It’s no secret that lady luck is a big part of the online gaming industry, but when it comes to becoming a profitable bettor on League of Legends, she has very little saying about it. Short term profits may always be decided by chance, but in the long run the skilled bettor will have the upper hand and decide him or herself how much money that is to be made.
Becoming a very skilled bettor is not an easy task and it’s not what most of us are looking for either as many of us mainly bet for entertainment purposes. Making a little extra from betting is however always a pleasing bonus. To give you the best chances of doing so and the opportunity to master the art of betting on LoL, we have created this guide where we’re listing valuable League of Legends betting tips.
Check out the best sites for League of Legend letting here
Tip 1. Knowledge and research is the key
This may be the most obvious betting tip on LoL, but it’s also one of those that can help you increase your profits the most. To become a successful bettor, you need to forget everything about going with your gut feeling or letting your favorite team have an impact on your betting decisions.
When eSport betting sites are setting odds for different outcomes, they base these on knowledge that they have and research that they do. This is how they make a profit and for you to be able to steal this away from them and turn their profit into your own, you have to have a wider knowledge and do your research better.
This may sound like a lot of hard work and it does undoubtedly require a bit of your time, especially so the more knowledgeable you’d like to be. Getting an edge on the bookmaker is however not necessarily as hard as it sounds. Even if they’re usually good at what they do, they aren’t always any experts and they do make mistakes that you can take advantage of.
One of the most important things that are included in doing you research is looking up previous match history on the teams that you’re betting on. If there are any previous encounters between the two teams, it can be quite valuable to know how these ended as this can give you a good idea of how the current match will play out. It is however important that you pay attention to when the matches went down as the teams might have had player changes and either improved or worsened since they took place.
It’s also highly recommended to look up matches they’ve recently had against other teams and find out how well they’ve been doing against tougher, weaker and equally strong opposition. This way you can get a good feeling of their current form, which is something that can make or break a match.
Knowledge doesn’t come easy, but it’s extremely valuable for your long term profits
When doing your research, you should also take into consideration what type of match it is that you’re betting on and how this may affect either of the team’s performances. It might for instance be a match in the group stage of a tournament, which one of the teams have already secured a confident win in. In such a case it could be that the team won’t put a lot of effort into the match or experiment with new strategies, which could affect their performance in a negative way. On the contrary, another team might be required to win to position themselves better and will therefore find enough motivation to bring their A-game.
Included in this LoL eSports betting tip is also general knowledge about the teams and the current meta game. If you have the time and passion to watch a big portion of the matches that are being played on League of Legends, you will get a better understanding on what strengths and weaknesses teams and individual players have. This knowledge can be quite valuable when player changes happen or when game updates occur.
As you surely know, Riot Games are regularly releasing new updates to League of Legends. It may be that certain champions were just heavily nerfed or buffed and if so you have to ask yourself if and how this will impact the gameplay and team drafts. Are the teams good at adapting to changes or could this be to a disadvantage for them?
These updates may not only impact the teams, but could also have an effect on certain markets that are offered by bookmakers. This could for instance be which team that will kill the next dragon or baron, which is a market sometimes offered for live betting. The update might have resulted in a certain champion being more efficient in killing these.
If the odds compilers at the bookmakers aren’t aware of the changes, you could find flaws in their odds and get yourself an advantage. More importantly may however be that you stay up to date with the game so that you don’t find yourself placing bets that are based on an old meta game and therefore costing you money.
Tip 2. Match predictions can be very helpful
Doing your own research and drawing your own conclusions from this is always preferred, but as it requires quite a lot of work it isn’t for everyone. This is where match predictions can be very helpful in taking part of. This simply means that someone else have done all of the research and used the knowledge from this to come up with a prediction of the match’s outcome. Using these shared predicitions is not as bullet proof as doing your own research as you put your faith in the predictor’s hands, but it is an effortless alternative that could be very effective.
Match predictions can be a useful alternative to doing your own research, but also function as a complementary to it
These match predictions are actually not only useful for those that don’t have the time doing their own research, but can also be valuable to read for those that have done it. This way it’s possible to compare your own findings and conclusions with what other’s believe, which could be very helpful in making a correct prediction.
Tip 3. Only bet on outcomes that are profitable
Just like our first LoL betting tip, this may sound very obvious, but the big question is what a profitable bet really is. Does this mean betting on an outcome that is most likely to occur? Sometimes it will, but the fact is that a profitable bet will also often be one where you run the highest risk of losing. This may not sound very profitable at all, but let us explain this in detail for you and you will soon realize why it is.
No matter what outcome you’re interested in betting on, you should always make a prediction on the likelihood of it occurring. This can either be done based on your own research or by having read someone else’s match prediction. Let’s for instance say that Fnatic is playing a match against H2K and you’re looking to bet on the winner of this encounter. To understand what a profitable bet would be, you would first have to give the two teams a certain percentage of their chance of winning.
