You’d be surprised how much fun this type of betting is, especially with shorter tournaments that only last a few days or so. The amount of anticipation is brilliant, making every penny bet on definite a good investment.
Winner Group / Region
Major CS:GO tournaments, such as the Majors or DreamHack series, usually have several bookies that offer winner’s bracket and winner’s region bets. Both bets are quite similar and straightforward. There is nothing complex about them – basically you are choosing between the groups and/or regions in which you think is the winner. So for example if you think Astralis will win the tournament, you can choose the Europe among region of the winner’s bet or you can choose the respective group.
It’s a similar concept to the ultimate winner’s bets with less risk because you’re not betting on a team, but on a single group or region. Remember, group/region betting can be a tricky business if you don’t know what you’re doing. This is why you should always do your pre-bet research to avoid the risk of losing your money in a stupid way.
Mapes up/down
This next bet is also pretty straightforward, so there’s no need for complex explanations. However, you will see this special CS: GO bet available only during longer contests. In other words, it’s reserved for best-of-three or best-of-five matches. Multi map matches are very popular, especially in big tournament playoffs, so there should be no problem finding events that have maps on / under special bets.
Also we shouldn’t forget about Handicap betting
If there is an additional CS:GO type of special bets that we forgot to mention above, they have to be handicap bets. They are called “handicap bets” in the UK and Europe, while Americans usually call them “spread bets”. The principle remains the same – bookies give an artificial advantage to the underdogs to make the bets the odds are slightly more even. This way, the favourites to win will have much more betting odds, but they will have to win with a certain point advantage. So far as CS: GO is concerned, here is a small example of what a handicap bet would look like compared to a normal match winner bet:
If you bet both options on Astralis and the match ends 16-14 in favour of Astralis, only your first bet would be valid. This is because FaZe had 2.5 rounds advantage due to the rounds handicap bet, which is enough for them to take the win in the eyes of the bookie.
Summarizing
That’s it folks, those were all the CS: GO special bets you should know about. Yes, there are one or two additional ones that pop up now and then, but the ones pictured above are definitely the most common ones you’ll be seeing.