Teasers Explained

A teaser is a parlay where you shift each spread in your favour in exchange for a reduced payout. Unlike most combination bets, teasers can be genuinely profitable — but only in football, only across specific numbers, and only because of how football margins distribute.

The Mechanics

A standard two-team six-point teaser lets you move both spreads six points your way. A -8 favourite becomes -2; a +2 underdog becomes +8. Both legs must still win, and the payout is typically -120 instead of a parlay's +260.

At -120, a two-team teaser needs both legs to win 54.5% of the time. Since the legs are close to independent, each leg needs roughly 73.9% — the square root of 0.545. That is the entire bar: can six points get a football spread above a 74% win probability?

Why Only Football, And Only Certain Numbers

Football margins are not smoothly distributed. They cluster heavily on 3 and 7, because of field goals and touchdowns with conversions. Roughly a quarter of all NFL games are decided by exactly 3 or exactly 7.

A six-point teaser that crosses both numbers therefore captures a disproportionate share of outcomes. The canonical version — named after Stanford Wong, who documented it — takes favourites of -7.5 to -8.5 down through 7 and 3, or underdogs of +1.5 to +2.5 up through 3 and 7.

Move a basketball spread six points and you cross nothing in particular, because basketball margins are distributed smoothly. There is no clustering to exploit, so basketball teasers are simply a worse-priced parlay. See key numbers and NBA against the spread.

What Books Did About It

The strategy became widely known, and books adjusted. Several responses are common now:

Worse pricing. Two-team six-point teasers at -130 or -140 instead of -110 or -120. Each ten cents raises the required per-leg rate by about a point.

Excluding the good numbers. Some books bar teasing through 3 and 7, or restrict which spreads are eligible.

Requiring more legs. Three-team minimums, which adds variance and dilutes the qualifying legs with worse ones.

The edge has narrowed accordingly. At -120 with clean crossings the maths still works; at -140 it mostly does not. The arithmetic has to be redone at the actual price offered, not the price from an article written years ago.

Practical Discipline

Only qualifying legs. Favourites -7.5 to -8.5, underdogs +1.5 to +2.5. A leg outside that range is dead weight that drags the whole ticket.

Check the price first. The decision is arithmetic, and it changes with a dime.

Consider totals separately. Teasing totals lacks the same key-number structure, though 6-point moves off certain football totals have some merit.

Expect long droughts. Genuinely qualifying two-leg spots may appear a handful of times a season. A teaser strategy that produces plays every week is not using qualifying legs.

Frequently Asked Questions