Are Teasers for Suckers? How to Bet NFL Teasers.

Are Teasers for Suckers? How to Bet NFL Teasers

A teaser is a bet that allows you to adjust the point spread in the direction you want on 2 or more games. The key is that you have to hit them all. In football, the most common teaser is 2-team 6. So if you love the Falcons +4.5 and the Bears -8.5 this week, then you can simply adjust the spreads to Falcons +10.5 and Bears -2.5. There are also 2-team 6.5’s, 2-team 7’s, 3-team 6’s, 3-team 10’s, 3-team 14’s, and so on. If you want to win though, you need to focus only on 2-team 6 (or 6.5’s).

I am not going to get too in depth about percentages and numbers, but in order to win money betting 2-team 6s you must hit each individual leg (or game) of the tease 72.37% of the time. In a 3-team 6, each leg must hit 70.95% of the time. Here are the breakdowns of how often each leg must hit in order to break even:

2 team -110 = 72.37%
3 team +180 = 70.95%
4 team +300 = 70.71%
5 team +450 = 71.11%

I would advise against betting 4-6 team teasers simply because of the variance involved and likelihood that you would have to “force” a team into the tease that you probably do not like very much. I would stick to 2- and 3-team teasers since they offer great value with less variance involved.

You can get a lot of value crossing key numbers (3, 7, 6, and 4), but the Wong Teasers have been long outdated. His strategy was basically to take 1.5-2.5 dogs and push them up to +7.5/+8.5 or to take -7.5/8.5 favorites and push them down to -1.5/-2.5. You would’ve actually lost money if you would’ve strictly bet these teasers over the last 7-8 years. Pushing +1.5/+2.5 home dogs up has not been profitable and has hit around 60% over the last 7 years, nor has betting road favorites of -7.5/-8.5 down. The good news is that there are some modified teasers that have been profitable. Betting down home favorites of -7.5/-8.5 has been, hitting almost 78% of the time. Pushing road dogs of +1.5/+2.5 has also been successful, hitting 73% of the time. Another profitable angle is pushing +4.5/+5.5 dogs (especially road dogs) across +10 in teases. They have hit around 74% over the last 7-8 years. I would stick to mainly trying to tease across 3 and 7, but jumping dogs over 10 definitely has value as well.

I will never strictly bet one trend every single time. If you factor other trends, which we will discuss later, into these basic strategies then you should be able to get 74-75% of your teases and profit each year. You never want to tease college games, because the key numbers are not as valuable there. You also want to resist teasing big numbers down or big numbers up; stick to single digit numbers. There is little value there also. As far as totals are concerned, you will have better luck teasing low totals (in the 30’s) down and taking the over in the game. Teasing totals in the 50s down and taking the over is a recipe for disaster, as is teasing high totals up and taking the under. There is a high variance to those numbers, and there has not been any consistency to those bets since I started betting sports for a living back in 2002-03.

In sum, teasers are sucker bets if you bet them without first considering the best approach to them. If you bet in an informed manner, you can profit on them just as much as you can on straight bets. Focus on key numbers and key trends and look for the ones that offer the most value. If a number is inflated because of the public, it makes little sense to bet that number down. You would be better off betting the number up across a key number and taking the anti-public team. You can win money betting teasers if you do it the right way.

By Rance Young  email me: ranceyoung@behind-the-bets.com