Glossary · market

Teaser

A teaser is a parlay variant where you can adjust the point spread or total in your favor on every leg — at the cost of reduced odds. The most common teaser format in football is a 2-leg, 6-point teaser.

How It Works

A standard NFL 2-leg, 6-point teaser:

You select two games. For each game, you can shift the spread (or total) by 6 points in your direction.

Original line: Chiefs -7 → Teaser line: Chiefs -1
Original line: Cowboys +3 → Teaser line: Cowboys +9

Both legs must win for the teaser to pay. The payout is typically around -110 (smaller than a straight parlay would be).

Teasers can vary in size (4 points, 6 points, 7 points, 10 points) and number of legs (2, 3, 4+). The more points you tease, the worse the odds. The more legs, the worse the odds.

Why It Matters

Teasers are a useful tool when used carefully and a major trap when used carelessly.

The Wong Teaser: A specific structure popularized by handicapper Stanford Wong. The idea is that 6-point teasers in football should ideally cross the key numbers 3 and 7 — the most common margins of victory.

For example, teasing a -7.5 favorite to -1.5 crosses both 3 and 7 (margins of 2-7 now win, when before only margins of 8+ won). This dramatically increases the probability of winning each leg.

The Wong Teaser is one of the few parlay-family bets that has historically been profitable when applied selectively. Modern books have priced this somewhat better than they used to (so the edge is smaller), but specific teaser structures crossing key numbers can still produce +EV at the right odds.

General teasers, on most legs, are -EV. Teasing through unimportant numbers (taking -8 to -2 in the NBA, for example) doesn’t significantly increase your win probability while still reducing your payout. Books make money on teasers because most casual bettors construct them without considering which numbers are crossed.

The lesson: not all teasers are equal. NFL teasers crossing 3 and 7 can be valuable. Most other teaser structures favor the book.

For broader context on parlay-family bets, see Parlays Explained.