Shinobi Academy A-Z Betting

Whether you are new to betting or already an experienced bettor, this material will definitely have useful content for you, and it is an absolute must read for anyone who is trying to get better at it or just started betting.

Bookmaker Types

Before you dive into betting you need to figure out what platform you will be using for that. It's always recommended to have multiple ones available for you at all times to get better conditions, but we will talk more about it later, for now it's important to understand the types of the bookmakers and the key differences between them.

• Player vs Player

A lot of people involved with CSGO and DotA 2 betting are probably already familiar with this concept, as it was used by the most popular platforms - CSGOLounge and Dota2Lounge.

As the name states, all of the bets are made on PvP basis, and the website only takes a fixed cut from all the bets. As a result, the odds keep fluctuating based on the total distribution of the bets until the match begins, which can be both a pro and a con. Sometimes you can find extremely good odds just because of some highroller with personal bias towards one of the team, or majority of the bets being swayed for some reason.
Another good point is that you can often find matches that aren't listed on other platforms and often people who bet on them don't actually know much, they are just feeding their addiction and we can use that in our advantage.

There are downsides to this system too, the obvious one being the changing odds of course. Sometimes you can be mislead by higher than the normal odds few hours before the match, but then you find out your bet ended with much lower ones. There is one exception though - CSGOPositive. Once you lock the bet in, the odds stay the same for you regardless of how it changes later, unless you make a combo bet. This can even bring an opportunity for arbing, as you can snipe very good odds when only few people made their bets and then counter it for guaranteed profit once the odds adjust, however that isn't very common.
Another obvious downside would be the fees. Losing a few % on deposit and withdrawals, as well as a cut from every bet you make might be negligible on the distance, but if you only use it to make 1-2 occasional bets it becomes quite noticeable.
Finally, perhaps the worst aspect of such platforms - very small betting line. It's best suited for ML and map bets, but when it comes to extra markets such as handicaps or totals you might find out that it's just not available, especially for the low tier matches.

In general, this type of bookmakers is recommended for people with low bankroll as it's easier to grind with increased odds, or for people who want to have a secondary bookie to get an extra value out of the odds differences.

• Player vs House

This is the classic model of bookmakers that is more familiar to the general public. The odds are determined by the house, and once you place your bet it's locked. The overall fluctuating is also pretty rare, unless there is some big volume on a particular market but even then the change is usually no more than 0.1-0.2 from the starting value.

These bookies have a much wider variety of available bets and in general it's much simpler to use, however there are some problems with it as well.
First of all, virtually all of them require KYC verification to withdraw funds as opposed to PvP ones who either dont require it at all or only ask it after passing a certain threshold (actually 99% of the time you won't need to do it at all).
Another thing is the betting limits, more specifically cut limits. Once your account is flagged as "beating the house", they will put a max limit of, let's say, 3 euros on any bet that you can make. Technically this is their way of legally banning you, because although you can still bet your account becomes pretty much useless. The only way to overcome that is by making a new one (but you will need a different identity for that) or switching to a different bookmaker.

All in all, I wouldn't say that you should choose one type and avoid the other. Ideally you'd want to have at least 3 different bookmakers and spread your bankroll across them, for example 70% for the normal type ones and 30% for PvP, and gain the maximum advantage combining all of them. Sooner or later you will end up having to change them, but like I said it's part of the betting process and luckily we have good deals with bonuses for people who join new bookies through our links.

Bankroll Management

In simple words, bankroll management is the way of minimizing your risks while maximizing profits over a long run. A lot of people ignore this for some reason and bet like 20-30% per match, then complain that it's impossible to make money with betting.

First of all, you need to determine your starting bankroll. It has to be a decent amount, and by decent I mean at least a few hundred euros/usd. There is simply no point in even trying to do anything with something low like 20 euros, you will just waste your time. I've seen many people who try getting a big win from a couple bucks regularly, but if you look at them and think how much they already lost over the time and how big their bankroll would've been if they saved up - probably a gamechanging amount. If you can't afford dedicating a good bankroll it's best to save up and come back when you are ready. Remember, betting is not a way to get rich overnight. You should look at it as a serious investment.

Ideally a starting bankroll should equal at least 1 month of your income (or more as you get more experienced). The reason for that is very simple - imagine 2 situations:

1. Your income is 1000 and you put 100 into betting, then win or lose 10% or 10 euros. Would you really take it serious? Probably not
2. Your income is 1000 and you have spare money to make a 1000 bankroll, you will treat it differently because you know what it took you to earn this money, and you will put more effort in analyzing the matches, as well as make less stupid decisions

So, you determined your bankroll size, now it's time to actually start managing it. There are different strategies for doing this, but we will cover the most effective and stable ones.

