ESI Gambling Report: Parlay?

While betting on esports can be a fun way to spice up a match (if done responsibly), there’s a handful of bettors out there who are looking to turn a sizable profit with some serious money on the line.

Tipsters have been around betting seemingly forever – an individual who possess knowledge that can lead to gambling on a likely winner is needless to say a desirable trait in this world. While it’s impossible to beat the odds 100% of the time, or anywhere too close to that, we’re hoping these tipster services can give you a good starting position in this week’s ESI Gambling Report, Powered by Thunderpick.

Back in the 1970s, US sports commentator and Las Vegas bookmaker, Jimmy Snyder – more commonly known as Jimmy the Greek – had established himself as the premier source for sports tips. Bettors from around the country tuned in to CBS’s The NFL Today to listen to what ‘the Greek’ had to say about the upcoming matchups. If you’re wondering how this is pertinent to our esports tipster conversation, we’ll tell you: Snyder’s ability to pick winners with strike rates of 75% and higher were more than just a stroke of luck – rather these unheard-of win rates were accredited to some creative resourcefulness.

 Most famously, Snyder bet $10,000 on Harry S. Truman to win the 1948 election over Thomas Dewey going up against 17-1 odds; the Greek indicated he knew Truman was a lock in an interview after surveying hundreds of women to conclude “American women didn’t trust men with a mustache” – which Dewey had. For a period of time, Snyder paid commuters at train stations to bring back local newspapers for study – yielding tidbits of information such as a quarterback’s girlfriend breaking up with him the days leading up to a game in one instance. Things that wouldn’t necessarily make the Associated Press yet, could give a shrewd bettor a small competitive edge in placing an informed risk.

Essentially, what we’re getting at is that you want to ensure your tipsters are knowledgeable and interested enough to go the extra mile in breaking down a betting line. If you’re looking to score in this market, you need to be resourceful; luckily you won’t have to loiter around any train stations or ask women about their thoughts on mustaches to do so. There are plenty of tricks and devices available to help beat the odds, tipsters being just one of those routes. We took a hard look into a few of our favorite spots to scout from ahead of a big match and broke them down comprehensively for your consumption:

Bettings Gods

Apart from having one of the best sounding brand names in the industry, Betting Gods is widely considered to be one of the foremost places to look to for expert betting advice.

Having launched in 2014 and primarily specialised in horse racing, the company has expanded into a plethora of other areas including most recently, esports. We covered the newly launched esports betting tipster service back in April more thoroughly however, we’ll go ahead and highlight some of its best features. With Betting Gods, your esports betting tipster will provide between 25-30 tips per month every morning, so regardless of your taste in gaming – whether that be Dota, CSGO or Overwatch – you’ll receive competitive odds and tips on the fly.

The esports service has a pretty impressive success rate thus far since its April launch – Betting God’s esports landing page details a £204 monthly profit from tipsters. With average odds floating around 4.00 and a 33.46% strike rate, there’d appear to be good room for profit, especially with some gambler’s luck. The site has always maintained a hush-hush stance on their process of selecting tipsters, but from what we can tell, it seems quite rigorous; extensive vetting is the verbiage used to describe the selection process of esports tipsters from Betting Gods, mentioning a 16-week period before they go public.

As an additional layer of transparency, the site is also very open when it comes to not only celebrating the big-ticket winners, but also highlighting the losers; in our opinion, this just gives the sense that the team behind the tipster service isn’t trying to hide anything from you and shy away from poor results. We would definitely say this one is worth a shot, if you’re willing to part ways with some cash of course. To see if it’s for you and to sweeten the pot, you can register for a 10-day trial for just £1.

Tipify

If you’re looking for a more affordable and proven tipster service, Tipify would likely be your go-to destination.

Although it took us some time to get used to the site’s interface, Tipify boasts some seriously good strike rates from its pool of almost 4,000 tipsters. Specialising in CSGO, Dota, League of Legends and Overwatch, you can follow the wagers of successful bettors in real-time using this service.

After warming-up to the site’s interface, we were quite surprised to see a decent bank of tipsters showcasing hit rates in the upper 80s. Don’t believe us? Give the top global tipsters a look here.

