By Eduardo Solano
Special teaser bets or sweetheart teasers are teaser bets for both football and basketball where you can incorporate either 3 or 4 picks (teams) in bets placed on point spreads and/or totals. Instead of the regular points, special teaser bets give you 10 (3 teams) and 13 (4 teams) points in football and 8 (3 teams) and 10 (4 teams) points in basketball. Note that the payouts are reduced and a push is a loss.
Take a look at the following example:
Let´s suppose the lines you want to tease are Arizona Cardinals +3, Green Bay Packers vs. Minnesota Vikings over 30 and Chicago Bears -5, then, your 3-team sweetheart teaser would be:
Arizona Cardinals +13.0
Green Bay Packers vs. Minnesota Vikings over 40
Chicago Bears +5.0
Some bettors believe that it´s better to sweetheart tease underdogs because they have been inflated already and therefore teasing them will increase your chances of winning. In general, underdogs are a good bet in the NFL, considering that NFL teams usually don´t like to blow other teams out. If done right, placing a special teaser bet on underdogs in the NFL can be very profitable.
Special teaser bet do not work with NFL and NCAAF favorites. Teasing NFL favorites is a tempting bet but it´s usually not a good idea; keep in mind that if a special teaser bet looks too easy, it will lose most of the time. Consider that parlays and teasers are sportsbooks´ best friends. Sweetheart teasing in NCAAF is not recommended because unlike in the NFL, blowouts are common in college football, which means it´s not a good idea to tease underdogs and upsets are very likely, which means it´s not a good idea to tease favorites.
Here´s another example that will help you understand special teaser bets better: the New York Giants are playing the Philadelphia Eagles, the Oakland Raiders are playing the Denver Broncos and the Dallas Cowboys are playing the Washington Redskins. Like in any teaser bet, a special teaser bet lets the gambler wager on the spread and/or the total points. This is the point spread we´ll use for these games:
New York Giants +15.0
Oakland Raiders vs. Denver Broncos under 60
Dallas Cowboys +3.0
You chose the Giants to win at +15.0. You used the under option to wager on the total points scored in the Oakland vs. Denver game and decided that the combined points of both teams (game total) will be 60 or under. And, finally, you selected Dallas to win at 3.0.
So far, for this to be a winning bet, the Giants have to win, or lose by no more than 15 points, the points scored in the Raiders vs. Broncos game have to total 60 points or under and Dallas has to beat the Redskins, or not lose by no more than 3 points. Then, to make it a special teaser bet you choose a 10 point teaser on the wager, meaning that 10 more points have been added to the spreads and point total.
New York Giants +25.0
Oakland Raiders vs. Denver Broncos under 70
Dallas Cowboys +13.0
Finally, in order for this teaser bet to win, the Giants have to win, or not lose by more than 25 points, the total points in the Oakland vs. Denver game must be 70 or under and the Cowboys have to win, or not lose by more than 13 points. As you can see, it´s best to consider special teaser bets in pieces and base your wager decision on each part of the bet.
