How to Win Money Betting NFL Teasers

Teasers are one of the many different ways to bet football. If you’re brand new to sports betting, as in never placed a bet, you should read the article I just linked you to as the information contained in this article here is quite advanced. For others, if simple math makes your head spin, note that I touch on teasers in my simple to follow article on football betting systems. For anyone ready to learn, let’s dive into advanced teaser betting which is one the best ways to profit betting NFL football.

What is a Teaser Bet

A teaser bet is a parlay bet that uses modified point spreads. For example: a 2-team 6-point teaser on Giants -8.5 -110 and Patriots +4.5 -110 gives you Giants -2.5 and Patriots +10.5 as a parlay. The odds for 6-point teasers vary between bookies. To give an idea: 2-team 6-point teasers are generally offered at -110, 3-team 6-point teaser at +150 to +180 and 4-team 6-point teaser at +250 to +300. You’ll notice these pay less than standard parlays; this is because you have the added benefit of 6-points in your favor. In this article I’ll teach you everything required to make long term profits betting teasers.

Understanding Teaser Odds

The first thing to understand about teasers is exactly what it is you are betting. Did you know a 2-team 6-point teaser at -110 is a parlay where each team is priced -262? Did you know a 3-team teaser at +180 is a parlay where each team is priced -244? If you’re already familiar with this math you can skip ahead; for those confused, allow me to illustrate this using simple math.

When betting at -110 we’re risking $1.10 to win $1.00, this means a successful bet returns $2.10 ($1.10 stake + $1.00 win). To calculate how often we need to win to break even we use the formula risk/return = implied probability. So here the math is 1.10/2.10=0.5238 (52.38%). This tells us in a -110 teaser BOTH teams need to cover 52.38% of the time for us to break even. To see how often each team individually must win all we need to do is calculate the square root of 0.5238. You can do this via a root calculator; just enter 2 on the top field and 0.5238 in the bottom one. Doing this we see the answer is 0.7237 and this tells us each team must cover their point spread 72.37% to achieve the overall 52.38% required win rate. If we plug 72.37% into the implied probability field of our odds converter we see in American odds this is -262. This tells us is if we parlayed -262 with -262 the odds are -110. Therefore a 2-team 6-point teaser at -110 is a parlay with each team priced at -262.

Doing the math on a 3-team 6-point teaser +180: we start with $1.00 risked returns $2.80 ($1.00 stake + $1.80 win). So to calculate how often all three teams must win we take 1.00/2.80= 0.3571 (35.71%). This time we’re going to take the cubed root (3rd root) of 0.3571 because we’re dealing with 3 teams. Plugging this into a root calculator we see this solves to .7095 (70.95%). Once again using our odds converter we see 70.95% implied probability is -244 in American odds. So a parlay on -244, -244 and -244 pays +180. Therefore a 3-team 6-point teaser at +180 is a parlay where all teams are priced -244.

How to Beat Teasers

If you’re using 3-team 6-point +180 teasers you simply need to find a situation where teasing a point spread six points increases that teams expected win rate by 20.95%. Why? Because point spreads are a 50/50 proposition, and we’ve already determined in order to break even on 3-teams +180 teaser we need each team to win 70.95% of the time. 70.95%-50.00%=20.95%, so if a point spread is 20.95% more likely to cover when moved 6-points it is a +EV bet, if less than 20.95% it is a –EV wager and should be avoided. If we’re doing 2-team 6-point -110 teasers we need to increase the win rate by 72.37%-50.00%=23.37%. Hopefully this all makes sense! If not, reread it and keep in mind the math involved here is very simple.

Basic Strategy Teasers

Teasers were originally designed as a method to extract more money from recreational punters; however, along the way sharp sports bettors soon realized that with simple math and careful selection betting teasers can be quite profitable. Although the concept Basic Strategy Teasers has been around since the 1980’s, it was 2001 book by Stanford Wong titled “Sharp Sports Betting” that introduced this concept to the masses. Basic Strategy is based on the fact that almost 25% of NFL games are decided by either 3 or 7 points and around 38% of all NFL games are decided by 3 to 7 points. There are no other margins of victory close to these figures. Therefore simple logic tells us teasers that fully cross the 3 and the 7 at the best possible odds are the highest value of all teasers. This is called Basic Strategy or in some circles Wong Teasers.

To put this into a betting system, basic strategy is to tease underdogs +1.5 to +2.5 and favorites -7.5 to -8.5 in 6-point teasers. Basic strategy also states the best odds possible are required. As illustrated in the first section of this article 3-team 6-point teasers at +180 have better odds per team than 2-team 6-point teasers at -110. Therefore if on a given week there are 3 point spreads matching basic strategy criteria, 3-team teasers are a far better option than 2-team teasers.

Some Points about Basic Strategy

Basic Strategy Teasers are very often +EV, but this is not always the case. The logic behind them only shows they are the best blind subset to wager on, nowhere does that logic quantify their profitability.
It is important to check multiple online sportsbooks to confirm point spread you’re about to tease truly are +1.5 to +2.5 or -7.5 to -8.5. If your sportsbook list the line as -7.5, but one, two, or several others have the same team at -7, this should not be considered a basic strategy teaser.
Basic Strategy refers only to NFL football. Despite belief to the contrary, there are in fact profitable college football teasers. To find these you need to understand advanced teaser strategy covered later in this article.

