Splitting aces is a must, and tens should never be split. And eleven doubles every time you get to the age of 17.
If you’re a frequent bettor, you’re familiar with the fundamentals of blackjack strategy. Casinos in Las Vegas give away free basic strategy cards in their gift shops to entice customers to use them while they play the tables.
When it comes to Basic Strategy Teasers, they’re unique, and they are neither promoted nor encouraged by Las Vegas Sportsbooks. In some cases, Sportsbooks will “cheat” by “shading” the markets to prevent them from doing so. As a result, bettors have been using teasers for more than two decades and generating a sizable profit on NFL odds.
History
Stanford Wong, the pseudonym of famed blackjack player John Ferguson, appeared in the book “Sharp Sports Betting” in 2001. Ferguson discussed Basic Strategy Teasers in one of the book’s last chapters.
Ferguson says the best wager is a teaser for an NFL market, which takes a team from point three to point seven. Therefore, you should tease the favourite (7.5-8.5) below the point spread and the underdog (0.5-2.5) above the point spread.
A field goal or touchdown is worth three points. Therefore this tactic takes to use in football. NFL games are won by a margin of three points (15 percent of the time), followed by seven points (10 percent), six points (5), and four points (4). (5 per cent). The bet effectively covers more than a third and four of the five most common margins of victory by teasing across three and seven.
Making Use of a Basic Strategy for the Current Market Environment
You could stop here and keep betting 6 1/2 point teasers for eternity. These bets can be maximized, but you can do more.
Teasers are all about saving time, and NFL markets are wasteful by their very nature. Only a quarter of the time does the point differential matter (meaning the team that covers the spread also wins 80 percent of games).
Road favourites are one of the NFL’s most inefficient pricing circumstances. A wide range of fans cheers for NFL teams when they do anything good or terrible. It is safe to believe that the market is inflated whenever there is a large mismatch that warrants a road favourite of at least a touchdown (road favourite of 7 points or more have covered just 40 percent of games in the past seventeen seasons).
It’s no accident that teasing down road favourites of 7.5 points or more has resulted in a victory rate of 60% when teasing six points, 69% when teasing 6 1/2 points, and 72% when teasing 7 points. This is not a random occurrence. All three teaser categories are considerably below the total break even ratio of 73.7 percent.
The accuracy of teasers is also a concern. The more predictable a teaser game is, the better it is. Over the previous five years, the average NFL over/under has increased by roughly one field goal each game. Teasers with a reduced degree of volatility are critical to back.
There is a tendency for markets to break at the seven-yard line. Just over 9 points separate the closing point spread from the actual margin of victory in games with an over/under of 49 points (7 touchdowns). There is more than a field goal differential in games with an over/under of 49 1/2 points or more.
All three teaser categories win 77.5 percent of the time if the total is less than seven touchdowns, much above the 73,7 percent combined break even average.