthen the odds in a match where one team is clearly favourite and allow you to make good returns still.

Researching Your Bets

The big key to successful CS:GO bets is research. You should try and find out the history of the teams, their form, any factors that might affect their form like a change in roster.

This information will ensure your CS:GO gambling will be significantly more successful.

Getting the Facts

You need to gather your data on the teams. There are a huge variety of web pages that give you loads of information on teams & tournaments.

Websites likes www.csgopher.com and www.gosugamers.net are particularly useful sources.

Getting a Feel

If you are going to successfully bet on CS:GO then its important to get a feel for the game, to understand how it plays and what affects teams the most, where the upsets happen and why.

The best way of doing this is by watching matches, and thankfully CS:GO matches usually have excellent coverage.

Major tournaments will have official streams for the matches for you to watch, but additionally almost all professional players have their own twitch feeds for you to see how they play.

The tournament streams are especially useful as they often specially highlight players so you can really follow exactly where everyone is and get a good feel for the flow of the game.

Make use of this invaluable resource.