The community has the ability to leave comments or tips on upcoming matchups, but it doesn’t seem to be a frequently utilised feature from what we’ve garnered. Primarily with Tipify, you’ll be following the tipsters of your choice only to see who they’re putting their money on – but with strike rates that high, do you really need the summary? There’s an ample amount of visibility on each user’s profile as well – calls, underdogs, profits and graphs showcasing records really enhance each tipsters validity, or lack of.

In conclusion, Tipify is a solid spot to go scouting for some esports betting guidance. CSGO tipsters heavily outweigh the rest of the population here, so if that’s your fancy you might’ve found your new home. Being that it’s a free service with almost 4,000 users and plenty of accounts to follow, we really couldn’t make an argument against Tipify as to why you shouldn’t have a peek at its platform.

E-Sportsbetting.org

E-Sportsbetting.org is a free tipster service that incentivises users to make winning predictions for a cash reward at the end of each month – if you fancy yourself as a tipster, right off the bat we’d say this is worth inspecting.

We’ve already familiarised ourselves with the site through research for a previous report and can say it’s really hit or miss. Comparatively to the aforementioned services, E-Sportsbetting.org has a minuscule group of tipsters – we’re talking users you can count on two hands, seriously. Not to take away from any of the tipsters here though, some of them actually sport satisfactory strike rates orbiting around 50% on average. Submitting a tip on this site means following up on that prediction with a bit of information – an excellent quality, in our humble opinion. While some of these summaries can be a bit lackluster, we were happy to uncover a few tips supplemented with a beefy amount of awareness – some even academic in study. Profiles have adequate visibility here, not quite as comprehensive as we’ve seen from other platforms (or as nicely packaged as Tipify) but certainly enough to give a bettor a strong sense of a user’s track record.

In short, E-Sportsbetting.org is worth a scope – again, it’s a free service and every here and there you’ll unwrap some worthwhile background on a matchup; the site is pretty straightforward and easy to use and while only a few people are using it today, we don’t see why it can’t grow into something bigger and better down the line.

Esports-Betting-Tips

As the name suggests, Esports-Betting-Tips is your go-to destination for esports betting advice – well, that’s at least what you’d think.

After searching desperately, turning over every stone on the site’s tumultuous layout, we uncovered just one lonely tip – that’s right, one. The comments across the many match previews have more zeros attached to them than Donald Trump’s bank account. Not to be harsh, but the site appears more of a livescore and match tracker then a legitimate tipster service. Overall, Esports-Betting-Tips has a fair user-interface and you can find virtually any upcoming esports matchup across varying divisions on their platform – all that’s lacking is a body of willing and able tipsters. In terms of tips, there’s a ‘community prediction’ in which you can pick a winner after registering on the site – however, after a few cursory clicks we revealed there’s hardly any participation on these. A page exists for each match and you can very easily join in on the “conversation” by typing in some of your thoughts – but again, you’d only be talking to yourself as seemingly all of these tabs are bone dry. Where Esports-Betting-Tips succeeds is in its betting previews, with distinctly perceptive coverage of tournaments.

While the site may lack volume in tipsters, its team of writers are undeniably on the ball when it comes to event coverage. Don’t come here expecting the same experience you’d get visiting any of the aforementioned platforms, but do give the news column a scan for some sound direction. Ultimately, there’s no incentive for tipsters to live on this site; while we’ve seen cash rewards for high strike rates or visibility through profiles granting some street cred on other platforms, Esports-Betting-Tips offers neither. We’re not telling you to steer clear of this site, but with the nature of this report having a focal point of tipsters, we’re going to have to score this one low until further notice.

With such a low-barrier to become an esports tipster it’s tricky to distinguish who’s going to be the next Jimmy the Greek and who’s just blindly throwing darts at a wall. There’s a good number of platforms available that are trying to be pioneers here which indicates a wholesome appetite from esports at large as a betting market. As the product evolves, we anticipate tipsters playing a more prominent role in this space.

The current galaxy is a bit too overcrowded to locate that true sense of reliability from informants yet; following some additional nurturing though, we foresee these services taking off in the future. Aside from tip-dedicated sites, shadowing sub-Reddits and esports analysts for steadfast intel is typically a reliable source to fall back on.

These ESI Gambling Reports are powered by Thunderpick