What does the Playoff format mean to your bets?

What is a Playoff format?

A Playoff format is the type of game that is going to be played. The most common ones used in Esports are: “Best of x series” or “Elimination”.Playoff formats are decided by the tournament organisation which usually consist of multiple formats throughout the tournaments progression.

The best of x series is won whenever the first player/team has won over half of the amount of games maximum to be played.

The single elimination can be seen as a knockout stage. It is usually a best of one series where the loser is out of the tournament and the winner progresses in the brackets. There is also a variation called a double elimination which means that first 2 players/teams play against eachother. The loser of this game is placed in a lower bracket and the winner progresses in the tournament. Another set of players/teams play and the same is done for the winner and loser of the match. Following this the lower bracket (loser teams) play eachother in a knockout game where the winner can progress in the lower bracket of the tournament and the loser of this match out of the tournament.

Bet with the information you are given

 

So what of all this is relevant when you place a bet? For this we need multiple statistics that are already given to us

• Players/Teams
• Playoff format
• Expected team to win (%)

We need this information to predict our risk factor in the bet. First we will take a look at the Players/Teams that are facing against eachother. How have these teams been playing recently and is there a clear advantage for one of them? With this in mind we move on to the Playoff format. The important thing to look at here is the best of x, where x is the amount of games they play. The higher this number the more chance the best team wins because the better team usually performs better in the longer matches. This doesn’t always mean you should place your bet on the team thats most likely to win. With a best of 1 format or single elimination the match is played with a very high risk factor. If one of the teams doesn’t show up there is a high chance for an upset. This is where you should look at how much chance the “Better” team has to win. If this percentage is not accurate with the Odds placed on this team this is the game you went to bet on the underdog (the team not expected to win). Why? Because in this Playoff format there is only one chance for both teams. You can place a much smaller amount for a high payout and the chance you take it is very unpredictable because of this Playoff format. Where as if the match was played in a best of 5 series there would’ve been a high chance that the better team would take this because of the long stretch of games where most of the time the better team prevails.

Risk against rewards

This way of betting has bigger risks to it than always betting on the “better” team you might think. That might be the case but in the long run what we are doing is just playing a game of chance. We look at the Playoff format and decide if this game is a free win for one of the teams because of how many games are going to be played or if we have found a potential upset where we can win with a much smaller bet than what we receive for this possible “underdog” victory.
The question you always have to ask yourself is if the Odds display a proper representation of who is going to win. If team 1 has odds of 1.05 and team 2 has odds of 8.95 but according to your research team 2 has 40% chance of winning because they have been playing decent recently and they are playing in a best of 1 format this would be the perfect game to place a bet on team 2.

 

 

The risk of losing is much high but compare it to the chance of winning more than you should’ve won on a game like this. Using this tatical approach when betting can yield you much larger profits than always betting on the best team and losing all your money to these “upsets”. Always look which Playoff format is used in the game you are betting on and use this information in your betting predictions.