Esports Bet Types

The main esports bet types at a glance

If you have ever bet on football or basketball, most esports markets will look familiar. The names change a little because esports matches are played as a series of maps rather than a single game, but the logic is the same: pick a winner, pick a margin, or pick a number.

The core markets you will see on almost every esports slip are:

• Match winner: which team wins the series.
• Map winner: which team wins a specific map.
• Map handicap: one team starts with a virtual head start on the map count.
• Totals: whether a number, such as total kills, total rounds or total maps, finishes over or under a line.
• Correct score: the exact map score of the series, such as 2-0 or 2-1.
• Live props: in-play markets such as first blood, which settle within the opening minutes of a map.

Books offer these markets across the major titles, and title-specific variations exist too.

For a broader picture of the scene, see our guide to esports betting in Asia.

Match winner: the simplest esports bet

The match winner bet is where almost everyone starts. You pick which of the two teams wins the match, the book gives you a price for each side, and the bet settles when the series ends. There is no margin to worry about and no number to beat: if your team lifts the win, you get paid.

It works the same way a win bet works in any sport. You are predicting the outcome of the contest, nothing more. Because it is the simplest market, it is also usually the one with the most money on it and the prices most people check first.

One thing to understand before you place one: most professional esports matches are not single games. They are best-of-three or best-of-five series, so a "match winner" bet is really a bet on who wins the series, not who wins one map. If you want to bet on a single map, that is a separate market. Our page on Bo1, Bo3 and Bo5 series formats explains how the series length changes what your bet means.

Map winner and map handicaps

Because a series is played map by map, books let you bet on each map as its own contest. A map winner bet asks a simple question: which team wins this particular map? In a best-of-three, you can bet on map one, map two and, if it goes the distance, map three, each priced separately from the overall series result.

Map winner markets are especially popular in tactical shooters. Valorant slips, for example, carry map winner, total rounds and handicap markets as their core offerings². The same structure appears in CS2, where the map pool and each team's map preferences shape the price. For more on that, see our Counter-Strike 2 betting page.

A map handicap is the map-level version of the handicap bet covered in the next section. Instead of betting a team simply wins the map, you bet they win it by enough to cover a margin, usually expressed in rounds. The idea is borrowed directly from football: an Asian Handicap is a bet type where teams are assigned a positive or negative handicap according to their form⁴, and esports books apply the same thinking to rounds and maps. We cover the mechanics in detail on our esports map handicap page.

Handicaps: giving one team a head start

When one team is much stronger than the other, the match winner price on the favorite can be so short that it barely pays. The handicap market fixes that by giving the underdog a virtual head start before the match begins.

Here is how it works in practice. The book sets a handicap line, say minus 1.5 maps on the favorite. If you back the favorite on that line, they need to win the series 2-0 in a best-of-three for your bet to pay, because a 2-1 win is only a one-map margin and does not cover 1.5. If you back the underdog at plus 1.5, you win as long as they either win the series or lose by a single map.

The concept comes straight from football betting, where a handicap bet is a bet on the result after adjustment by the set handicap, offered either as a single bet with the entire stake on one line, or as a split bet where the stake is divided equally between two adjacent lines⁵. Esports books use the same structure, with the handicap applied to the map count in MOBAs or the round count in shooters. Dota 2 slips, for instance, list map handicap alongside match winner and total kills².

Handicaps do two things for you. They turn a lopsided match into a competitive bet, and they let you back a strong favorite at a better price than the plain match winner offers, provided they win convincingly. The trade-off is simple: better price, harder condition.

Totals: kills, rounds and maps

Totals markets ask whether a number in the match will finish over or under a line set by the book. They come in three main flavors in esports.

Total maps is about the length of the series. The book sets a line, commonly 2.5 in a best-of-three, and you bet whether the series finishes over or under it. Over 2.5 means the series goes the full distance to a deciding map; under 2.5 means one team wins 2-0.

Total kills is the signature MOBA total. The book adds up the kills scored by both teams across the match and you bet over or under the line. Total kills is a standard market on both Dota 2 and League of Legends slips¹, and Dota 2 books list it among their core markets alongside match winner and map handicap². Because kill counts vary hugely by matchup and playstyle, the line moves with the teams involved.

Total rounds is the shooter equivalent. Valorant slips carry total rounds as a core market², and the same market appears in CS2. You are betting on how many rounds the map takes to finish, which depends on how close the teams are.

PUBG does things differently because it is a battle royale rather than a two-team contest. Instead of kills and rounds, PUBG slips offer champion team, total kills and final placement markets², so you can bet on who wins the whole lobby or where a team finishes overall.

For a deeper look at kill-based markets, see our page on esports prop bets.

Correct score: calling the exact result

The correct score bet takes the match winner idea one step further: instead of picking who wins, you pick the exact map score of the series. In a best-of-three, the options are 2-0 and 2-1 for either team. In a best-of-five, they expand to 3-0, 3-1 and 3-2 each way.

