Basketball Teaser Calculator

The most commonly wagered basketball teaser is 5 points. Most bettors typically bet basketball teasers between 4 and 6 points. However, there still may be wagers that offer a positive return on investment for players at 5.5-point and above. It all depends on the odds offered. For Regular Teasers (5 ½ pt, 6 pt, 6 ½ pt) a push (es) combined with a win (s), will reduce the bet to the next lowest number of teams. Example: If you have a 4-team teaser, where 3 games win and one game pushes, the bet will be reduced down to a 3-team teaser with the payout adjusted accordingly. A teaser bet is a lot like a parlay bet, all of the games you picked must win in order for you to win. As well because you are 'buying' points, the win return is smaller. Use our Teaser Calculator to determine the outcome of any particular teaser combination. Our Teaser Calculator allows.

Seasoned bettors are likely familiar with the teaser bet. But some beginning bettors might not know what these unique and exotic sports wagers entail. We are here to explain everything about a teaser bet; what it is, how it works, and the best way to use this option in your overall sports betting strategy.

Like a parlay, a teaser is a wager that involves multiple games -- two or more -- and you must be correct in all of the games in order to cash your ticket and win the bet. Teaser bets are most common in football and basketball -- the against the spread sports . What makes teasers unique, however, is that you get to adjust the odds in your favor. A typical NFL or college football teaser, for example, is six points. That means that you get to subtract six points the spread of a favorite and add six points to the spread of an underdog. For example, a -13 favorite would become -7 in a six-point teaser, while a +8 underdog would become +14.

Doc's Sports offers free NFL teaser picks and predictions every week of the pro football season. Check our homepage weekly during the season!

Teaser Sports Betting: Teaser Bet Explained

Online sportsbooks allow for up to 10-team teasers, or sometimes more, with odds greatly increasing, and some sportsbooks allow for up to 10-point to 13-point sweetheart teasers where a bettor drastically changes the line in exchange for drastically lower odds.

While football and basketball are the two main sports with which sportsbooks offer teaser bets, not all teasers are created equal. Just think about the numbers for a moment. The average NBA total is above 200 combined points for both teams. And the average NFL total is in the 40s. But the standard football teaser (at anywhere from -110 to -120 juice, depending on the sportsbook) allows you to move the spread six points for each matchup on the ticket, while a basketball teaser offers only 4.5 points at the same odds. There is obviously a lot more scoring in a basketball game, but you have to pay more for the extra points. That's why most sharp bettors stay away from basketball teasers and stick with six-point football teasers, which we will discuss in more detail later in this article.

How Does a Teaser Bet Work?

The payout in a teaser doesn't change because of the teams involved - the payout is at a fixed number depending on the number of teams and the number of points for each segment. Each sportsbook sets their own teaser odds, though, and they can vary widely from book to book. When you are placing a teaser bet, it's imperative to shop around to find the best payout odds for the number of teams you are betting. Some sportsbooks generally have better teaser payouts than others. Over the long run, a difference in payout can obviously make a big difference to the bottom line, so looking for the best deal is crucial. The odds you want for football teasers are -110 for a two-team, six-point teaser. However, many sportsbooks found that offering this juice opened them up to risk from sharp bettors, so many books raised their price to -115 or even -120 for this teaser bet variation.

Teaser Bet Tie or Push

This is the single biggest rule that you need to be aware of -- how the book handles ties or a push. There are four different ways that a book can handle it if one of your games ends exactly on the number. Some books treat a tie as a win. Others reduce the number of teams in the teaser by one -- if you bet a four-team teaser and have a tie and three wins, then it will pay off like a three-game teaser. Others will treat a teaser with a tie as no action -- they'll return your bet -- as long as you win your other bets. Finally, some books will treat a tie as a loss. Each of those is a very different situation and can affect your return significantly. You need to be aware of what the book offers and make sure that it fits your needs. There isn't necessarily one situation that is better than another, but you need to make sure that the potential return adequately reflects the risk you are taking.

NFL Betting Teaser with Example

Sharp bettors generally stay away from basketball teasers, as previously stated, and also normally avoid college football teasers in favor of NFL teasers. We already talked about the perils of hoops teasers, but for college football there are many more points scored in general than in professional football, removing the value out of the extra six points you get in a matchup. There are also more blowouts in college football. NFL betting lines are considered the sharpest in the sports betting industry, meaning the oddsmakers set the tightest lines on the games. So, therefore, getting the six points on a matchup creates great value for the bettor when many games end up close to the point spread. There are many NFL games where both sides of a teaser hit as well as both sides of the total. The following is an example:

Original Spread:

Kansas City Chiefs -10 vs. Las Vegas Raiders, Total 52

Final Score: Chiefs 30, Raiders 21

The Four Possible Six-Point Teaser Options:

Chiefs -4, Raiders +16, Over 46, Under 58

In this example, all six-point teasers for this game were a winner.

