Teaser, in plain words
A teaser is a parlay where you move the line on every leg in your favor by a fixed number of points, often 6 in football, in exchange for a lower payout. A -7.5 favorite becomes -1.5, a +2.5 underdog becomes +8.5, and both have to win.
Because every leg must win, each one needs a high win rate to pay for the reduced price. A two-leg teaser at -120 needs each leg to win about three times in four. The question is whether the points you bought push a leg over that bar.
That depends on which numbers the points cross. In the NFL, teasing a line through both 3 and 7 crosses the two most common final margins, which is why those teasers were once valuable. Books have since raised prices and changed rules, so price a teaser leg by leg before you trust an old rule of thumb.
The idea, drawn
Worked example · illustration
A two-leg teaser at −120
- Price
- −120
- Ticket break-even
- 54.55%
- Each leg must win
- 73.9%
- Legs
- 2
- −120 implies 54.55% for the whole ticket.
- Both legs must win, so the per-leg chance is the square root of the ticket's.
- The square root of 54.55% is 73.85%.
Each teased leg needs to win more than 73.9% of the time for the teaser to pay.