Let’s say that you predict Fnatic will win 80% of the time and H2K the other 20%. Once this prediction is done, you would have to turn each of the percentages into odds, which you can quickly do by using a probability to odd calculator that you can find on the internet. You can also easily turn them into decimal odds by just dividing 100 with each of the team’s percentages. This would equal an odd of 1.25 for Fnatic (100/80 = 1.25) and an odd of 5.00 for H2K (100/20 = 5.00).
By knowing these odds and assuming that the prediction that you have made is a correct one, you’ve now made yourself aware of what a profitable bet is. For you to be able to make a long term profit betting on this match, the odds offered by the bookmakers has to be higher than 1.25 for Fnatic or higher than 5.00 for H2K. If you bet on anything less than this, you will lose money in the long run (again assuming that the prediction that you did was correct).
No knowledge in the world can make you a profit if you don’t place your bets right
We can easily illustrate this by picturing a scenario where a bookmaker is offering an odd of 1.20 for Fnatic and 5.50 for H2K. Let’s also assume that this match is being played out ten times and that you choose to bet €100 every time.
If you’re always betting on Fnatic, your bet will win 8 times out of the 10 matches played as you predicted them to have an 80% win chance. You will earn yourself €120 on every win as this is what a €100 bet pays on odds 1.20 (100 * 1.20). With 8 matches won, this will result in €960 being paid out to you (8 * 120). As your total bet for 10 matches is €1000 (10 * 100), this means that you end up losing €40 by betting on Fnatic, which for a single match would be equal to an expected loss of €4.
Now if we compare this to always betting on H2K, you will have €550 paid out every time they win the match as this is what a €100 bet pays on odds 5.50. This win only happens 2 times out of the 10 matches played as you predicted a 20% win chance. It will however result in a total of €1100 being paid out (2 * 550). As your total bet is €1000 for all of the 10 matches, this means that betting on H2K will earn you a €100 profit, which for a single match is an expected win of €10.
As you can understand, finding profitable bets has nothing to do which team is most likely to win, but all that matters is that the odds you choose to place your bets on are higher than the odds you get from your own prediction. For this to work your prediction does however always have to be correct.
Tip 4. Use bonuses to get an added value
Compared to some of our previous betting tips on LoL, this one is a simple one that everyone can take part of with very little effort. As you may or may not know, bonuses are offered by eSport betting sites as a way to compete with each other to attract players. These offers often include receiving extra money as you’re making a deposit, but could also involve other forms of extra value, such as a free bet or a cashback. While some of these bonuses can be considered less valuable than others, you’re able to find those that are guaranteed to increase your chances of making a profit.
Unless you’re giving up equity, bonuses are always an easy way of increasing your profits
To be able to understand yourself the value that a certain bonus has, you should always check out the terms and conditions that the offer comes with. This does for instance usually include a wagering requirement, which more often than not means that you have to turn over your received bonus amount (and sometimes also your deposit) a certain number of times, on a certain minimum odd, within a certain period of time.
As long as you’re placing profitable bets, it doesn’t really matter how high these minimum odds are or how many times you have to turn over your received amount. The only danger with bonuses that have high wagering requirements, thus often being recognized as less valuable, is that you’re giving up equity by placing bets that aren’t good for you just to be able to meet the minimum odd required. If you don’t give this up, every bonus is always favorable taking part of.
Tip 5. Consider placing accumulator bets
Our last LoL betting tip for the time being is placing your bets as an accumulator, rather than placing them as singles. This is an option that every eSport betting site offers when you add two or more outcomes to a coupon. If you choose to have them placed as an accumulator, this means that the LoL odds for every outcome will be multiplied with each other, thus becoming higher. Two single bets that have 1.30 and 1.40 in odds will for instance give a total of 1,82 if placed as an accumulator (1.30 * 1.40).
This isn’t something that will always be beneficial for you to do as opposed to being placed as singles, all of the outcomes that you bet on must occur for any win to be paid out from an accumulator bet. This means that you run a higher risk of losing, which actually is just as big as the increased odds. In other words, under normal circumstances it really doesn’t matter if you place an accumulator bet or not as your long term profits will be the same.
Accumulator bets aren’t always useful, but can be handy and profitable in certain situations
With all of this being said, there are certain situations where accumulator bets can be advantageous to place. If you’re betting with a bonus and have to achieve a certain minimum odd to your bets, it can for instance be a useful option to easily reach this without having to place bets that wouldn’t be profitable for you (as mentioned in the 3rd tip).
Another reason to place an accumulator bet is if you’re taking part of a profit boost campaign. This is an offer that you can find on a couple of different eSport betting sites and means that you’re getting a certain percent of extra money when you win from an accumulator bet. Usually you’re required to combine a certain number of different outcomes, whereas the extra percentage you get becomes higher the more combinations that are placed in the accumulator.
With such a campaign it’s always beneficial to use an accumulator as this adds an extra value to your bets. You might of course find yourself getting longer losing streaks as it will be harder to get a win, but the profits will be higher those times that you do, which in the long will give you higher ones than if you just placed single bets.