Best Betting Sites for Teaser Betting

Prior to getting into advanced teaser strategy it is important to understand, punters who are beating teasers are doing so using lots of simple math and value shopping multiple online sportsbooks. A mistake novice bettors often make is to focus only on best teaser odds, meaning they want 3-team +180 not 3-team +170. However, what if there is 3 point spreads all +1.5 at every sportsbook (in other words the consensus line is +1.5 for each), yet one sportsbook that offered only +170 had these all priced at +3 -135? In case you’re not aware, the price such as -110 in +1.5 and -130 in +3 makes no difference to teaser payouts. Each site has “fixed odds” for teaser, so teasing +1.5 -110 to +7.5 or teasing +3 -130 to +9 results in the same payout. Generally speaking it’s important to get +180 on 3-team 6-point teasers however it is not the end all. If you understand advanced teaser strategy all things need to be considered to determine which option is best.

More to this point: 5Dimes.com is well known for offering the best teaser odds overall, however they shade their lines in such as way it cost more to cross the 3 and the 7. Examples of how they accomplish this: say a team should be a -8.5 point favorite, 5Dimes might list them as -10.5 +130, or if a team is a +2.5 underdog 5Dimes might list them at +1 -125. On the point spread their expectation is the same; 5Dimes does this only to make it tougher to beat teasers. So although 5Dimes offers the best teaser odds, the value is often less than expected.

Again I must emphasize it is very important to use as many betting sites, bookies and sports books as possible when betting teasers. However the site I find has the largest value the most often is www.bovada.lv. These guys offer 3-team 6-point teasers at +180, which is somewhat scarce these days. For example Intertops offers these at +170, Bookmaker at +160 and BetOnline at +150. Additionally, Bovada rarely shades their lines on -7.5 to -8.5 favorites, and often shades the lines on +1.5 to +2.5 underdogs to +3. So the one place they do shade the lines benefits teaser bettors. So while using multiple betting sites is important, opening an account at www.bovada.lv is an also near must for any serious teaser bettor.

Even websites with poor teaser odds often have +EV teasers. For example BetOnline.com offers teaser odds so poor it’s almost a crime they’re allowed to do so. However, they also offer 2-team 7.5 point teasers at -140 which is an option not many sites offer. On rare occasions when there are two strong 10 point NFL favorites on the same week, this teaser option often has positive expected value. Another site Bookmaker.eu isn’t very competitive on most teaser options; however, they offer 4-team 6-point teasers at +300. This is quite impressive compared to BetOnline +250, Pinnacle +260, Carib +260 and Sportbet +280 on the same. The point I’m attempting to drill home in this section: understanding the intricacies of several online betting sites and then shopping point spreads in depth is a major key to profitable teaser betting.

Advanced Teaser Strategy

Teaser Odds The theory behind “advanced teaser strategy” isn’t actually all that advanced. We already know that if a point spread is a 50/50 proposition and a 3-team 6-point teasers at +180 requires each team to win 70.95% of the time, in order profit we must find selections that moving their point spread six points increases their win rate by greater than 20.95%. It doesn’t matter what teaser subset we’re dealing with this is still true. I included the chart on the right where you can see a two team teaser at -140 require a 76.4% break even rate. BetOnline offers 2-team 7.5 point teasers at -140. So here we’d need to find a situation where moving a point spread 7.5 points increases the cover rate by 26.4%. This is very basic; the advanced part comes in developing the skills needed to calculate true odds of the modified point spreads.

Tips to Consider

Remember Basic Strategy – Teasers that fully cross the 3 and 7 have the highest value. Although it is possible to find profitable teasers outside this criterion, they are far and few between so we should always first focus our math on crossing the 3 and the 7 at the best odds possible.
The Market is Near Efficient – It’s important that you understand sharp betting sites such as Pinnacle Sports are setting odds in such a way neither side should be +EV. This is a heavy basis behind advanced strategy tips I’ll provide in the rest of this article. If this outside your understanding read my simple article on fade the public prior to continuing.

Now that you understand teaser betting in great depth all that’s left is the strategy to quantify team’s chances of covering modified point spreads. While this topic is so advanced that an entire book could be written about it, the good news is following very simple methods provided below are enough to spot more than 60% of the profitable teasers available on a given week. This is plenty enough to get you started betting teasers profitably.

The Moneyline Method

The absolute best method for calculating the value of teasers is the moneyline method. To show how this works: week 12 of the 2011 NFL season there were two point spreads I was interested in evaluating for a potential teaser. New York Jets -9.5 at home against the Buffalo Bills and Atlanta Falcons -9 at home against the Minnesota Vikings. Basic strategy already tells me that crossing the 7 and 3 at the best odds possible is the highest value of all teasers. So here a 7-point teaser to -2.5 and -2.0 is the known highest value solution. The site offering the best odds and point spreads to do this was www.bovada.lv who offers 2-team 7-point teasers at -130. Worth noting is 5Dimes offers 7-point two team teasers at -120, however they had the lines shaded to -10.5 +115 for both teams, so here a 2-team 8-point teaser at -150 was required; obviously -130 at Bovada was far better value.

