Polymarket lists most professional CS2 matches, from Majors and ESL Pro League down to regional qualifiers. The prices look like percentages, not odds, and the costs sit in places a sportsbook bettor does not expect: a fee that changes with the price, a gap between buy and sell prices, and settlement rules that pay $0.50 a share when a match does not happen. This guide walks through each one with real numbers.
How a CS2 market works
A Polymarket match market has two outcomes, one per team. Each outcome is a share. When the market resolves, a share of the winning team pays $1 and a share of the losing team pays $0. Before that, shares trade freely between users on an order book, so the price moves with every new bid and offer.
- You never bet against the house. Someone else is on the other side of every trade. Polymarket makes money from the taker fee, not from your losses.
- There are two prices. The ask is what you pay to buy now, the bid is what you get if you sell now. The gap between them is the spread.
- The two sides mirror each other. Buying team B at 39¢ is the same position as selling team A at 61¢, so the bid on one side and the ask on the other add up to $1.
- Bigger matches get more markets. A tier-one BO3 typically comes with the match winner plus map winners, a map handicap, total maps and round totals per map, each with its own rules and its own order book.
Reading the price
The price in cents is the implied probability. To turn it into decimal odds, divide 1 by the price in dollars. The table below is before fees and spread, which the next two sections add back in.
| Share price | Implied chance | Decimal odds |
|---|---|---|
| 20¢ | 20% | 5.00 |
| 35¢ | 35% | 2.86 |
| 50¢ | 50% | 2.00 |
| 62¢ | 62% | 1.61 |
| 75¢ | 75% | 1.33 |
| 85¢ | 85% | 1.18 |
For any other price, the Polymarket odds converter does the conversion both ways, including American odds. Profit per share is $1 minus what you paid, so a 62¢ share wins 38¢ and loses 62¢.
Fees on CS2 markets
Polymarket files CS2 under its sports category. The taker fee is:
fee = 0.05 x shares x price x (1 − price)
You are a taker when your order fills immediately against an order already on the book, which is what a market order or a limit order at the current ask does. Makers, whose limit orders sit on the book until someone else fills them, pay no fee and receive a share of the fees as a rebate. The fee is largest at 50¢ and shrinks toward the extremes:
| Price | Taker fee on 100 shares |
|---|---|
| 10¢ | $0.45 |
| 30¢ | $1.05 |
| 50¢ | $1.25 |
| 70¢ | $1.05 |
| 90¢ | $0.45 |
Polymarket charges nothing to deposit or withdraw, although the exchange or payment service you move money through may. Polymarket US runs its own schedule: since October 1, 2026 its taker fee uses a coefficient of 0.0695 instead of 0.05 (at most $1.74 per 100 contracts), and makers get a rebate of 0.0125 x contracts x price x (1 − price).
Worked example: Polymarket vs a sportsbook line
Say team A plays team B in a BO3. On Polymarket, team A shows a bid of 61¢ and an ask of 62¢, which means team B can be bought at 39¢. A sportsbook prices the same match at 1.57 on team A and 2.35 on team B.
Buying team A on Polymarket as a taker. 100 shares at 62¢ cost $62.00. The fee is 0.05 x 100 x 0.62 x 0.38 = $1.18. All in, $63.18 buys a $100 payout, which is decimal odds of 100 / 63.18 = 1.58. You need team A to win more than 63.2% of the time to break even.
Buying team B. 100 shares at 39¢ cost $39.00, plus a fee of 0.05 x 100 x 0.39 x 0.61 = $1.19. $40.19 for a $100 payout is odds of 2.49.
The sportsbook. 1.57 implies 63.7% and 2.35 implies 42.6%. Together that is 106.2%, so the book keeps about 6% of the market as margin. Remove it and the fair prices are 1.67 on team A (59.9%) and 2.50 on team B (40.1%).
| Price you get | Team A | Team B |
|---|---|---|
| Sportsbook | 1.57 | 2.35 |
| Polymarket after taker fee | 1.58 | 2.49 |
| Sportsbook with margin removed | 1.67 | 2.50 |
What the numbers say:
- On team A the two venues are almost level, 1.58 against 1.57. On team B, Polymarket pays 2.49 against the book's 2.35, close to the book's own fair price.