• Flat Betting

Very simple, but at the same time not very flexible. In flat betting you choose a base value of each bet based on the risk that you're willing to take. For example, let's say you defined 3% as a base bet, every bet you make will be 3% regardless of the odds or "safety". By following this strategy your profit won't be huge, but the risks are as low as it can possibly get - even if you lost 10 bets in a row (which in itself isn't very likely) you would still be very far away from losing the bankroll. An important aspect here is not to change your base value regardless of the results. This means if you are down 30% or up 30% you should keep it the same, otherwise it's really easy to fall in the trap of dispersion and you'll end up wasting time just to keep breaking even

• Advanced Flat

This is the one we recommend and the one we use ourselves, however it requires more experience and ability to evaluate the odds/risk ratio regardless of the numbers that the bookie shows you. Gonna give you an abstract example: imagine 2 matches with 1.5 vs 2.5 odds, and in both of them you want to bet on the underdog for one reason or another. If you were to use normal flat you would end up with 2x 3% bets on 2.5 odds, but if you analyze it deeper and, let's say, you believe that for one of them the odds are fair while for other it should be lower - here's when advanced flat comes in. Instead of betting 3% on both of them, you would bet 3% on the one that you believe to be underrated, and for example just 1% on the one you think is rated fairly. That way, if you analyzed it correctly you will have a bigger risk/reward ratio, as it minimizes losses while juicing out the value bets to the maximum.
NOTE: Although we said that the bet size may vary for advanced flat, this doesn't mean that you can start betting 10% or more, even if you feel like it's gonna be easy. You should still keep some boundaries, for example 0.5-1% for lowbets, 3% for normal and 5% for super confident ones.

How to count profit?

This aspect is very individual and varies from person to person, but in general there are 2 things you need to keep in mind: bankroll growth and securing the profit.

Let's say your starting bankroll is 1000, you wouldn't want to keep betting 10 as 1% forever. What we recommend is for every X amount of a period of time Y, take a % of profit Z out. Each value should be determined based on your ultimate goal in betting and your risk level, but let's go through an example.
So, suppose after 1 month of betting with 1000 starting bankroll you ended up with 50% profit. That's a pretty good result and you want to make sure not to lose it, but you don't want to risk taking all of it out and going back to the first step. Out of 50% profit which is 500, let's say you take half of it out (250) and leave the other half for bankroll growth. By managing it this way you minimize the overall risks by having an extra 25% safety net for betting, as well as securing 25% of the initial investment. We would recommend doing this without changing the base bet % at least until you double the starting bankroll.
By the time your bankroll hits 2000 you would most likely already have the initial 1000 safe and sound back in your bank account, and now you can increase the base % according to the new bankroll.

This is just an example to give you a general idea of what a good approach looks like, of course some months could be better or worse and you would have to adjust to it. You might even want to not take anything out at all until hitting a certain amount, and that's fine as long as you stay disciplined, however it's dangerous to keep all profits untouched as it might give you false sense of safety. It's easy to fall down the rabbit hole thinking "oh I still have a lot of profit", but unless you actually secure it you have none.

Your biggest enemy - Tilt

One of the main factors that differentiates a good bettor from a losing gambler is the ability to overcome emotions. It sounds pretty simple and obvious, but of course it's easier said than done.
The truth is you will probably never be able to fully control yourself at all times, but it's important to work on it and here are a few major guidelines for dealing with tilt:

1. Don't bet higher than your set values even if you think it will be a super easy win, regardless of the odds. If you found a match that you're very confident about - great, approach it with clean mind and make a normal bet. If you win it will be good anyway but if you lose you will thank yourself for not wasting a huge chunk of money and therefore won't have to take extra risk trying to make it back
2. If you make a bet and lose it - don't panic or chase it back. Losing is just as big part of the process as winning, and what matters is not winrate but your overall profit. Instead, analyze this loss. Was it your mistake in analyzing the match, was it just bad luck or maybe the team you bet on was out of form for that day? Use every loss in your advantage to get better at future bets.
3. Have you ever found yourself in a situation when you made a bet and as you're watching the match you realize that the team you chose is just not ready to win today? Maybe you might have the urge to counter your bet in live to reduce the losses, but DON'T EVER DO THAT. Sure, there's a chance that you make a counter bet and instead of losing 3% on that match you might lose 1%. However, with this kind of behaviour you will certainly end up in a situation when the original bet wins and you either go negative or at best break even. Either way, your mental state won't be good after this
4. In any case, if you did end up getting tilted for whatever reason - just don't bet. Take that day off to relax, even if you miss a few potential winning bets it will be better than spiraling down the losses and only tilting further. An important thing to understand: you can be tilted even if everything is good. If you hit a winstreak of like 10 bets in a row and catch euphoria it can be just as dangerous as having a losestreak

