Teaser Bet Calculator: The Per-Leg Break-Even Math
A -120 two-team teaser needs each leg to cover 73.9% of the time. Here is the arithmetic, book by book, and the six spreads that cross 3 and 7.
Lights out
A teaser bet calculator tells you what a ticket pays. It does not tell you how often each leg has to cover for that price to be fair, and that number is the whole game. At a 6-point, two-team price of -120, each leg needs to cover about 73.9% of the time just to break even, and the teasers that get closest to that bar are the ones that move a spread across both 3 and 7.
What a teaser bet calculator leaves out
A teaser lets you shift every spread by a fixed number of points, and the book charges for it in price. Borgata's house rules spell it out: the additional points on each selection reduce the odds. Every leg also has to land, because Bovada grades a single losing leg as a loss for the whole teaser with no partial payout.
So the useful math runs backwards. Convert the teaser price to an implied probability, then take the root for the number of legs. At -120 that is 54.5% for the ticket, and the square root gives 73.9% per leg. The calculator shows the payout; the root shows the bar.
Break-even per leg at two books
Prices as of October 2026, NFL regular season, from Bovada's teaser payout grid and the Borgata pro football pay table:
| Teaser | Bovada price | Break-even per leg | Borgata price | Break-even per leg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 teams, 6 points | -120 | 73.9% | -130 | 75.2% |
| 3 teams, 6 points | +150 | 73.7% | +160 | 72.7% |
| 4 teams, 6 points | +260 | 72.6% | +250 | 73.1% |
| 2 teams, 7 points | -140 | 76.4% | -150 | 77.5% |
Two things jump out. The same two-team 6-point ticket costs -120 at one book and -130 at the other, which moves the per-leg bar by more than a full point. And the seventh point is expensive: Bovada's two-team price runs from -120 at 6 points to -140 at 7, which lifts the bar from 73.9% to 76.4%. Every half point in between carries its own price.
Which point moves clear the bar
Six points only earn their cost when they cross the numbers NFL games actually land on. In the Wizard of Odds margin study, 25% of games end with a margin of 3 or 7, with 3 alone at 15.7% and 7 at 9.3%.
With 6 points, only six spreads cross both: favorites of -8.5, -8 and -7.5 teased down, and underdogs of +1.5, +2 and +2.5 teased up. That is the Wong teaser. Built that way, a two-team ticket at 20 to 23 odds won 0.536192 of the time in the same data, against 0.469264 for a random picker. Break-even at that price is about 53.5%, so the disciplined version barely clears it and the random version loses roughly 12 cents on the dollar.
Pushes change the math
A tie on one leg does not always help. At Bovada, two-team teasers cannot reduce: a push plus a win comes back as no action with the stake refunded. On bigger tickets, Borgata drops the tied leg and reduces the teaser to the next lowest number of plays, re-priced at that size.
Fast answers
What is a teaser bet?
A teaser is a multi-leg bet where you move every point spread in your favor and accept a shorter payout for it. Every leg has to cover the adjusted number, and one loss sinks the ticket.
What's the difference between a teaser and a parlay?
Both need every leg to win. A teaser buys extra points on each spread, and the additional points reduce the odds.
Are teaser bets worth it?
Only when the legs cross key numbers. On the Wizard of Odds data, random two-team 6-point teasers lose about 12 cents per dollar, while teasers built on spreads that cross 3 and 7 land near break-even.
Sourcing
- Bovada, Teaser Betting: Rules & Payouts - Help Center, accessed October 2026
- Borgata Online (BetMGM NJ house rules), Off the Board Teaser Odds, accessed October 2026
- Wizard of Odds, Teaser bets in the NFL, accessed October 2026
