A 6 point teaser is worth the price in exactly one situation: when the six points carry your line across both 3 and 7. Every other teaser is a parlay with a worse payout. The math behind that is not complicated, and once you have it you will stop teasing the wrong games.
What a Teaser Is and What It Costs
A teaser lets you move the spread in your favor on two or more games in exchange for a worse payout, and every leg has to win. The standard football teaser is 6 points on two teams at -110. Books also sell 6.5 points at about -120 and 7 points at about -130, and three team versions at roughly +180, +160 and +140. Prices vary by book, and some charge -120 for the basic 6 point two team, which changes the math more than it looks.
At -110 on a two team teaser you need both legs to win 52.4% of the time, the same as a straight bet. For two independent legs to combine to 52.4%, each leg has to win about 72.4% of the time. At -120 the combined break even is 54.5%, which pushes each leg to about 73.8%.
Keep those two numbers in your head. A teaser leg that wins less than 72.4% of the time loses money at -110, however good it feels to be getting a touchdown.
Why the Points Only Matter at 3 and 7
From 1999 through 2025, 15.1% of NFL games ended with a margin of exactly 3 and 9.0% with a margin of exactly 7. Six landed 6.0% of the time and 4 landed 4.9%. Everything from 11 up is thin. Six points of teaser are worth exactly what the numbers they cross are worth.
Tease a -2 favorite down to +4 and you cross 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3. Ties are 0.2% of games and 1 and 2 are about 4% each. Most of those six points buy almost nothing. Tease a +2 underdog up to +8 and you cross 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, which together cover close to 40% of all final margins. Same six points, completely different value.
The Wong Teaser
Stanford Wong laid this out in Sharp Sports Betting. The idea is to tease only the spreads where six points cross both 3 and 7. That means underdogs of +1.5 to +2.5, which tease to +7.5 to +8.5, and favorites of -7.5 to -8.5, which tease to -1.5 to -2.5.
Wong’s own data from 1999 through 2010 came out like this:
- Home favorites of -7.5 to -8.5, teased: 128-42-3, about 75%
- Home underdogs of +1.5 to +2.5, teased: 120-42-2, about 74%
- Road underdogs of +1.5 to +2.5, teased: 170-60-0, about 74%
- Road favorites of -7.5 to -8.5, teased: 43-25-0, about 63%
Three of the four spots cleared the 72.4% line. Road favorites did not, and the sample on them is small. The 2010 through 2019 data held up. Teased spreads starting at -7.5 covered 82.5% of the time, +1.5 covered 80.8%, -8.5 covered 80.0% and +2.5 covered 77.6%. A few spreads outside the strict Wong range also cleared 73.8% over that decade: -11, -6.5, -7, +3 and +9.5. The worst performers were spreads that teased through zero, from -4 to +2 or -3 to +3.
The Price Has Moved Against You
The Wong teaser has been public knowledge for twenty years and the books have adjusted. Some now charge -120 or worse on the basic two team teaser. At -120 you need 73.8% per leg, and a few of Wong’s own spots from the original data fall under that. The edge has not disappeared, but it is thinner, and it is not there at all on a book charging -130 for 6 points.
Shop the teaser price the same way you shop a spread. A book at -110 versus a book at -120 is the difference between a leg that needs 72.4% and one that needs 73.8%, and at Wong’s historical rates that is the difference between a small edge and none.
Ties, Totals and Other Mistakes
Tie rules vary and you must read them. Some books drop a pushed leg and pay a three team teaser as a two team. Some grade a push as a loss on the whole ticket, which is brutal. Some refund a two team teaser if one leg pushes. A book that grades ties as losses on a bet whose whole point is landing near 3 and 7 is a book you should not tease at.
Teasing totals is a mistake. Totals have no number that lands anywhere near 15% of the time, so six points of total is worth close to six points of nothing. Teasing big favorites from -14 to -8 crosses 10 and 14, which matter, but you are still crossing far less than you would from -8 to -2. Teasing through zero is the worst of all, since the points between -2 and +2 are the cheapest on the board.
The last mistake is mixing one good leg with one bad one. A Wong leg at 75% paired with a leg that wins 65% combines to 48.8%, which is a loser at -110. Both legs have to clear the bar.
Where to Bet Teasers
The two things that matter are the price on the basic two team 6 point teaser and the tie rule. Both are on the rules page, and both differ from book to book. Of the five books we cover, BetOnline posts its NFL lines early, which matters here because the Wong spreads tend to drift onto 3 and 7 by Sunday and the +2.5 you wanted becomes a +3. These books are offshore and outside US state regulation. Check the teaser rules for each in our sportsbook reviews before you place one.