- Buying both sides on Polymarket at the ask, fees included, costs $1.034 for a $1 payout whichever team wins, about 3.4% of friction. The book's two prices carry about 6.2%. That gap is the usual case for prediction markets on liquid matches, and it disappears on thin ones where the spread is wide.
- The two venues also disagree on the match itself: Polymarket's midpoint puts team A at 61.5%, the book's fair line at 59.9%. Neither number is the truth. If you think team A wins 60% of the time, neither 1.57 nor 1.58 is a bet.
A limit order changes the maths. Post a bid for team A at 61¢ and, if someone fills it, you pay no fee and get odds of 1.64. The catch is that it may not fill, especially if the price moves toward you for a reason you have not seen yet.
Settlement rules, forfeits and postponements
Every market has written rules on its page, and they decide what you get paid. For a current Polymarket CS2 match winner market they say:
- Resolution source: official results on HLTV. If HLTV has not published within two hours of the end of the match, a consensus of credible reporting can be used instead.
- Canceled match or tie: resolves 50-50, which means every share pays $0.50 whichever side you hold. If you bought at 62¢, you lose 12¢ a share plus the fee. If you bought at 39¢, you make 11¢.
- Postponed match: it must be rescheduled to start within 14 days of the original date or the market resolves 50-50. Older markets used 7 days, so read the window on each market.
- Forfeits: a walkover before the match starts resolves 50-50. If the match starts and one team later wins by forfeit or disqualification, that team wins the market.
- Map markets: a map that is never completed resolves 50-50, even if the match was played.
Resolution itself runs through UMA's optimistic oracle. Someone proposes the result with a bond, and if nobody challenges it within two hours the market resolves and winning shares redeem for $1. A disputed result goes to a second proposal and then to a vote of UMA token holders, which can take several days. An undisputed CS2 market can settle a few hours after the final map; a disputed one can tie up your money for most of a week.
This is the biggest practical difference from a sportsbook, which usually voids the bet and returns your stake in the same situations. Polymarket US and Kalshi use a third approach, settling at a "last fair price" set by the exchange; our Kalshi vs Polymarket comparison covers it.
Access and funding
The international site. Polymarket's help center blocks the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and other countries, plus Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia in Canada. A few countries, including Singapore, Poland, Thailand and Taiwan, are close-only: you can exit existing positions but not open new ones. Using a VPN to get around this breaks the terms of service. Your balance is held in pUSD, a token on the Polygon network backed one to one by USDC, and you fund it by sending crypto from a supported network.
Polymarket US. US residents use a separate app that operates as a CFTC-regulated exchange and clearing house. It opened to waitlisted users in December 2025 and dropped the waitlist in May 2026. Sign-up requires full identity verification, including your Social Security number, and you fund it in dollars by debit card, bank transfer, PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay, wire or USDC. Its esports section lists CS2 match markets. State regulators are still challenging sports event contracts in court, so check that your state is supported in the app before you deposit.
If your country is not on the blocked list and betting on event contracts is legal where you live, you can open a Polymarket account here. Our Polymarket CS2 page collects the live CS2 markets we follow.
Liquidity checks before you trade
The displayed price is only real for the size sitting at it. Before you trade a CS2 market, check:
- The spread. On ESL Pro League and Major matches it is usually a few cents, sometimes 1¢. On small qualifiers it can be 30¢ or more, and the "price" shown means very little.
- Depth. Open the order book and see how many shares are offered at the ask. A large order walks up through worse prices, and the fee applies to every fill.
- Timing. Books on tier-two matches often fill in only in the last hour or two before the start, and lineup news moves them fast.
- The exit. You can sell before the match, but only at the bid. In a thin market the bid may be far below what you paid even if nothing has changed.
If you want to see how prediction-market prices hold up as a guide, our picks come from SkinBetHub's proprietary signal model, built on prediction-market data. They are posted with their odds before the match starts, graded at a flat 1 unit, and every result stays on the results page. For a full comparison with traditional books, read Polymarket vs sportsbook for CS2. If Polymarket is blocked where you live, check whether Kalshi accepts your country. It lists CS2 match, map and tournament markets, and you can sign up for Kalshi here. No market, fee level or record makes profit likely: only stake what you can afford to lose.