ESL One Cologne Pick’em’s Day 1

When you first start out you’ll be tempted to try to bet as frequently as possible, don’t. Wait for matches with good odds where you or the predictors know the teams. Never force yourself to bet, bet on matches that you are confident in. You may go days or weeks without placing a bet, you’re not in a rush, wait for bets you are comfortable and confident in and profit should follow.

If there’s any uncertainty, don’t place a bet. Save your skins for another day. There will be plenty of other matches that you can bet on.

Betting is always risky, that’s unavoidable. But staying inside a ‘safe zone’ will help cover you off from some really silly bets. When starting out with a low inventory, large bets placed on matches with 80%+ odds aren’t going to return much in general (on lounge, even less due to the inconsistent returns) but you’re still risking a large amount of your inventory for very little.

Equally, odds below 30% sound very, very attractive with huge returns possible. But if you don’t know the teams or all the details, it’s very possible the team doesn’t stand any chance. If you think there might be a chance, reduce the size of the stake or consider an ICB.

Always bet with a percentage of your inventory. Think, what happens if you lose an ‘All in’ bet, do you stop betting for the rest of your life, or just get your wallet out and go again? You may think there’s no risk, however there is always risk. If you’re placing a high bet, stick to an absolute maximum of 20% of your betting inventory.

Always leave enough to bet another day.

If you’re feeling angry or frustrated, your judgement get’s very cloudy. You’ll make a stupid bet and lose. If you just lost a big bet or are on a losing streak, instead of trying to force a bet, you should take a step back, calm down and just take a break, come back refreshed with a fresh mindset.

Betting blind is a purely relying on luck, if the underdog odds are 30%, that definitely doesn’t mean the team has a 30% chance of winning. It just means 30% of the betting community chose that team. A late roster change could mean there’s zero chance for the team to win. Check in with our predictions to help give you some more background on the game.

Use the lounge odds tracker to predict the final odds as the start of the match get’s closer. If the odds are increasing/decreasing for the team you intend to bet on the return may not outweigh the risk anymore. A huge significant switch of odds at the last moment may mean that something shady is going on, mostly in very low tier games, or a sudden announcement, E.g standin may have occurred.

Bookies will put up their odds based on their own expectations, as the bets start coming in they'll tweak the odds to ensure it's still profitable for them. That early stage is key to getting an edge on the bookies.

As soon as you feel like you have to bet again to recoup loses, you’ll feel compelled to make bigger bets with bigger risks. This often starts an endless cycle driving your losses further and further. Instead, after a big loss, take a day off from betting (or a week if was really big). .Keep to the proper bet sizing based on the risk of the match no matter what. You are not in a race to win it back, just take it easy.

Do not blindly follow betting site odds and think that they are correct to the true odds. If a betting site has ‘Team A’ as a heavy favorite, it does not always mean that it’s an easy win for ‘Team A’.

SK beat Na’Vi… Na’Vi beat E-Frag. That means SK can beat E-Frag now, right? No.

There are many factors which contribute to the team winning a match, these factors such as player performance, map selection, strategy and tactics which may not apply to other teams.