The word exotic usually brings up images of faraway tropical islands, or perhaps the wonderful world of exotic dancing. But not every handicapper shares the same warm and fuzzy feelings about exotic bets.
For those new to the game, exotic bets refer to anything other than a single bet or a parlay. Single bets include pointspreads, moneylines, totals, props and futures. Exotics include “if bets,” reverses, round robins and any bet that allows you to buy points – teasers being one of the most popular wagers in this category.
These wagers are not for everybody. Many conservative bettors will avoid exotics altogether, sticking to single-game matchups. They’re not interested in the cost of taking on less risk for less reward; in fact, some place prop bets, futures and parlays under the same exotic umbrella, eschewing the opportunity to take on more risk for the potential of a larger payout.
Generally speaking, the deeper your pockets, the more liberal you can be with your betting choices. Exotics provide bettors with more variety and more entertainment – but there are still methods a sharp handicapper can use to maximize profits in this environment.
“If bets” are similar to 2-game parlays, except the second bet is only taken if the first one wins. You can also make an “action” wager that allows the second bet to go through in the event of a push or a situation where no action took place, such as a postponement.
Let’s say you put these two lines from Week 12 of the NFL season together for your if bet, and you wager $110:
Tennessee Titans –5 (–110)
New England Patriots +2 (–110)
In a regular parlay, if the Titans cash in and the Patriots don’t, you lose the whole $110. In an if bet, your $100 in earnings from the Tennessee game is secured and applied to the Patriots, so if the Pats lose, you’re only down $10. That’s a significant reduction in risk compared to a parlay – but it comes at a price. The most you can win is $200 if both Tennessee and New England come out victorious, while a parlay would have earned you $260.
The rules and payouts may be different between parlays and if bets, but the strategy for handicappers remains the same. One sharp approach that we mentioned in this article is to combine the pointspread and the total from the same contest; say, Titans –5 and Over 40.5. This allows you to specialize your research on one game and to take advantage of the relationship between the two lines – high pointspreads are more difficult to cover in low-scoring games, so underdog/under and favorite/over are popular combinations.
Reverses, round robins and teasers are also similar in structure to parlays and can be approached with similar betting strategies. Buying points, on the other hand, applies to single pointspread wagers only. This wager allows you to move the spread by a half-point in either direction, provided you’re moving onto a whole number. For example, the Detroit Lions are 8.5-point home dogs in Week 12 against Tampa Bay. You could bet Lions +8.5 at the standard –110 price, or Lions +9 at –120.
This is where your knowledge about “magic numbers” comes in. An NFL game is most likely to end in a 3-point margin of victory (roughly 15 percent of the time), so moving the spread from 2.5 to three points can easily turn a loss into a push. It’s a valuable enough move that it’ll cost you –135 instead of –120. Moving from 6.5 points to seven will cost –125, since the 7-point margin of victory is No. 2 on the outcome list at about eight percent. Everything else is –120 when working with the standard juice, so you’re getting more value moving onto a 10-point spread (5.8 percent frequency) than a 12-point spread (1.6 percent). It all adds up.
