Sometimes you have your esports bet prepared and ready to go, perhaps, for example, on popular Danish Counter-Strike team Astralis at some favourable odds. So you head to your favourite bookmaker, place the bet, and then wait with positive thoughts about the outcome.
But when the match ends, instead of celebrating a win, you suffer an unexpected loss. Losses happen to all sports bettors, but why did this latest esports bet fail? One of the reasons could be down to what is called a meta shift.
But what exactly is meta shift? That’s a perfectly reasonable question for someone who’s not deeply familiar with esports disciplines yet still places bets. Besides the esports betting line at bookmakers, people also focus on dozens of different sports, and if you look at any betting games list at a reputable online platform, you’ll find plenty of variety bet types.
It can be quite challenging to grasp subtleties like the concept of meta in esports. However, if you want to bet on esports matches, understanding the meta is essential.
Explaining Meta – A Daily Life Example
You have to go to the supermarket, but you are late for a meeting. You decide to leave the house, but when you do, you find that the path you usually take is completely blocked. Now, you have to find another route to reach your destination.
All these unexpected and new characteristics of the situation, are elements that will force you to change your strategy (or in esports terms, your meta) of how to reach your goals. So with this simple example, you can imagine how meta works in a game.
Games have their features, mechanisms, and maps, all of which have to be navigated, but at the same time, they can also produce unpredictable variables. Suddenly, a new map can be launched or even a small update can be made to the amount of damage that a weapon can do. What happens then?
For casual players, this will just be a small thing to deal with, but in the professional gaming context, this can mean everything for a team’s rise or downfall. As for those who are looking to explore some esports odds, knowing about a team’s past successes and failures, won’t be enough. To really improve the decision-making process in esports betting, a focus on the meta shift is required.
Counter-Strike Meta: The Astralis and Heroic Cases
As mentioned above, Astralis is one of the best esports teams in the world. One of the reasons for their success is their ability to create and find the best tactics in different CS:GO maps. Their grenade strategy in the “Banana” area of the Inferno map is a good example.
Other strategies they have used to good effect when fighting for the counterterrorist side, include controlling the apartments (or apps) and other tactics to gather the maximum information about the opponent’s actions.
By mastering each pixel of the screen, Astralis found their way to winning 4 Majors and being regarded as the best team in the world for a long time. Heroic is another team to consistently produce high-quality performances. Back in 2020, they had an amazing run in the Nuke maps, using strategies like controlling the ramp areas.
Granted, the concept of meta may look similar to strategy and tactics. So to clarify this, looking at other esports will help.
Meta in Valorant and League of Legends
In Valorant, for example, the agents (characters) and weapons are updated regularly, and this directly affects the performance of the teams, forcing everyone to master other sets of skills like creativity, adaptability, and mentality.
League of Legends, with regular updates to skills, items, maps and various other features, makes the lives of players and therefore bettors, more complicated through newly-introduced variables.
So it’s very clear how the concept of meta is not just strategy, but the ability to adjust to new circumstances to find the best way to achieve the goal, just as the acronym of ‘meta’ suggests – “Most Effective Tactics Available”.
So, as a bettor, you can find a better footing for options, by focusing on players and teams who can quickly find solutions after game updates.
In Conclusion – Everything Changes
While in sports such as soccer, volleyball, and basketball unpredictable events can happen at any time before or after a game, the idea of meta proves that, sometimes, esports can be even more variable. If you are planning to bet on online esports games, it’s important to keep track of these changes to be ready for any twists and turns.