By A. Aguilar
Teasers are a type of bet that is usually featured for football and basketball. It is a prop bet that allows you to change the betting odds up and down so you can make the most from the result of a match. The most common teaser bets in football are 6, 6 ½, and 7 point teasers. You must pick at least 2 teams when betting teasers, but you are able to select up to 6 teams total.
A parlay is a bet that combines 2 to 8 individual bets. To win the parlay you must win all the individual bets, but if any bet ends in a draw, the rest are still maintained. The reason you should make this type of combination bet, and not just 8 individual bets, is that the payout will be greater than the sum of the individual bets. The downside is that if you lose one, the entire parlay loses.
The teaser is practically the same as the parlay, except that the stakes are bought as teaser points instead of straight bets. In the teaser you will group the selected number of straight bets, and then adjust the points. What you can do is buy a different points line for every bet. That is, if you buy 6 or 7 points for a football team, the adjustment applies to all single bets that form the teaser.
Being able to adjust the results obviously implies that these wagers pay less than the parlay. The advantage is that with the teaser we can buy more points than when buying direct stakes. For example, we can buy direct stakes between ½ and 2 points for a team, while with a teaser we can buy up to 6 points for a football game and up to 5 points in a basketball game.
Teaser bets are not always a good idea. If you're very confident about the result of a game, especially in regards to the point spread and point total, you should not bet a Teaser. Go for a parlay bet instead, which will give you a better winning margin. Again, there's always a trade off, parlay bets are harder to win than teasers, but the difficulty of winning a parlay bet also means you'll potentially make more money, so you have to balance the cost and benefit factors well.
To fully understand teaser bets you should first learn the parlay betting operation amply, to avoid mistakes in your bets.