Analyzing your losses

This topic is somewhat related to previously mentioned tilt, and being able to analyze your losses is just as important as analyzing the matches, if not even more important. There is always a reason behind any loss, and it's important to be able to differentiate them. Here are a few most common ones:

• Betting for the sake of betting

It's very likely that everyone has done this more than once in their betting career. You might get away with it a few times, but most of the losses actually come from unnecessary bets that had no reasons to be placed other than you being bored or greedy or something else

• The bet was good on paper but lost anyway

This of course happens too, it's impossible to win every single bet even if every analysis tells you it should be a winning one.
Sometimes you can just be wrong too. For example, a match between a 1.5 odds favorite and not-so-good team. You might think that the favorite should win because rhe other team is absolute garbage, and sometimes forget that the favorite team aren't actually that solid either. You bet on it anyway and end up with 14-16 loss. Was it just bad luck or you actually made a mistake? More often than not, the reason is simply choosing a wrong match or wrong bet. You could probably get similar or even better odds on some extra market such as handicap or total rounds, or just choose a different match where the odds are same but probability of 1.5 odds team winning would be much higher

• Choosing inappropriate bet size

This depends on your bankroll management strategy but if you use advanced flat betting as we recommended, sometimes it could be that you chose a wrong amount. It mainly comes with experience, but common sense should tell you that a 50/50 match deserves a lower bet than the one you're confident about

• Don't forget about dispersion

In simple words, over a short-term period it is likely to have a losestreak regardless of the quality of your bets. Think of flipping a coin: if you flip it 10 times chances are you will see 7 or more of the same side, but if you do it 1000 times instead the numbers will be getting closer to the expected distribution. Similar thing happens in betting, you can have 4-5 days of bad performance but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing something wrong.
However, don't write all your losses off to dispersion - if you see a decline over 2 weeks period or longer, chances are you are actually doing something wrong and need to take a break

Types of bets and their meaning

With more of the basics out of the way we are getting closer to the interesting stuff. Now it's time to figure out all the different bet types and what you need to win them

• Match Winner / Moneyline (ML)

The most straight-forward one, you just need the team of your choice to win the match, regardless of the score

• Handicap Bets

Although there are some nuances to each different sport, the general concept of a handicap is always the same. A handicap is either an advantage or disadvantage for the team of choice.
For example, let's look at CSGO round handicap. We think that the underdog team is not good enough to win the match but they can make it close, so we take +5.5 handicap. Essentially this means that at 0-0 the team of our choice gets an extra 5.5 added to their score and they start as 0-5.5. So, since the winning condition in CSGO is 16 rounds, our team onlg needs to win 11 in order to have a higher score than the team with 16 rounds. Similarly if we want to take a -3.5 handicap, our team needs to win with no more than 12 rounds lost because 16-3.5=12.5
For maps handicap (or other sports) the idea is the same, just the values are different. In BO3 match -1.5 equals a 2-0 win, and we lose the bet if the team we chose wins 2-1. For BO5 matches -1.5 would be win both in 3-0 and 3-1 but lost in 3-2, and vice versa

• Total Bets

Different sports have different totals, but just like with handicap the general concept is the same. In CSGO you have total maps for BO3 and BO5 series, and total rounds for individual map. If you bet on over 2.5 maps rhat means you need one of the teams to win 2-1. The good thing aboht this kind of bet is we don't care who actually wins it, all we need is get to the last map
In DotA you can have total bets on team kills, barracks destroyed, time played on the map, etc; in Football total bets are made on goals or bookings, and so on

• Extra Bets

Once again, each sport has its own extra markets, but this includes things like pistol round winner or overtime bets in CSGO, first blood in DotA or LoL, BTTS (both teams to score), etc.
These bets are usually a lot more random and it's not recommended to bet on it except for very rare exceptions

Some things that need to be said about combo bets

Combination, multi, parlay, express - all of these are different name for the same type of bet. It's a bet of two or more selections added to the same slip, and in order to win it you need all of them to be correct

Doing combos is usually very dumb and unreasonable. It is mostly done by people with low balances or hardcore addicts because they get deluded by high odds, but the reality is that combo bets risk is ridiculously disproportionate to the final odds.

