NEW BEDFORD — A tease is a bad bet. That’s all I can think about as Seamus and I drive through New Bedford. Seamus has a tease on the Patriots-Dolphins game, and he’s going to lose. I know he’s going to lose, because everyone always loses teases. But I’m just thinking that. I’m not saying anything.

The game’s already under way, anyhow — in fact, Miami is lining up to attempt a field goal as we turn onto the street where Seamus’s friend Rick lives — so it’s not like my saying something now would be helpful. Not that it ever would have been.

Teases are attractive bets, even if they’re not particularly smart. Okay, to be fair, all bets are attractive, and none of them is particularly smart. Everyone, even the most optimistic gambler, knows that at some level. No one honestly believes bookies take bets and casinos stay in business because they love giving money to all those gamblers who are forever winning.

But teases are particularly attractive. Mostly because there’s no vig. You lose a tease, you pay what you bet.

Before I leave anyone behind, a little primer on football betting: there is a handful of ways to gamble on a game. Betting the line is the one that’s best known. There, handicappers determine which team is more likely to win and establish a point spread, essentially a mechanism for spotting the underdog team a given number of points. If you bet the favorite, you’re picking it to post more points than the underdog’s total score plus the spread. Bet the dog and you’re picking its total plus the spread to exceed the favorite’s actual total score.

Then there’s the over/under. That’s where handicappers set a number they think will be the total number of points scored by both teams. You bet over if you think the actual total will be more than the over/under line, under if you think it’ll be less.

Both of those are straight bets. That is, your odds of winning are 50/50, which means they should pay even money. Except bookies don’t like 50/50 odds; they like to know they’re gonna make money. So they take more on losing bets than they pay out to winners. With straight bets, they accomplish this by charging losers a 10 percent bump (the vig) on their wagers. So in reality you have to risk $110 for a chance to win $100.

If you don’t want to pay vig, you’ve got three ways to go. You can bet the money line, where you get a fairly standard type of odds. Say the money line is the Pats +150; that means if you bet $100 on the Patriots and they win, you collect $150 (if it were Pats -150, you’d have to risk $150 for a chance to win $100). You can bet a parlay, where you pick more than one game against the spread, and you have to win all your games to win the bet. A parlay is attractive because you can win $100 (usually more) on a bet of $50.

Or you can bet a tease.

It’s called a tease because they tease you with some extra points. How many extra depends on how many lines you bet. But in a two-team (really two-bet) tease, you get six points to play with on each bet. You can tease either the betting line or the over/under in each of two games. Or you can tease both lines in a single game. In Seamus’s case, he’s teased both the spread and the over/under on the Pats-Dolphins. The Pats are getting three points in the straight-betting line; he’s bumped that up to nine. And the over/under is 44; he’s teased it down to 38 and bet over. Seamus needs to get both. He needs the Pats to keep it within nine points, and he needs the total score to top 38.

It seems like a decent bet, since the oddsmakers think the Pats will lose by only three, and the total score will top 44. But it isn’t a good bet. Because teases are never good bets. That’s why there’s no vig; your odds of winning both ways are astronomically low.

It all comes down to this: Seamus was screwed before kickoff. So was his buddy Doug, who also has the Patriots getting nine but has paired it with a teased-down over/under on the Arizona-Carolina game. So was just about everybody we’re going to hang out with at Rick’s place, because they’ve all got some action on some game today.

I keep thinking about this sociology professor I had in college, who would say over and over, "Gambling is losing." He was really just making a point about the importance of statistics, but he was still right.

THE OTHER thing about gambling, though, is that it really does make football more exciting.

Football is a beautiful and exciting sport to watch. The skill, the athleticism, the strategy involved are all engrossing. The trouble, though, is that the games are played pretty much all at once. It’s not like you can watch a football game or two every day of the week. You’ve got 12 or 14 of them coming at you in two big batches on a Sunday afternoon, which makes it hard to appreciate a lot of the skill, athleticism, and strategy. And, especially early in the season when it’s hard to think about how an outcome might affect the playoffs, it’s damned difficult to care about a lot of the games unless you’ve got some personal stake in them.

