The further you go from the household names, the further from perfect the markets become, says the former Counter-Strike professional
I would wager that a reasonably large part of all betting is a result of wanting to make a game more interesting to the bettor.
By betting on a game, people become financially invested in that team and therefore find the match more enjoyable to watch.
As such, the biggest games likely wind up bringing in the most revenue.
But there is something the bettor who is trying to profit could be missing: that the biggest names are the ones best studied and it is going to be the hardest to make money on them.
Put simply, the better teams are known and analysed better.
The market is still imperfect overall and there will always be places where someone who is willing to put in the work can make long-term profits by playing the game the right way.
But the further you go from the household names, the further from perfect the markets become and the more value you may be able to find.
Take for example a match between fnatic and EnVyUs and another one between FlipSid3 and SK.
You can count on hundreds of thousands having seen both fnatic and EnVyUs play, and most of them will even have seen direct matches between the two behemoths.
On the other hand, how many fans have watched FlipSid3 or SK play, let alone against one another?
Obviously there will be less knowledge to go around – among not only the casual fans, but the betting community as a whole – when it comes to the smaller teams with less following.
That leads to an easy conclusion: if you want to find value, you should look where others are not looking, which is away from the biggest names in any sport.
While all of this is true in short run, if you were to follow this kind of strategy for a longer time period, it should become even more profitable – because while most still lack knowledge on the lower calibre teams, your knowledge will continue growing over time and at some point you may know them better than the big teams.
And that is why it pays to specialise, much like in life in general.
What makes this kind of strategy even better, is that while eSports is growing at a rapid pace – much faster than any traditional sport – the following is still much smaller, which means if you are an avid follower, you are already specialised to some extent.
But you can take that specialisation and apply it even further by following the tips outlined above.
My pick for the coming week:
My betting tip this week is EnVyUs over fnatic at StarSeries at 13/10.
While the Frenchmen have had their share of struggles in the past two months, they have beaten fnatic in their past two encounters.
