A teaser calculator answers one question before you place the bet: do your legs cover often enough to beat the price? Take a 2-team, 6-point football teaser at -110. Stake C$10 and it pays C$19.09 back, but each leg has to cover 72.37% of the time just to break even. The free calculator above works that number out for any teaser, from 2 to 6 teams, with the typical payout table or the odds your book actually quotes.
How the teaser calculator works
A teaser is a parlay where you move every spread in your favour, by 6, 6.5 or 7 points in football and 4, 4.5 or 5 in basketball. A -8.5 favourite becomes -2.5. A +2 underdog becomes +8. In return the payout drops a long way: two legs that would pay about +264 as a straight parlay pay -110 as a 6-point teaser.
Pick the number of teams and the points, then either leave the price on the typical table or switch to your book’s price and type it in. The last input is the one that matters most: how often you think each teased leg covers. The calculator turns that into the chance the whole ticket wins and the expected profit on your stake.
Chance all legs win = p ^ teams Break-even per leg = (1 ÷ decimal odds) ^ (1 ÷ teams) Expected profit = stake × (p ^ teams × decimal odds − 1)
Typical teaser payouts
Prices change from book to book, and plenty of books shade the 2-team price to -120. These are the common ones, and they’re what the calculator uses on its default setting:
| Teams | 6 pts (4 in basketball) | 6.5 pts (4.5) | 7 pts (5) | Break-even per leg at 6 pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | -110 | -120 | -130 | 72.37% |
| 3 | +180 | +160 | +150 | 70.95% |
| 4 | +300 | +250 | +200 | 70.71% |
| 5 | +450 | +400 | +350 | 71.11% |
| 6 | +600 | +550 | +500 | 72.30% |
Look at that last column. The break-even rate barely moves between 2 and 6 teams, but the chance of the whole ticket landing collapses. At 71% a leg, two legs come in about half the time. Six legs come in 12.8% of the time. Same edge (or lack of one), far more swing.
The extra half-point costs more than it looks. A 2-team 7-point teaser at -130 needs 75.18% per leg, nearly three points more than at 6 points, for one extra point of cover per side. Only worth it if that point is crossing a key number.
Key numbers and the Wong teaser
Teasers only make sense because of how football games end. More NFL games finish with a 3-point margin than any other, and 7 is next. Six points that carry a line across both, say a -8 favourite down to -2, or a +2 underdog up to +8, buy a lot of extra wins. Six points that move a -13 favourite to -7 buy far fewer, because there’s nothing special about the numbers in between.
That’s the idea behind the Wong teaser, named after the blackjack writer who wrote it up: tease favourites of -7.5 to -8.5 down to -1.5 to -2.5, and underdogs of +1.5 to +2.5 up to +7.5 to +8.5. Those legs covered well over 72% for years. The books noticed, which is why the prices got worse and why you see -120 on two teams more often now.
Basketball is different. Margins in the NBA spread out evenly and no single number stands out, so four or five points don’t jump you over anything in particular. Most basketball teasers need a better leg win rate than the market gives you. Don’t assume the NFL numbers carry over to the CFL either; scoring is different there, and you’d want to see the data before teasing it.
Teaser or parlay?
Run the same two picks through the parlay calculator at -110 each and you get about +264. The teaser pays -110. You’re giving up about two-thirds of the profit in exchange for six points per side. That trade is good when the points cross 3 and 7, and poor when they don’t. If you’re not sure what a price is really saying, the implied probability calculator turns any odds into a percentage, and the vig calculator shows how much juice is built into a single line.
Ties, pushes and the small print
The calculator ignores pushes. Books handle them in two ways: some drop the tied leg and grade the teaser as one team fewer (a 3-teamer becomes a 2-teamer), and some grade a tie as a loss, often on 2-team teasers. A “ties lose” rule is worth about a point of break-even rate, so check before you bet.
Thinking about a single half point instead of a teaser? The buying points calculator shows when it’s worth the extra juice.
A teaser is still a parlay, and every leg has to come in. Stake what you’re fine losing. If betting stops being fun, BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential.