A Weekend in the Life

Well, I had a good weekend. Should have been great (since I wager more on college than NFL), but it was good. But the ways the games I was involved in ended were bizarre.

I had Florida Atlantic teased to -4 vs. UTEP. They were up 18 with five minutes left, and they had the ball in UTEP territory. Penalty, went for it on 4th-and-20, UTEP takes over and scores, onside kicks against a weird alignment, hits 4th-and-long bomb against no safety, then goes for two and makes it. Florida Atlantic wins by three; I lose.

Meanwhile, I have SMU teased to +7 versus Houston. They kick the tying field goal with 20 seconds left, then give up a 100 yard kickoff return to push.

In the NFL, I have JVille/Seattle teased to Over 37 1/2. Down 24-0 with two minutes left, JVille keeps plugging, God bless them, and scores to make it 24-7. They then onside kick, which is scooped up and returned for a TD by JVille. I win by half a point. Previously, at halftime, I had hedged the bet with an Under 22 1/2 second half since it was 17-0 at half. I win both the teaser and the hedge.

And finally, Chargers teased to +3 versus Patriots. Down 27-17 with 40 seconds left, they hit a bomb for a 27-24 final and a push.

Turns out Florida Atlantic -4 was the only loser for the weekend.

Except, of course, for my LMS contest entries, half of which had the Ben-Gals. Up 11 on the J-E-T-S with five minutes left. LOL. What a weekend. No sanity at all. By the way, NFL faves of more than a TD had been 23-0 straight up before the Ben-Gals.

I’m interested in why teasing to -4 was the right play in your mind. I’ve always taken to heart the advice that a teaser is a sucker bet, though I get the Wong teaser if you cross the 7 and 3. A teaser should also share the issue you have with parlays, that they require multiple games at the same book at the same time. So the numbers are unlikely to be the best.

Congrats on the profitable weekend. I’ve always liked John Madden’s take on the NFL acronym. Never Figure League.

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Originally Posted by unJon

I’m interested in why teasing to -4 was the right play in your mind. I’ve always taken to heart the advice that a teaser is a sucker bet, though I get the Wong teaser if you cross the 7 and 3. A teaser should also share the issue you have with parlays, that they require multiple games at the same book at the same time. So the numbers are unlikely to be the best.

Congrats on the profitable weekend. I’ve always liked John Madden’s take on the NFL acronym. Never Figure League.

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Correct on many fronts. The only way to use teasers is if (1) you're getting -110, which is getting increasingly rare and may be more or less extinct when cross-referenced with (2) you can keep the teasers open in perpetuity (or nearly so) so you always have the optimal numbers.

I hate the phrase "Wong teaser," by the way. If you gotta call it something, call it the mailman teaser. Here's why I hate the phrase "Wong teaser." If you go back and read The National Football Lottery by SI writer Larry Merchant (published in 1973), it's clear if you follow how he's betting most teasers in the book, he's using what "Wong" decided to name after himself 25 years later. Everybody was using that framework for teasers since the 60's, but nobody was stupid enough to formally lay it out and give it a name like "Wong" did. He basically gave the powers that be a formal heads up. Not smart. Not good.

Anyway, teasers in general, as opposed to the "Wong" teasers, can be useful with NFL totals, which is why most brick-and-mortars LV books did not allow totals teasers for decades. As to the Florida Atlantic, well, yeah, I would have preferred -3, but in college football, that really does not have the long-term impact that it does in the NFL. That disparity between NFL and college will have degraded since the NFL moved the PAT back and have instituted two-point conversions. So the utility of "Wong" teasers should be on their way down in the NFL, except for the following, which will help explain why teaser odds and how long you can keep them open are being worsened to the point I may pull the plug on teasers except in a handful of situations. The NFL now has some teams each year that, as in the NBA and MLB, really aren't trying much to win. So you have a couple or three or four goddawful NFL teams the last few years, which previously had not been the case. People have been plugging in teasers to go after these goddawful teams, and the last three years, they've done well. So teaser odds and openness are being dramatically worsened. Some places that previously offered -110 are now gouging -140. Previously open-in-perpetuity teasers are now sometimes close of business Monday. Those take teasers off the table, of course. People have been betting against the goddawful teams and keeping teasers open for the next week or the week after and using them against the same teams again.

I think teasers are sucker bets early in a college football season and late when weather and coaching changes are an issue. I was kicking myself for taking the Chargers +3 because I almost never take NFL faves with teasers, but I took a shot at that one, which was really a force. Should not have done it. I think the best use of teasers is NFL totals, which is why they were not allowed for a long time. I will state the obvious for the math guys who know nothing about sports betting, but the lower the total, the more value the teaser has. That's obvious, but not everybody grasps that right off the bat.

Thanks for the helpful and detailed response. Point about open to perpetuity makes perfect sense. As does -110. I haven’t looked at teasers in decades, but remember two team 6 point NFL teasers always being -120 back then. (Strictly betting with a bookie back then.)

I just checked the website I use now and see it’s -110 for 6pts, -120 for 6.5 and -130 for 7. This site also lets you keep things open for perpetuity.

Also had no idea about the “Wong” history, but it makes perfect sense that Wong wasn’t the first to come up with it, just popularize it.

Interestingly, to me at least, is that NBA teasers are only four points. (Just learned that tonight when looking up teasers on the website.) I wouldn’t have thought that the standard deviation of basketball spreads was lower than NFL spreads. Especially as of course the totals are so much higher. Offhand I suppose it has something to do with fouling in the end game, but need to think about that some more.

I remember the bookie decades ago also offered pleasers. You moved the line 6 points against you and you picked two teams. If you hit, it paid +600. Always wanted to check the data that the standard deviation of the lines and totals fell higher than required to make teasers profitable but lower than required to make pleasers profitable. But never did.

Quick obvious speculation. Because so many games get played in college hoops, by the end of the season, the lines for the teams are amazingly deadly accurate. Sides and totals. So tight teasers would almost be necessary. That's not the case early in college hoop season, but maybe they are designed to cope with the back half of the season.

Kickoff. If KC loses outright, my LMS are pretty much shot to hell.

I doubt Wong named the strategy after himself. He was once asked about the term "Wong" or Wonging." He said he happened to meet a couple of pro blackjack players in a casino. They talked for awhile but he never told them who he was. After awhile one of them said "Excuse me, I have to go Wong this blackjack game." He said that was the first time he ever heard the term "Wong." It was his readers that actually created the term.

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Originally Posted by mickeycrimm

I doubt Wong named the strategy after himself. He was once asked about the term "Wong" or Wonging." He said he happened to meet a couple of pro blackjack players in a casino. They talked for awhile but he never told them who he was. After awhile one of them said "Excuse me, I have to go Wong this blackjack game." He said that was the first time he ever heard the term "Wong." It was his readers that actually created the term.

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When I talk about Wong (the mailman) naming stuff after himself, I'm talking about him doing and publishing an analysis of the different win percentages of teasers being dependent on where in a spread they are applied. Wong did the analysis and made it public, so they became known as "Wong teasers," which was ridiculous because knowledge of the advantageous application of teasers to some spreads as opposed to others not so advantageous was known for 30 years (at least) before he publicized it. Nobody called the particular applications of teasers to specific spreads Wong teasers before his analyses were published. Why would they?

As to the blackjack stuff, I literally have no idea and no opinion. I'm talking strictly about the teaser applications.

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Originally Posted by redietz

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Originally Posted by mickeycrimm

I doubt Wong named the strategy after himself. He was once asked about the term "Wong" or Wonging." He said he happened to meet a couple of pro blackjack players in a casino. They talked for awhile but he never told them who he was. After awhile one of them said "Excuse me, I have to go Wong this blackjack game." He said that was the first time he ever heard the term "Wong." It was his readers that actually created the term.

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When I talk about Wong (the mailman) naming stuff after himself, I'm talking about him doing and publishing an analysis of the different win percentages of teasers being dependent on where in a spread they are applied. Wong did the analysis and made it public, so they became known as "Wong teasers," which was ridiculous because knowledge of the advantageous application of teasers to some spreads as opposed to others not so advantageous was known for 30 years (at least) before he publicized it. Nobody called the particular applications of teasers to specific spreads Wong teasers before his analyses were published. Why would they?

As to the blackjack stuff, I literally have no idea and no opinion. I'm talking strictly about the teaser applications.

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It was most likely his readers that started calling them wong teasers, not him. And....why would someone with a PHD from Stanford become a mailman? I think you may have Arnold Snyder mixed up with Stanford Wong.

In blackjack, wonging is standing there counting the shoe without playing until you get a positive count, then sitting down and playing. Wong put forth the concept in one of his books but he did not call it wonging. His readers that actually put the concept into practice started calling it wonging. To counter the wonging casinos started barring mid shoe entry.

I'm sure "wong teasers" got the name the same way, from his readers.