PUBG: Battlegrounds is a battle royale game developed by PUBG studios and published by Krafton. The game is inspired by Battle Royale, a Japanese film released in 2000.
The concept of PUBG is that up to a hundred players parachute onto an island where they hunt for weapons and equipment to save themselves and kill other players. The available safe area for the players decreases in timed intervals which forces more encounters. The last surviving player or team wins the round.
PUBG was banned in India in 2020 under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act as the central government banned the app along with 117 other Chinese applications. The game was then rebranded and relaunched in India in July 2021 as Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI). It is available both on Android and iOS.
BGMI remained a player-vs-player shooter game with similar gameplay having six maps – Erangel, Miramar, Sanhok, Vikendi, Livik and Karakin.
PUBG gameplay explained
A competitive game of PUBG or BGMI takes a series of games which accounts for all the random elements of the game. Players can choose to enter the game as a solo, duo or team of up to four players.
A player’s journey in the game begins by being parachuted onto an island by a plane. The plane’s path changes in each round which creates different strategy scenarios for each player or team.
Professional teams and players have a strategically preferred location to land on each map. The initial minutes of the game are spent scavenging for vehicles, weapons and armour. Players can search for them in buildings or ghost towns. The high-risk zones typically have better equipment offerings for players. Finished players can be looted for equipment late on in the game.
Once all the players have landed and the game has begun, the map’s play area keeps on shrinking towards a random location after every few minutes. A player outside this zone encounters incremental damage and eventually gets eliminated if he/she does not get back into the safe zone.
The ever-constrained map results in more encounters between players and teams. Regions at random are red marked and bombed which also is a threat to the players in that area at the time. Players are given prior warnings so that they can relocate to safer areas.
The plane occasionally drops loot packages at random in the playing areas or also does it when players use their flare guns. The items in this package are otherwise unavailable in the game.
A full round takes 30 minutes on average. Players also earn in-game currency which they can use to buy in-game items.
PUBG betting: Markets and more
The number of betting markets available in PUBG or BGMI is lesser as compared to more established games like League of Legends, Dota 2 or CS:GO as the battle royale style makes it unconventional as compared to other first-person shooters (FPS) games.
Round winner
In Round Winner, bets will be settled based on the player/team that finishes first in the specified round regardless of the kill score.
Map winner
The punter wins the bet if the team backed wins one particular map round out of a series of maps.
Kill markets
The punter wins the bet depending on the total number of kills committed by a team/player or all the teams/players in a round. Handicap kills on a round are also a betting market.
Point markets
In Point markets, bets will be settled based on the total number of points earned by a player/players/team/teams depending on the tournament scoring format.
Top 3 round finish
In the Top 3 round finish, bets will be settled on the basis of the finishing position of the team/player after a game regardless of the kill score.
Websites that offer PUBG betting in India
Parimatch, Bet365 and Betway offer betting for PUBG (now BGMI) among other bookmakers in India.