How Do Parlays and Teasers Work?

Parlays and Teasers might be the most polarizing form of Sports betting to wager on. People, from time-to-time bet on parlays and teasers, some just more frequent than the average. Bottomline, people love to bet on parlays and teasers. However, if you were to ask betting experts or connoisseurs, they would most likely shut you down by saying parlays or teasers are bad for casuals and are to be avoided. But what exactly are parlays and teasers, and how do they work?

PARLAYS

A parlay is a term in sports betting that centers around at least two or more bets or wagers linked together into one big bet. Every single bet that a parlay is composed of is called a leg. A bettor can have as many legs as he wants on his parlay. But it is not advisable to do so, for the more legs you add, the odds of winning stack further and further against the bettor.

If any of the legs fail to hit, the bettor outright loses his bet even if the other legs cover. Even so, this is where the fun part of parlays comes in, the higher you bet and the more legs you have, the lesser the chances to win, but the higher the payout you’ll earn.

Say that a bettor bets 100$ on a full Detroit-team parlay which is made up of bets such as the Detroit Lions +1500 to win the Superbowl, Detroit Pistons +1700 to win the NBA Championship, Detroit Tigers +180 to win the World Series, and Detroit Red Wings +190 to win the Stanley Cup. If the bet covers, the bettor would win a whopping 233,756$ . Though, if one of the legs fails to hit, the bettor would lose his 100 dollars flat.

TEASERS

Teasers are bets that comprise two or more point spreads wagered into one flexible bet. This form of betting is adjustable and heavily favors the bettor. For this reason, since the bettor can shift the tide of luck into his way, Teaser bets tend to have low payouts. Similar to other forms of betting, if a point spread fails to cover, the bettor outright loses the bet, though it is uncommon due to its ideal nature. For example, 7-point teasers would move the point spread line for every wager in favor of the bettor by 7 points. And if the spread offered by a sportsbook is -8 for the favorites, the line would move, and the spread would be reduced to -1 instead of -8. This would mean that the favorites would only need a point or more to win, which is more than likely to happen. Inversely, for underdogs, the line would move up, meaning if it’s +8 for them, a 7 point teaser would mean the spread will go up to +15, making the point margin for the underdogs to lose on a little bit bigger. Parlays and Teasers have a love and hate relationship with bettors. Parlays have all the risk with bigger payouts, while on the other hand, Teasers offer minimum risk with low return. If you are a bettor, especially if you are relatively new, it’s best and suggested that you try betting on parlays and teasers, not only for the experience. But also for the sake of finding that sweet spot where you could earn the most money while betting.