More NFL Teaser Math

Betting undervalued teams is the best way to go when betting against the spread. Just because you think one team is better than another is not a good reason to bet them when it comes to spreads. One example of this was the Buffalo Bills game in Week Seven where they lost to the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens were clearly the better team, but the Bills managed to keep the game closer than Ravens fans felt comfortable with throughout the entire game. The game went into overtime and the Ravens ended up winning the game by 3 points, nowhere near the 13 point deficit that Vegas had pegged on the game.

Look at QB Jay Cutler and the Bears as an example. Cutler is a good quarterback, but he is prone to mediocre play because of his team’s offensive line. The Week Four game against the New York Giants is a great example of this. The Bears were undefeated going into this game and the Giants were in a slump, causing many people to bet on the Bears. But if you had looked at the three games that took place before the Giants game, you would have seen a problem. For one, all three of their games were close. All three games were against poorly performing teams as well. So when the Bears travelled to New York, they were in a vulnerable position. The Giants’ defense completely shut down Jay Cutler and only allowed them to score a single field goal.

This is not to say that the Bears are a bad team. They have some glaring weaknesses though, and the Giants were prepared to exploit these weak spots. A careful examination of the first three games of the season would have revealed this.

Spread betting is supposedly a 50 / 50 proposition, with odds of -110 so that the sports books can make money regardless of which side you bet. But in reality, this is not how bets are actually distributed. A closer look at a book’s wagering distribution will reveal that even though the spread is in place, the vast majority of bets placed will be for the favored team. It is as if the spread were not in place at all!

Straight spread bets are, in most cases, arranged by the sports books to be 50 / 50 bets. By changing the spread to be more in your favor, you are effectively changing the odds of the outcome of the bet. If you attack the most vulnerable spreads, your odds of winning become roughly 73 to 76 percent per leg. But because you need to be correct more than once to win a teaser, the odds are more difficult to overcome than the typical bet against the spread. This is why you need to be correct much more often than you do with a typical bet against the spread. For a single game spread bet at the typical -110 odds, you need to be correct only 52.4 percent of the time or more in order to make a profit. As stated above, with a three legged teaser you need to be correct 70.7 percent of the time.

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