How to Bet Teasers

If you can bet a parlay then you can bet a teaser. Really, you can. Teasers and parlays have a lot in common. Both are a single wager on multiple games and to get paid you must correctly pick every game.

The difference between a parlay and a teaser is the ability to move the point spread in any direction, known as teasing the lines. Because of this reliance on a point spread teasers are only available for sports with a spread like basketball and football.

To understand what it means to tease a line take a look at the following example. Our example will be a two-game six-point football teaser. The games you’ve selected are Montreal as a 9-point favorite versus Toronto and Winnipeg as a 6-point underdog versus Edmonton. Before teasing the line your games would look like this:

Montreal -9 at Toronto
Winnipeg +6 at Edmonton

After teasing the line by 6 points (the value of the teaser you’ve chosen) the games would now have the following lines

Montreal -3 at Toronto
Winnipeg +12 at Edmonton

After teasing the line Montreal now only has to cover a 3-point spread instead of the nine-points from the original line. Winnipeg has gone from being a 6-point underdog to a 12-point underdog. Teasing the line has hopefully made it easier for you to win each game and as a result win your bet. You could also tease the line the other way and make Montreal a 15-point favorite and Winnipeg a pick’em.

You teaser options will depend at which sportsbook you place your wagers. You’ll typically find that books will allow you to bet on 2-15 games on a single teaser. The number of points you can tease the line by depends not only on the sportsbook you use, but also the sport.

For football teasers most books allow you to tease the line by 6, 6.5 or 7 points. Basketball teasers generally come in 4, 4.5 or 5 points. There are some books that do bigger teasers with more points and some also include what they call super teasers that can go as high as 10 points.

The payout on a teaser varies depending on the payout rules at the book. It is also determined by the number of games you bet on and the number of points you a teasing. All books have a complete list of their teasers payouts, so look them over to find out where you’ll get the best odds for the kind of teaser you usually bet.