Gameplay ofStarcraft II

Starcraft II is a fast-paced real-time strategy game that demands coordination and multi-tasking skills from its highest-skilled players. Unlike many other esports like huge teams and many players, competitive StarCraft II is a one-versus-one affair, and played over three or five different maps, with the first player to win either two or three maps taking home the title and the prize.

At the start of every SC II match, both players pick one of three species to play as (Protoss, Terran or Zerg): All factions come with their own unique aesthetic, abilities, units, advantages and disadvantages and set out to gather resources, build their base, train their units and assault the enemy. The game is played via an isometric perspective over a large battlefield, with many different approaches to taking out the opposition.

In a typical StarCraft II match, each player starts with a base and 12 workers, and the primary objective is to destroy the enemy opponent’s base via careful management of resources, building the proper units, training them in the right specialisations and using them in the right combat scenarios to counter potential threats.

Choosing your faction carefully and playing to their strengths is essential to succeed. The Terrans have high mobility and great defense, but low damage output, the Protoss units deliver massive damage with high production costs, while the Zerg produce lots of units for low costs but with weaker damage output. Every single faction’s units have special abilities (the Protoss Zealot can dash forward and reach enemies quickly, for example) which demands the player knows them in and out in order to properly micromanage and successfully defeat the competition, and because everything is played in real-time, speed of movement and issuing out orders is key to high-level play.

How to Bet on Starcraft II?

Starcraft II is the one eSport where betting have been available for the longest time. To become a successful bettor you really need to understand the game and to do that, you need to put in a lot of time. As a start, be sure to find the right bookmaker for your needs. You can see all the different bookmakers as well as their strengths, weaknesses and what eSport bonuses they offer at our Review page. Be sure to check out what tipster competitions are available as well to add even more value to your bets.

In the betting guides for the other eSports we have mentioned that professional bettors think they need information on a lot of crucial variables. Several studies have shown that when they rank these variables and actually only get information on about 5-7 of the ones they ranked as the most important, they perform better than if they had all information. With that said we at eSportbetting.eu have compiled a list of the most important aspects to analyze before a Starcraft 2 match to achieve great, winning results.

Of course you have to watch a lot of games, keep up with the current meta-game and the players day form. It takes a lot of time to achieve good results in Starcraft 2 betting. When you acquire this base knowledge, you have to use it to find value in odds that are misprices by the bookies.

We can’t emphasize the importance of the match format (Best of ?) and the map balance in Starcraft 2. Blizzard have built the game and are trying to accomplish an even balance between the races. This does not mean that they aim for a complete balance between the races across a single map, but rather the current map pool.

If a game between two players are played as a best of three but on two Zerg favoured maps. The Zerg player (priced at say 2.5 times the money because he normally is a lesser player than his current opponent) might have a better chance to win. These are the kind of situations that you are looking for to make winning bets.

Look at the odds the bokmakers are offering, analyze the two players playstyle and the decided maps for the match. For example a Terran player’s true strength might be the mech-strategy, but on this map the mech-strategy vs Zerg has a poor winning percentage. In your opinion, does the bookmakers odds really reflect these factors? If not, find the odds that are higher than it should be and make a bet. It might not happen just this game, but you have put your money in with a positive expected return which will make you a winning player in the long run.

As with all bets you make, the value might not be in predicting who wins but rather how often they win and if the odds are right. To become a better eSports bettor we recommend that you play the game of guessing the odds at a specific match or event before looking at what odds the bookmakers are offering. This gives you experience that are worth a lot. If you do this for a long period of time you will become more accurate and hopefully, better than some of the bookmakers!

Types of Bets forStarcraft II

The vast majority of esports betting sites we have reviewed and tested offers betting markets on major StarCraft II tournaments such as the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS), StarCraft II Corsair Cup, StarCraft Star League and the SC2 World Championship Global Finals. Most bet types are easily understandable for newcomers to online sports betting, and don’t require intimate knowledge of every possible outcome in the average high-level StarCraft II match-up.

Below, we go over the types of bets you can place on SC2 esports, based on the available markets offered by our highest reviewed esports betting sites.

Match Winner: You are betting on the result of the match – which team successfully destroys the other team’s base and wins. Depending on the faction chosen, the base is called a Command Center (Terrans) a Nexus (Protoss) or a Hatchery (Zerg). All sportsbooks label this type of bet differently, but it is most widely known as a ‘Match Winner’ – other labels include ‘Money Line’, ‘Straight’ or ‘Head to Head’. The odds offered on Match Winner bets are reflective of the perceived skill level of each player in question, and are usually based on their most recent win/loss records, performance and other potential personal dramas.

Map Winner: You are placing a bet on which player will win each individual map played in the SC2 match.

Correct Map Score: You are placing a bet on the final scoreline of the SC2 match-up. For example, you can wager whether your favoured player will win 3-0 in a landslide victory, or win 3-2 after a hard-earned battle with the opponent, with odds reflective of how the sportsbook perceives who the match will go in favour of.

Outright Winner: You are placing a bet on the overall winner of a specific StarCraft II tournament – not the winner of an individual match, but the winner of the entire tournament in question.