i just bet/handicap for fun, so i am just curious .... what is the advantage/disadvantage/reason for making a bet on the 1st Half of a football game.

i can understand placing bets on the 2nd half after getting a feel for the teams performance during the 1st half. .... but what would make you place a 1st half bet as opposed to just betting the whole game?

also, i have read on here, in previous posts, that teasers are sucker bets. at the moment i am up about 4x my starting sports bankroll betting primarily 2-4 team teasers. (of course i realize this could just be short term variance)

the reason i like the teaser bet (especially 2 team teasers) is that if i feel that 2 teams have a good chance at covering the spread .... then teasing them gives me a better shot at having those teams actually cover. i get less of a payout than a parlay, but a better shot at winning if the game doesnt go as you planned.

a typical 2 team teaser wager of $55 will pay $50 ... this is roughly the same payout as taking 1 team to cover ... except you have the added advantage of a lowered point spread. i know picking 2 teams to cover, probability wise, is tougher than just 1 team ... but if your confident (as one can be) in your picks, isnt the tease a safer bet??? .... or.... would it just be better to parlay the teams to win (moneyline)??

i could be way off base here, like i said, i just do this for fun, but would like some input from those that are more seasoned at this ... the reason i bring it up is i seem to suck at betting 1 team to cover as opposed to the tease.

i make a lot of plays for the second half of games. The reason I like them so much is that on a typical Saturday or Sunday most of the games start at the same time. So the books have to make several halftime lines and post them within a few minutes. This inevitably leads to a softer spreads on the games that no one is watching. The Arizona-Houston line is just not going to get the attention from the oddsmakers or bettors that the Colts-Pats game will. So on a typical NFL Sunday I'll TiVo the three games I want to watch later and I'll try to watch closely two of the shitty games on the board and hope I can get a good feel for what should happen in the second half.

As for teasers, the reason that they are such horrific plays is because the pointspread actually comes into play in such a small percentage of games that if you put in parlays you would fare much much better. Check out the results of your winning teasers and you'll see what I'm saying, you didn't need the points most of the time, at least not often enough to make the teaser a better play than the parlay.

Yeah they do, they close out a lot of games to you can't parlay them. Pretty stupid IMHO.