To run through the math quickly: risking $1.30 on -130 returns $2.30 ($1.30 stake + $1.00 win). So using the formula risk/return=implied probability I see 1.30/2.30=0.5652 so I need to win this bet 56.52% of the time to average break even. To calculate how often each team must cover their teased to point spread, I calculate the square root of .5652 to be .7518 (75.18%). Therefore I now need to determine if Jets -2.5 and Falcons -2.0 will each win greater than 75.18% of the time.

To evaluate this I need to take the money lines for each game from pinnaclesports.com. The reason I use Pinnacle Sports is because they take the largest wagers, have the lowest juice and pay the fastest. This is site that makes their profit by setting very accurate lines, and is therefore the best to use when dealing with the moneyline method.

At Pinnacle the moneylines were:

Jets -475 / Bills +380
Falcons -425 / Vikings +365

A quick lesson on finding no-vig probabilities: Using our odds converter enter -475 to see this has a 82.6% implied probability and enter +380 to see this has a 20.83% implied probability. The two probabilities total 103.43%. The reasons they total over 100% is because the juice (vig) which how the bookmakers make their profit. To remove the vig just divide each by the total percent market. 82.6/103.43=79.86% and 20.83/103.43=20.14% these now total 100% so we’ve determined the sharpest bookmaker Pinnacle is giving the Jets a 79.86% chance of winning the game with no point spread involved. If you do out the same math on the second game you’ll see they’re giving the Falcons a 79.01% chance of winning. Note: I found it important to share the math but also will now mention we have no-vig calculator that will do this math for you.

Consider I’m teasing to Jets -2.5 and Falcons -2.0 my calculations are not complete. I need to know the chances each team wins by exactly 1 point, or exactly two points. For this I have a very rough push chart that tells me teams favored by 13 or less win by exactly 1 about 2.3% of the time, and by exactly 2 about 2.0% of the time. Earlier I calculated the Jets have a 79.86% chance of winning so here I deduct the 2.3% and the 2.0% from that figure to calculate Jets -2.5 has a 75.56% true win probability. For the Falcons -2 I can’t deduct the full 2.0% for a win by 2 points because this is a push not a loss. 1% of that is in our -2 line where the other 1% is in the bookmakers +2 line, so I only take half credit. So here I deduct 2.3% for the loss on -1 and 1.0% for the push on -2 from the 79.01% to see Falcons -2 has a 75.71% probability.

What I just found here is a wager with small positive expectation. Remember 2-team -130 needs each team to cover 75.18% of the time to break even and I’ve calculated Jets -2.5 has a 75.56% chance and Falcons -2 has a 75.71% chance. I’ve exceeded the break even rate on both. Worth noting this does not fall under the term “wong teaser” as that system only teases +1.5 to +2.5 dogs and -7.5 to -8.5 favorites by 6 points. However using the same information basic strategy was derived from I found a +EV bet.

Calculating Underdogs Teasers

As I mentioned an entire book can be written on teaser strategy. There are all sorts of +EV spots on the board each week when using multiple betting sites and doing simple math. This article however failed to cover how to calculate the value of teasing underdogs, so let me touch on that quickly. The advice you’ll most often find on this involves creating push charts based solely on historical data. This is a poor method because there will never be enough meaningful data to calculate things like the exact chances a +1.5 to +2.5 favorite with a total 41.5 to 43.5 wins by exactly 8 points. Likewise, pulling how often a certain subset covered the point spread and then comparing it to how often they would have covered when teased is also a poor a method. With this one you run the risk of operating off data mined variance and before long you’re making wagers similar to the Vietnamese guy at your local casino who keeps score in baccarat in order to find good bets.

As you can see the current methods used for calculating underdog teasers have issues. Unless you’re able to artificially simulate a match multiple times over, your best strategy is to use alternate point spreads from the sharpest and lowest juice site offering them. You can find current betting odds on alternate point spreads at oddsportal.com. Just be sure to follow the same math I covered in the moneyline method to remove the juice. If you’re able to find an exact alternate point spread at sharp betting site…the work is very easy. If you only find an alternate point spread close to the teased spread then you can do the same math using a broad push chart for just one or two potential margins of victory as we did when using the moneyline method.

Despite the fact there is a lot more that could be covered on this topic; this article provides everything a bettor needs to know to beat bookies via teaser betting. If you we’re confused by the simple math this article contains, I encourage you to read this again and again until it’s clear as this is certainly one of the easiest ways to profit when betting sports online. With that, I wish you the best of luck and will conclude by asking you for a small favor. The information I just covered is enough to make you a great deal of cash, please consider supporting our website by at the very least recommending our content to a friend. Finally, if you’re hungry to learn more about football betting, refer to our page on football betting strategy.