First of all, how likely it actually is for you to win 4, 5, 6 or even more bets without losing a single one? Pretty low, however a lot of people forget it when they get an idea of getting a 30x off a small bet. Remember how we said betting isn't about getting rich quick? That's because it isn't
Another dangerous path is trying to add a bunch of favorites in one bet thinking that it's a money glitch. Ironically, this type of bettors is the one with the most severe addiction. One thing you need to understand is the more bets you add to the slip the harder it gets to win the whole thing, and it doesn't matter if you add 1.1 matches or 2.5 ones

Let's break down an example. Say there are 5 matches and you're confident in all of them. For simplicity let's assume all 5 have 1.8 odds. There are 2 situations that can happen in this case: you bet a fixed % on each of them or you bet a fixed % on a combo of 5. You might think that risking less money for almost 20x odds is a better choice, however you need to remember that if just one of them loses you will not get anything, meanwhile in first case you would have a nice profit if 4/5 bets won. Actually you would already be slightly above break even if only 3 of them did.

Now, that is not to say that combos are pure evil and you shouldn't do them, we occasionally make combos ourselves too. It's just that there are certain rules you need to remember:

• Don't add more than 3 selections in the same bet

2-3 matches in one combo is the most optimal way of doing if, adding more inevitably ruins the risk/reward ratio and it's obviously harder to win combo the more bets you have in it

• Don't think any match is equally suitable for a combo

There are situations when a combo bet wouldn't be bad, however you need to understand that for the most part even the confident bets will generate more profit as singles. Unless you are aware of it and are willing to be losing more - stay away from combo betting

• Don't be greedy

If for some reason you decided to make a combo bet - pick the matches and stick with it. A common mistake is to add some 1.1 match to "boost the odds". Although you might get higher odds for seemingly no extra risk, the real increase in the overall risk is way higher than the increase in the total odds

HLTV Basics and Important things about Analyzing CSGO

Most of the people who've dealt with CSGO betting are already familiar with HLTV, but I've seen a lot of bettors who don't know how to use its full potential. This material is for those people as well as for beginner

Overview

• News - News about roster changes, event announcements and match results
• Matches - Schedule for CSGO matches. Unfortunately, HLTV doesn't cover some of the lower tier tournaments, but for 90% of the people their coverage is more than enough. We will talk about other resources to check unlisted matches later
• Results - History of all matches with final scores
• Events - Schedule for different tournaments and leagues, might be useful to check overlapping for some teams as one tournament can be more important than others
• Stats - Statistsics of different factors for individual players. While information here is important, it shouldn't be your main source of reasoning for bets

Match page

Now let's look at a match page example

First thing you see is the information about the match format (BO1, BO3, BO5) and its status (Online/LAN) as well as the stage in the tournament (in this case Swiss round 1) and the map veto. Sometimes the map picks are known in advance but usually it appears here only 5-10 minutes before start
Analyzing map veto is almost 50% of the whole decision process. It's important to know which maps are strong for each of the teams, and the more you watch the games the better you will understand this

As you scroll down you can see the mappool field

It shows the winrate on each map for both of the teams and the number of maps played in the last 3 months. Please note that this information can often be misleading - it's always important to consider the quality of the winrate rather than numbers alone. If you click on one of the numbers it will take you to the team's history on this map with detailed scores and opponents

Another field that you'll see is the players comparison

It shows stats for each player during the last 3 months and you can compare them with each other by selecting the player you want

Finally, in the bottom you will see most recent history for each of the teams and their H2H (if there is any)

Just like with map winrate, don't follow this information blindly. If you haven't seen those games yourself you should always check the details, because a 2-0 win of 16-13 16-12 against a low opponent can be a lot worse than a 0-2 loss against much stronger opponent

Team page

Next thing you need to know is how to gather information about a single team. When you find the team you want in the search bar you will be taken to their page

• Info - Information about the team
• Roster - team's current roster and past player history

• Matches - past and upcoming matches for the team

• Events - upcoming tournaments for the team
• Achievements
• News
• Stats - recent statistics for the team