The appeal is the price. Because you have to be right about both the winner and the manner of the win, correct score pays considerably more than the match winner market on the same team. A team priced short to win the series might be several times that price to win it 2-0.

The risk is equally obvious: a team can win and still leave your correct score bet losing, because they needed the sweep and took a decider instead. It is a market for when you have a view not just on who wins but on how the series plays out.

Live props: first blood and in-play markets

Live betting is where esports markets get creative. Because every game is streamed with a full view of the action, books can offer in-play markets that settle within minutes.

The most famous is first blood: which team draws the game's first kill. It is listed among the standard live props on major-title esports slips¹, and it appears on League of Legends boards alongside match winner and objective markets like Baron and Dragon². First blood typically settles within the first few minutes of a map, which makes it fast, dramatic and popular.

League of Legends slips go further with objective markets: you can bet on Baron and Dragon outcomes in addition to the match result². These are the esports version of the "first team to score" idea in football, where you bet on which side gets the opening objective.

In-play betting on esports works much like in-play betting on football, where bets may be placed after kickoff, in the midst of the match⁶. The odds move constantly with the state of the game, and a team that goes behind early can drift quickly. Our page on live esports betting odds explains how those moves work.

Bet limits: minimums and maximums

Esports bet limits are friendlier to small-stakes players than most people expect. Minimum bets start at $1, with maximums of $500 or more across major global tournaments¹. That range covers almost everyone: you can have a small interest in a match for the price of a coffee, while serious bettors have room to stake meaningfully on the biggest events.

Two things to keep in mind. First, limits vary by market: a major tournament final will typically accept larger stakes than a minor-league group stage. Second, deposits are separate from stakes, and some platforms set their own entry point; one Asian esports operator requires a minimum deposit of RM10 to get started². Check both before you plan your betting.

Titles covered

The depth of markets depends on the game. The core titles covered by esports books are Dota 2, Mobile Legends, PUBG, Valorant, CS2 and League of Legends², and these carry the full range of markets described above.

Each title has its own market personality:

• Dota 2: match winner, map handicap and total kills². See our Dota 2 betting guide.
• League of Legends: match winner, first blood and Baron/Dragon objectives². See our League of Legends betting guide.
• Valorant: map winner, total rounds and handicap². See our Valorant betting guide.
• PUBG: champion team, total kills and final placement².
• Mobile Legends: one of the most bet titles in Southeast Asia. See our Mobile Legends betting guide.

Beyond these, books list markets on a wide range of competitions, and the broader betting world in Asia includes esports alongside traditional sports; in Japan, for instance, a bookmaker-guide website covers soccer, baseball, basketball, esports and more⁷. For a comparison across games, see which esports games you can bet on.

Odds formats: decimal, fractional and American

Esports books display their prices in three formats, and they all say the same thing in different ways.

• Decimal odds are the default across Asia. The number shown is the total return per unit staked, including your stake, so a coin-toss price of 2.0 means you double your money if you win.
• Fractional odds show profit relative to stake, the traditional British style, so the same even-money price is written 1/1.
• American odds show how much you must stake to win 100 units on a favorite, or how much a 100-unit stake wins on an underdog, so even money is written +100.

Most books let you switch between formats in the settings, so use whichever you read fastest. The price itself does not change with the format, only the way it is written. If you are new to how prices move and settle, our page on how esports betting works walks through it.

Single bets and combining bets

Everything described so far is a single bet: one selection, one stake, one outcome. Books also let you combine selections into multiples, where two or more picks must all win for the bet to pay.

The structure is the same as in traditional sports betting, where multiples combine selections across matches, such as a double on two outcomes or a treble on three⁸. Esports books apply the same mechanics: you can combine a match winner from one series with a map total from another, and the odds multiply. The catch is equally familiar: one losing leg sinks the whole bet, so multiples are harder to land than singles even though they pay more.

A practical approach for a first-timer is to keep bets single until you are comfortable reading the markets. A single match winner bet is easy to track; a five-leg combination across three titles is not.

Who can bet, and where

Whether you can legally place these bets depends entirely on where you are. Esports betting is illegal in Singapore, and the authorities there state this plainly³. In the Philippines, regulated operators hold licenses covering sports betting on a wide range of offerings, with esports betting among the approved electronic gaming products⁹. In much of the rest of Asia, the picture is mixed, and the practical risk of using an unlicensed offshore site is that you have no protection if the operator refuses to pay.

There is also a distinct corner of the scene worth knowing about: skin betting, where players stake in-game items rather than cash. Platforms such as Max+ allow users to use skins to bet on both traditional sports and esports competitions¹⁰. That works differently from real-money betting, and we cover it separately in our guides to skin betting and skin betting versus real money betting.

If you are traveling or living abroad in Asia, our page on esports betting as a visitor or expat covers accounts, access and the law by country.