PuckChamp - Balu: Dota 2 Preview, Betting Markets and How to Bet Before Start

How a Dota 2 map actually works

Dota 2 is a MOBA built by Valve, released in 2013 and grown out of the Defense of the Ancients map made for WarCraft III. Five players face five. One side plays Radiant, the bright camp; the other plays Dire, the dark one. There is a single win condition — destroy the enemy Ancient, the Throne standing in the middle of the opposing base.

The map runs on three lanes: safe, middle and hard, with jungle territory in between. Towers guard every lane and have to fall before anyone reaches the base. Gold and experience come from finishing off creeps (the last hit), from kills and from destroyed structures. Net gold difference is the number that tells you who is genuinely ahead, no matter how the fights look on stream.

All of that matters the moment you open PuckChamp - Balu. A lead built on the safe lane by a farming core is not the same asset as a lead built by a roaming mid, and prices reflect that difference. Upcoming fixtures for the discipline sit together in the esports schedule and Dota 2 fixtures section.

Reading PuckChamp - Balu before first blood: draft, roles, pace

The draft starts the contest before anyone moves on the map. Teams take turns banning and picking heroes from a shared pool, and the sequence already announces an intention — early aggression, a slow build toward late game, or lane control and vision denial. It is the one piece of hard tactical information available ahead of minute one.

Five roles split the workload. The carry (position 1) scales and becomes the main threat late. The mid (2) sets the pace and looks for rotations. The offlaner (3) exists to slow the enemy carry down on the hard lane. Supports (4 and 5) buy vision, heal and lock targets down — invisible on a scoreboard, decisive on the map.

Patches sit on top of everything. Valve rebalances heroes and items on a regular cycle, the metagame shifts after every significant update, and a roster's form can change within weeks. A lineup that looked untouchable on one version of the game sometimes loses its footing on the next. Pre-match prices in the upcoming matches and odds list absorb that shift, though usually slower than a viewer who watched the last two weeks of play. 📊

Roshan, buyback and why leads are never safe

Roshan is the neutral boss sitting in his own pit. Whichever team kills him walks away with the Aegis of the Immortal — a second life for the player carrying it. A fight around that pit can flip a game in half a minute: five bodies on the ground and the road to the Throne is suddenly open.

Buyback finishes the picture. For a gold cost, a dead player returns to the fight instantly instead of waiting out the respawn timer. Add backdoor protection, which shields buildings that are not exposed by creeps, and you get a discipline where comebacks happen more often than in most competitive games.

The betting consequence is straightforward. A series that looks decided at the twenty-minute mark is not decided at all, and the market knows it. That is why a struggling favourite keeps a shorter price than the on-screen situation seems to justify.

Pre-match markets available on PuckChamp - Balu

The pre-match coupon opens several days ahead and closes the moment the first map goes live, scheduled for 20/09/2026 16:00. These are the market types that show up regularly on the discipline, with the situation each one suits.

One detail worth repeating: a map equals one game, and maps do not add up into a points score. In a Bo3, winning 2:0 and winning 2:1 deliver the same series result but belong to completely different markets, and the -1.5 map handicap demands a sweep rather than a qualification. Selections, stakes and the running coupon stay visible once you sign in to your account.

Pre-match against live: two ways to follow Dota 2. European Pro League

Pre-match betting works on what is already known: the usual tempo of each side, the current version of the game, what the fixture is worth inside Dota 2. European Pro League, and how packed the schedule has been. Prices drift slowly, sometimes over days, which leaves room to compare formats and market types without hurrying.

Live is the opposite rhythm. The draft is on the table, roles are visible, net gold sits on screen and the line answers every teamfight. A Roshan pickup, a successful buyback, a high-ground tower falling — each event repriced within seconds.

Most people use both. A position taken before the series starts, then adjusted from the in-play betting section once the first map is running. That section also carries the short-lived markets — next objective, next kill — which simply do not exist on the pre-match card.

Placing a bet on PuckChamp - Balu from Morocco

The route is short. Open an account through the quick registration form, top up your balance in Moroccan dirham (MAD), then open the PuckChamp - Balu page inside the Dota 2 tree. Local deposits run through CIH, Attijariwafa, Al Barid Bank and Cash Plus.

From there it is pick a market, type a stake, confirm the slip. Accumulators are allowed too — several maps from the same Dota 2. European Pro League match day, or several fixtures from the bracket on one ticket. On a phone, the mobile app for Android and iOS keeps the same navigation and sends a reminder when a series is about to begin, which helps when a match starts late at night. ⚡

One habit to keep: check the announced series format before confirming. Bo1 in groups, Bo3 in playoffs, Bo5 in a final — half the markets listed above behave differently depending on that single line.