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What is a Football Pleaser in Regards to Sports Betting and Wagering?

by Doc's Sports - 10/10/2014

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A football pleaser is not someone who works hard to keep the pigskin happy. A football pleaser is a multi-game bet on football, like a parlay, but one that allows you to move the pointspread to improve your potential payout. It is essentially the opposite of a teaser. 

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In a teaser you are able to move the point spread so that it is easier for teams to cover the spread than it is in a parlay, which uses the posted odds. For example, in a six-point teaser, if you were betting the Patriots (-3) and the Colts (-7) then in the teaser your odds would be Patriots (+3) and Colts (-1). Because the bet is much easier to win in a teaser than a parlay, the payout is obviously worse. A pleaser takes the opposite approach - much harder to win, but a much better potential payout.

With a six-point pleaser the lines would not be shifted so that the Patriots were at (-9) and the Colts were at (-13). Big difference. You can see how significant the difference is by comparing the payouts. A two-team, six-point football teaser pays 10/11. A two-team parlay pays 13/5. A two-team football pleaser typically pays 11/2. So, a two-team, six-point pleaser will pay out more than twice as much as a two-team parlay.

So, the payout is much better, but why would you want to make this bet? The truth is that a lot of sharp bettors wouldn’t for the most part - the math is just plain lousy for parlays and often not much better for teasers or pleasers. If you felt that a team had a particularly significant edge, though, then this could be a way to leverage that opinion for a chance at a bigger payday. Still, pleasers tend to be the territory of squares in most cases - they are very often sucker bets. If you feel compelled to bet pleasers you have two choices - either bet them entirely for fun, knowing that you likely aren’t betting for any value, or really do your homework in advance to see if you have a found a rare attractive pleaser.

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