Teaser Bets that Win

One bet type that doesn’t get talked about much these days is the “teaser”.

It’s been around in sports betting forever and by using the correct betting strategy, known as the “Wong” Teaser, it can be a key part of a winning bettor’s arsenal. If you’re not careful, however, it becomes sucker bet and a half.

As the Robin Hood of sports betting, taking from the house and giving to the bettors, I’m fired up to teach you teaser strategy.

Today we’ll go deep on teasers; a fun way to bet, creating wins when boring straight bets might lose. As always, we’ll then make some (teaser) bets of the week for this weekend’s football games.

Let’s get after it.

What is a teaser?

A teaser is a type of parlay bet (requiring wins on multiple legs) where you adjust the point spread or total in your favor for each leg, typically by 6, 6.5, or 7 points.

For example, if a team is favored by 7 points, including them in a 6-point teaser would move the line down to make them a 1 point favorite. In the case of a 2.5 point underdog, a teaser would move the line up to +8.5 Here’s a visual of how it works:

Like a traditional parlay, all legs in your teaser must cover the adjusted spreads for the bet to win.

Teasers give bettors unique flexibility. For example, if I feel confident in a big favorite winning their game, but want some protection against a “garbage time” touchdown by their opponent, I might use a teaser to create that margin of safety.

The house offers these bets because the reduced risk on each leg leads to lower payouts compared to traditional parlays.

We’ll focus on the most common teaser: two teams (legs), 6 point adjustment to the point spread. Let’s talk strategy.

The Wong Teaser

Named after the prolific gambling author Stanford Wong, our optimal teaser strategy maximizes value by teasing point spreads through key numbers.

As we discussed in our line shopping piece, football is unique among popular sports for betting because points are commonly scored in bunches of sevens and threes.

This leads to a margin of victory that is not a balanced distribution, but instead clusters on key numbers (3, 7, 10, 14, etc.).

You can see this visually depicted in a graph of NFL outcomes here:

Wong realized that by only choosing teasers that cross the key numbers of 3, 6, and 7 (e.g., teasing +2.5 to +8.5 or -7.5 to -1.5), teaser bets would have a mathematical edge on the house.

Here’s the math:

In order to break even on a two team, 6-point teaser offered at -120, each leg would need to win 73.85% of the time.

Since 2003, NFL underdogs between +1.5 and +2.5 have covered 75.2% of the time when teased, while favorites between -7.5 and -8.5 have covered at 76.8%. These numbers easily clear the break-even point!

Below are additional guidelines to make these bets well.

The 10 4 Commandments of Teaser Betting

1. Don’t Tease Through Zero - While I recommend sticking to “Wong” teasers 99% of the time, the biggest mistake a bettor can make with teasers is teasing through 0 (e.g. teasing a favorite of 2 points to become an underdog of 4 points). This is because less than 1% of NFL games end in a tie, none since December 2022 (!!), so you’re wasting a valuable point on a hyper rare outcome.

2. Only Tease NFL Sides - While sportsbooks offer teasers on college football, and even basketball (with slightly different rules), college football has more scoring and less reliance on key numbers. This erodes the benefit you get from your 6 points of line movement. The same is true in other sports — stay away.

3. Look For Games With Low Totals (below 42 ideally) - Since teasers move lines a fixed amount, typically 6 points, a lower scoring game, indicated by a lower projected total, offers more outcome value for each point. To illustrate this with an extreme case, 6 points make up 20% of the total in a game where both teams’ combined score is expected to be 30. They make up 10% of the total points in a game score expected to total 60. You want a bigger chunk of the total in your line move for more value.

4. Choose The Right Book (avoid higher vig) - 2 team, 6-point teasers used to be priced at -110 pretty uniformly. Unfortunately that pricing is gone and odds vary by book. Today, books price in two ways: fixed or dynamic. Fixed price books list all teasers at one price, regardless of line movement - this is good for bettors. Dynamically priced books adjust pricing based on the value of the points gained, so Wong teasers will be pricier than less advantageous line movements - this is bad for bettors.

   You want a fixed price of -125 or better, so shop around before placing your bets. Based on my research, here is the approach popular sportsbooks are taking currently:

To capitalize on the strategies discussed here today, I’ll be making my teaser bets on DraftKings or Bet365 if I have access, and Caesers if not.

Bets of the Week $$

Last week we placed four NBA futures bets — we’ll check in on them down the line.

Since starting the newsletter, bets given out in this section are ahead 3.7 units, at a positive 30% ROI. We’ll update this regularly.

Based on the research and strategy above, I am making the following teaser bets this week:

• NY Jets -1 (teased from -7) + LA Chargers -1 (teased from -7) @-120 on DraftKings for 1 unit

• LA Rams +8.5 (teased from +2.5) + Philadelphia Eagles +9 (teased from +3) @-120 on DraftKings for 0.5 units

If the Rams game is over by the time you read this, I don’t mind substituting the Seahawks teased to +9 in the second wager.

Next week we’ll look at some wild NFL trends developing this season and how to play off them skillfully.

Please fill out the survey about today’s newsletter and let me know your thoughts! I’m especially curious for feedback on the new formatting 🙏.