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Best Teaser Bets NFL: Basic Strategy Teasers

A popular strategy implored by most casual bettors is to tease favorites down so that they are closer to a pick'em and to tease a total down and take the over. A smarter strategy used by professional bettors is to make the most of the allotted points in the teaser. In what is known as a Basic Strategy Teaser or a Wong Teaser , bettors use the six points in the teaser to move the line past the two main key numbers in professional football, which are three and seven. An example of this would be moving a favorite of -8 down to a favorite of -2, thereby moving past the three and the seven, and moving an underdog of +2 points to +8. So many NFL games fall on these two key numbers, so moving the points past these key numbers gives the bettor a nice chance for profit.

Unfortunately for bettors, most sportsbooks raised the juice for a two-team, six-point Basic Strategy Teaser because the sharp bettors were consistently winning. The Expected Value was too great for the bettor at -110 vig. Therefore, the sportsbooks increased their juice on these Wong teasers to -115 or even -120 in some cases, removing most of the value and potential for long-term profit.

Are Teaser Bets Worth It?

It depends. Most smart bettors avoid NBA, college hoops and NCAA football teasers altogether. But I do know some sharp guys who use teasers in these sports on a regular basis with success. Personally, I play only NFL teasers, and, unless in very rare circumstances, I play only the Basic Strategy Teaser variety. I have found that I hit a high enough percentage of these bets that I can achieve profit even at -115 or -120 juice.

Previously, I published a comprehensive article on teaser betting strategy which explains what teasers are, who has the best odds, how to analyze teaser bets on an advanced level, blind teaser bets that are likely profitable, industry secrets and more. If you haven’t read that article, I strongly suggest doing so before continuing.

Now, moving forward, a topic I didn’t discuss in any detail was special teasers. These are the ones referred to at sports betting sites as “sweetheart teasers” and “monster teasers”. The name is not a standard, but the concept is the same. If you’re not familiar with these, a common example is a 10 point three team NFL teaser, generally offered at -110 to -130 pricing.

To give a further example, there are 3 teams you’re interested in betting this week: Jets +1.5, Ravens -11.5, and Patriots -2.5. Rather than betting these straight at -110 or -105, or putting them in a standard parlay, or standard teaser, you can put them in what many sites call a special, monster, or sweetheart teaser. If you do so, you’ll have a single bet of: Jets +11, Ravens -1.5, Patriots +7.5; each spread has been moved 10 points. Once again, you’ll need to risk between $11 and $13 per $10 you want to win, depending if the betting site offers these at -110, -120, -130.

This is only one example of a sweetheart teaser. Some sites also offer four team 13 point teasers, while 5dimes.eu offers teaser betting for 2-15 teams on every half point between 5.5 and 17, as well as a 20 point teaser option. While teaser options vary site to site, the 3 team ten point option is offered by many local bookies and most online betting sites. For that reason, I’ll use that as my example of how to calculate the value of sweetheart teasers.

Ties Often Lose

The first thing you need to know about sweetheart teasers is that, generally, ties lose. This is not the case at all sites, but it is at many of them, so pay close attention to the rules.

Best Sites for 10 Point Teasers

Here are the odds and rules for 10 point sweetheart teasers at four of our recommended betting sites:

www.Bovada.lv – 10 point three team teasers at -110 (Ties Lose)
Sportsbook – 10 point three team teasers at -120 (Ties Lose)
5Dimes.eu – 10 point three team teasers at -110 (Ties Lose)
Bookmaker.eu – 10 point three team teasers at -120 (Ties Reduce)

Sportsbook obviously offers poor odds for this wager type. These guys are good in other areas, but for this type of teaser we’ll leave them out. Bookmaker also offers worse odds, but has its advantages. At Bookmaker these teasers can be bet for as much as $20,000 per bet, while most other sites have $500 max limits. Also Bookmaker has ties reduce, meaning if one or more legs push while all others win, the bet is refunded. However, at -120 this is not enough to make it worth it, so for most, www.Bovada.lv and 5Dimes.eu are the best sites for monster teasers.