Through the team page you can find all the information about their maps performances and past matches details, and it's much easier to navigate through here than looking up each individual match
The information that you need to prioritize shouldn't be older than 2 weeks, at most 1 month. Older information should be considered as well but it might not be as relevant due to roster changes, form gain/loss, inactive period or other factors

With these basics covered you should have a better understanding of the HLTV features and important things to focus on when analysing a match. Don't forget that HLTV is just one of the helping tools and it's always important to watch the games and build your own detailed knowledge about the teams

In the beginning it will be hard for you to follow all the different matches, so you should only bet on the things you're familiar with while learning the rest. Remember how we talked about choosing wrong match to bet on? If you don't know the teams you are risking making a wrong choice even with all the information provided by HLTV

DLTV Basics and Important things about Analyzing Dota

If you got familiar with HLTV it will be very easy for you to navigate through DLTV because they are pretty simliar

The pictures above show different areas of DLTV that are almost identical to HLTV, and to avoid repeating ourselves we will only focus on the key differences between CSGO and Dota

It's safe to say that Dota is one of the hardest sports to bet on and analyze when you don't have any background. Every few months Valve releases a new patch that changes balance for heroes and items, and even people that used to play the game back in 2016 will have a hard time understanding current patches right off the bat

Forutnately, DLTV can give you a little assistance with that. Since more than half of the win in Dota is getting a solid counterpick against your enemy (this is why you see even massive underdogs winning so often, the skill difference can easily be compensated by a good pick), we need to know some information about drafts
The picks themselves are done when the match starts just before loading on the map, but you can expect and predict certain heroes picked by certain players

When you go to an events page you can see the most commonly picked heroes in this particular event as well as some extra stats that give you an idea of the playstyle on this specific patch in this specific region (usually extremely useful in different DPC leagues, as the gamestyle varies drastically from one region to another)

By looking at this statistics you can somewhat predict the potential pick/bans for the upcoming match and have an easier choice. However, as we said you need to have a deep understanding of current Dota meta, and it's hard if you're not constantly following it

Analysis process

Assuming you already have some knowledge about the teams, here's what the analysis process should look like:

First of all, open the matches tab and pick a few games that you find interesting

An important thing to do is to ignore the odds that you see on the match page. Instead, what you should do is use your knowledge to set your own odds as if you were the bookie and only then compare it to the actual odds before making a bet
If the odds you derived for yourself vary too much from the official ones, there are 2 options - you either found a gem match or you were wrong. Unfortunately, the 2nd option is more likely as it's very rare to find an underrated match. If that is the case, you should be very careful about betting on it and you might even want to reevaluate your analysis. The key factors to look at are the following:

• Current team form

Every team has ups and downs. Regardless of the statistics, the team can have a bad period and be out of form, or vice versa. This is why we keep saying statistics are not everything

• Roster changes/Stand-ins

Sometimes the information about stand-ins is announced shortly before the match. Check HLTV and team/players Twitter to make sure you don't miss it. You could even snipe the odds before the bookies pick up on the news

• Playing against a tough enemy

Although it's not very common, some teams have problems with certain opponents regardless of their overall performance. This could be due to difference in playstyle, individual problems or some other factors

• Derby

Usually a matchup between two teams from the same region, like Astralis vs Heroic or Navi vs Gambit. In such matches we often see surprises and upsets because the underdog teams put all their effort, even if they struggle before and after. Similarly, if a top team has no problem destroying everyone else they can have issues against a weaker opponent from the same region

• Team's schedule

Some teams play a lot more different tournaments than others and therefore have less time to prepare and adapt for each individual opponent. Other team, on the other hand, could have a week to study everything about the upcoming game and have a significant advantage. This somewhat applies to LAN tournaments as well, for example if Navi were to play against Liquid in first day of NA LAN, they would most likely not be in their best form due to jetlag while Liquid would feel great

There are of course a lot more nuances when it comes to breaking down matches, but with what we've covered so far combined with watching the games and building up experience you should be good to go. As you progress in this journey you will figure out your own tricks that apply to your individual betting style

Well, what's next?

With the contents of this material and a few weeks of practice you should see your first profits even if you've never done a bet before. As you spend more time doing it and get more experienced you will learn to do a lot of the mentioned things intuitively, and eventually you could call yourself a professional

This is just a 1.0 version of our Shinobi Academy A-Z collection, we will update it with even more content and details about different betting aspects in the upcoming months.
In the meantime, enjoy being a part of Shinobi Academy! :)

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