A lot of us take care of that with office pools and fantasy leagues — the cheap way, relatively speaking. I spend $5 a week to play in an office pool, and a total of $80 a season to play in two fantasy leagues. There’s not much more than pride coming my way if I win, but that’s okay, ’cause there’s not much leaving my wallet when I lose.

Other fans, like Seamus, Doug, Rick, and their pals, need the stakes to be higher. These guys I’m with today are college kids (state-university students, at that — whose names have been changed to keep them from getting expelled), so the stakes aren’t exactly staggering. Twenty-five-dollar teases seem to be the standard. That’s still too much for me — even 13-plus years after college — but those stakes keep these guys interested.

The thing I don’t quite understand at first is why they bet on their own team. These guys are Patriots fans. The way I look at the utility of gambling, that means it would make more sense to put your money on another team, since you’ve already got a reason to care about the Pats game. Plus, when you bet on your own team, your judgment tends to be clouded by loyalty.

But it doesn’t take terribly long for me to find out why. The eight of us have been crowded into the tiny living room at Rick’s very-student apartment — hippie tapestry on the wall; flower beads over the built-in bookshelves; massive four-hose hookah on top of the TV — for only a few minutes when Tom Brady loses a fumble. Curses go around the room, just as I’d expect. Then Seamus says, guiltily, "Part of me wants the points."

A few minutes later, as Miami threatens to score the first touchdown of the game, Seamus the Pats fan/gambler makes himself known again. "They’re gonna punch it in right here. It’s gonna be seven points," he says with more than a hint of disdain. Then, under his breath: "Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing."

In some circles, such an utterance would be seen as an unforgivable act of betrayal. Here, it’s understood. After all, Seamus isn’t the only guy in the room with money riding on the over.

THESE GUYS are standard Patriots fans in many ways. They’ve certainly got the gloom-and-doom bit down.

Early in the second quarter, when Brady foolishly decides to throw into a pack of Dolphins defensive backs, buying himself an interception, Rick feels like he’s been here before.

"Here he goes," Rick says, sounding 21 going on 50. "What’s that, three interceptions in the last two games?"

"Don’t turn on Brady now," warns another kid, named Mark.

But Rick’s in that place. He references his upcoming road trip to see the Pats play the Bills. "I’m not gonna know who to root for in Buffalo."

"Typical Boston fan," Mark says. I can’t see him from where I’m sitting, but in my mind he’s shaking his head.

It’s not too long thereafter when Miami gets a big return on a Patriots punt, setting the team up to start a drive at midfield. Seamus wants us to know he too isn’t counting on much from the Pats today.

"The Sopranos should be good tonight, huh?"

I can actually feel my head swing around as I turn to glare at him, along with everyone else in the room.

"Well," he offers with a grin, "that’s something."

If nothing else, it gives me another glimpse at why these guys will gamble on their own team. They’ll gamble on anything. Seamus’s comment reopens what is clearly an old discussion about whether Ralph, a character on the HBO series, is going to be killed. It turns out Mark and Doug have a bet on it.

And as it turns out, those bets on the Pats game serve a purpose today, too. They keep some excitement in the room even late in the fourth quarter, when the Pats are down 26-13 and driving toward a possible score that would be meaningless to the game, but big for both Seamus, who’s already made the over (at 39) and just needs the Pats to stay within nine, and Mark, who also has the spread teased up to nine.

"You can’t be happy," Rick says as the Pats sputter toward their second straight loss.

"No," Mark answers, "but I’m gonna feel a lot happier if they lose 26-20."

A minute later the Patriots turn the ball over on downs, wrapping up a truly miserable performance with yet another ineffective drive. As the Dolphins run out the clock, no one’s happy. This day’s been nothing but a big, thick, heavy disappointment all around.

We stay long enough to see Doug, who got the over in the Pats, lose the second half of his tease on the Arizona-Carolina game. Then we’re on our way.

Walking out the front door of Rick’s building, Seamus asks, "Can you believe how depressing it is in there?"

"It’s pretty bad," I say.

"I had to get out of there."

"Let me ask you this," I say, just wanting to make sure I haven’t missed something. "Did anybody win any money in there today?"

"No," Seamus says, laughing. "Everybody lost today."

Sean Glennon is a freelance writer living in Northampton. He can be reached at sean@thispatsyear.com.