Are Sweetheart Teasers Sucker Bets?

For years I heard Sweetheart teasers are sucker bets, but to be honest I hadn’t looked at them in any great detail until writing this article. So with that, let’s go ahead and take a look together:

Now we already know, or at least should know, considering it’s the most common price charged in sports betting, that at -110 you’ll need to win 52.38% of your bets to break even over the long run. When there are three bets which are part of that -110 wager, what we need to do is convert 52.38% into a decimal of .5238 and then find which number times itself three times equals .5238, or in math terms: what is the cube root of .5238. Using a cube root calculator, I quickly determined that .8061 x .8061 x .8061 = .5238. Therefore, for a leg in a three team teaser at -110 to have neutral expected value, it must win 80.61% of the time.

After doing this math, I’m already discouraged. It seems rare that I’m going to pick up an extra 30.61% in win probability by adding 10 points, especially when pushes count as losses. I decided, however, to make an educated guess of which subsets of point spreads have the most value in a 10 point teaser. Now, what I know is that in the NFL the most common margin of victories in order are: 3, 7, 10, 6, 14, 4, 1, 17, 13 and 2. So I want to come up with subsets that cross as many of these key numbers as possible. The six that I decided were most likely to have value, if any subset has value at all, are-10.5 to -12.5 favorites, -1.5 to -2.5 favorites, -4.5 to -6.5 favorites, +4.5 to +5.5 underdogs, +7.5 to +9.5 underdogs and +11.5 to +12.5 underdogs.

My next step was looking at tons of historical data to determine how often teams push at each number crossed in a ten point teaser, and then add them together to get a rough idea if teasing that subset with ten points might have value. After doing, this I eliminated the -1.5 to -2.5 and the +7.5 to +9.5 subsets; teasing those ten points only increased their win rates by around 17%. The other four subsets were close enough to warrant a more detailed analysis.

As a professional gambler I’ve been compiling NFL statistics for years into databases I can use for analysis when needed. While this might sounds complex, for calculating teasers, push probabilities, etc., it is really not all that difficult. While I can’t confirm their accuracy, I’ve heard many recommend atsdatabase.com and sportsdatabase.com for NFL data. Heading to my database, I was able to find the following historical results for 10 point teasers:

-10.5 to -12.5 teased 10 points
Since 2006: 53-15 (77.94%)
Since 2001: 97-30 (76.37%)

-4.5 to -6.5 teased 10 points: (32.7% at -6.5) to (31.6% at -4.5)
Since 2006: 210-61 (77.49%)
Since 2001: 391-108 (78.36%)

Basketball Teaser Calculator Math

+4.5 to +5.5 teased 10 points:
Since 2006: 96-24 (80.00%)
Since 2001: 213-58 (78.60%)

Basketball Teaser Calculator 2020

+11.5 to +12.5 teased 10 points:
Since 2006: 24-8 (75%)
Since 2001: 41-11 (78.85)

I’ve now dug into these enough to determine with 98 percent certainty, there is no value to be had in standard three team ten point teasers.

Hopefully, this is not too discouraging. A thinking sports bettor, one who often makes the most profit, is someone who has lots of ideas, curiosities, theories and hunches. Rather than betting these and seeing if they win, they get out a blank sheet of paper, a few spread sheets, etc. and run tests. Bookies are smart, so more times than not we’re going to be disappointed in finding out that our brilliant idea was not +EV.

The good news is that as we practice our skills and as our knowledge grows, in time we can spot +EV bets much quicker. As far as teasers go, outside the box +EV teasers exist on a weekly basis.

5Dimes.eu has 560 different types of teasers available. They offer 2-15 team teasers on every half point between 5 and 17, and also 20 point teasers, with two different formats regarding ties for each. While initially doing the work takes some time, and it might be a “tough way to make an easy living”, becoming an expert at football teasers and then managing your bankroll will make you easy money over time.

10 Point Teaser Calculator

Now, if you’re a recreational bettor just looking for blind bets, stick to the strategies we mention in our teaser strategy guide. In that same article, those of you aspiring to or currently betting professionally can find further advanced strategies.

6 Point Teaser Calculator

Remember teaser betting often wins in streaks; don’t get over confident or carried away with your bankroll. Bet responsibly, and we wish you the best of luck!

Basketball Teaser Calculator Game

Other Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles:
» Future Betting Strategy
» NFL Bye Week Betting Strategy
» Parlay Betting Strategy