I dont play baseball, basketball or even College football seriously... but this type of NFL teaser is something that I have worked on and have come up with some basic guidelines and theories...
Guidelines
1. Never play a 4 team 13 point teaser at any odds other then -120
I hear people talking about -140 or -160 type of odds and I can tell you it is not worth it...
I use a mixture of 5 dimes (best place for teasers) and bodog (because the lines lean against square like a parlay card)
2. Play a maximum of 4 games a week.
if you were to randomly pick games +13 points ATS (against the spread), history has shown that you will hit about 84%...
so knowing that more games will hit then not (some games even both sides will win), then what you are in essence trying to do is avoid losers... not just focusing on trying to pick winners...
So the more games you pick, the better chance you have of hitting a loser... Think of it like a mine field, you probably would want to minimize the number of steps you take to the goal...
I would rather double my bet then try to pick 8 winners...
3. Play only sides
The numbers show historically that both sides and totals hit about 84%, so there is no advantage on either side...
I play only sides because of experience as I have only focused on sides over the years...
Theories
1. Lowering scoring games
I always start by looking at playing on games with the lowest totals because they give the most value to the +13 points ATS...
In a game that has a o/u of 39 points, +13 points ATS is a 3rd of the total...
But in a game that has an o/u of 52 points, + 13 points ATS is a 4th of the total...
So by proportion, the +13 points ATS has more value and more of an effect on the lower scoring game...
2. Playing the points
About 25% of all NFL games are decided by exactly 3 points...
So being aware of the points is a key... there is big difference between +3 vs +3.5 or +7 vs +7.5... this is the whole point of teasers is getting good numbers...
3. Home dog/bye dog combo
I tried to find the angle in the NFL that skews the +13 points ATS the farthest from the about 84%...
Home, away, favorites, underdogs, divisional foes, non divisional foes and coming off of bye weeks... I even looked at multi-variant analyses of combinations...
My original theory was in the combination of divisional underdogs, but found no correlation there...
Instead, based on the historical numbers I found a correlation when the combination of a home team, that is underdog, coming off of a bye week hit about 90%... and have watched this trend go longer then 3 seasons at a time with out failing...