Before you start attacking the betting markets, you’ll want to get an understanding of how the game is played at a high level.

Types of Bets

Moneyline

Every sportsbook on the planet is going to offer moneyline bets for COD, as they do for every other esport and traditional sport out there. COD moneyline betting follows the same general rules as other sports: it’s the easiest and most accessible way to get some action on the game while you watch, but the return on your investment (ROI) is going to be less than it could be when attacking other types of bets that are highly correlated with a team winning the match. If you are going to bet the moneyline, you’ll want to find opportunities to bet the underdog.

A lot of teams have strengths and weaknesses in terms of the game types played and, if you can find a single upset on one of the maps, an underdog will have a great chance to win, which will help to increase your long term payouts. Moneyline betting should be a sizable chunk of your overall portfolio, but not the type of bet you make the most.

Futures

Betting futures in Call of Duty esports is a bit different than you might be accustomed to, in that the Call of Duty world league is set up with a bunch of smaller tournaments spanning over the course of the season. Because of this, the futures to be taken aren’t based on the season itself, but on the smaller tournaments and the odds of each team finishing in first place for each of those. Betting futures on these smaller tournaments is interesting because the very good teams like the Atlanta Faze and the Chicago Huntsmen are typically big-time favorites to finish in first, in turn not offering a lot of value overall.

As with moneyline betting, it’s a better idea to look for an underdog to back since the ROI swings are more impactful. Futures should represent just a small piece of your betting action on a given weekend and should be focused on long shots that can hedge your day-to-day action in case things get squirrelly.

Props

Prop betting is generally considered an area every solid bettor must understand in order to round out a betting card, and it’s no different in esports. The props you’ll be able to find for COD are mostly based on objective time and kill counts for individual players and, when you know the tendencies of each team as they relate to the game types to be played, you can begin to attack bookmakers much more effectively.

For instance, Suppose there is a prop bet that allows you to bet the over or under on Simp’s total capture time in a game, and it’s set at around 110. If you have data that tells you their opponent – the Dallas Empire – is in a position to win the Hardpoint games by a large margin, it’s a worthwhile bet to take the under on Simp’s capture time considering you are projecting them to lose that game type.

This form of prop betting allows you to take advantage of match and individual game level moneyline betting, but without the high lines involved. A prop bet on the under for Simp’s capture time may be set at -120, whereas the line for the Dallas Empire to win that map/series could be set at -175, which gives obvious value to betting the correlated prop instead.

Parlaya

Another staple of the sportsbooks, parlays are the most fun and least lucrative bets you can make, especially when betting on COD. A parlay is when you take multiple bets and tie them together to increase the size of the payout if all of them hit. In combining bets -whether they are props or game level bets – you are drastically reducing the probability that your wager will be successful.

This, in turn, drastically increases the payout if indeed your bets all do win. The most common form of parlay to be found in Call of Duty betting is something like Player A to get under 50 kills combined with Player A’s team to lose the series. These forms of bets need to be as correlated as possible if you hope to find any measure of success, but smart bettors can gain a good understanding of what leads to certain outcomes and add these types of bets to their portfolio.

Because of the inherent variability within a game like COD – where one bad spawn or a team getting a multikill can change the tide of the objectives – trying to hit parlays should be even less of a priority than it is in traditional sports. No more than 5% of your total bets should be parlays.

Spreads and Handicaps

These are some of the most fruitful wagers you can make in betting on Call of Duty – and with esports in general – as the odds offered are almost never close to the reality of the situation. Most spreads and handicaps will be offered on the amount of maps or games played in a series, and it’s typically going to be set at around 3.5 for COD since it’s a best-of-five format.

The kicker in betting on spreads and handicaps is that they are almost always going to be ignorant of a general rule that says only 25% of matches end in a sweep, so any line implying the probability of a match going four or more maps at less than 75% is offering edge to the bettor. Likewise, knowing that teams can be either good or bad at certain game types – some teams can’t play Search and Destroy to save their lives – would give you all the reason in the world to bet the over on a map-based handicap.