Win at the Dog Track With Eb

Greyhound handicapping is no match for reality, as my friend Willie says. I believe the first time he said it was when we were sharing a ticket on a speedball that had just won in M, J, D and C and was about to knock the competition dead in B. He was a dead cert. The only early speed in the race. As a matter of fact, the only class dog in the race, who had run in A a few races ago, was a closer who looked like he couldn’t get out of his own way when he ran in his last six races, which were all in A.

So Willie and I were leaning on the fence, preparing to watch “Speedball” win for fun and wondering why he was at odds of 5-1 instead of 2-1. Well, shortly after the dogs broke out of the box, we were wondering why he wasn’t at odds of 50-1 because he didn’t even try. He broke out of the box okay, but then he kind of hesitated, looked to his right and left and then settled in at the back of the pack and stayed there ’til the end of the race.

The dog who had been running in A races, however, the closer, broke out of the box like he was shot from a cannon, raced to the lead and came in five lengths ahead of the second dog. Willie and I looked at our programs, thinking maybe we’d missed something in the winner’s lines, but he’d never broken out of the box before in any of his last six races.

So what did they do to him to make him break this time? Did they switch dogs on us? Did they “juice him up” somehow? Did they hypnotize him into thinking he was a breaker instead of a closer? What the heck happened here, we asked ourselves, as we tore up our losing ticket.

From the perspective of thirty years at the track, I can look back on that race and tell you what probably happened. It had nothing to do with race fixing, switching greyhounds or juicing them up. It had to do with two handicappers who didn’t know then what they know now. Class beats flash every time. No matter how great a young dog looks against older more classy dogs, don’t ever think that the younger dog is a shoo-in.

Even a dog who almost never breaks fast out of the box, may break, if it’s in with lower grade dogs, especially young ones. Dogs form a pack every time they race. If you think about it, they’re in the lockup cages right next to each other. The dogs for each race are weighed together. Then they’re led out to the track and often stand there with the leadouts holding them while their muzzles and blankets are checked.

During that time, they form a pecking order, because dogs always have a pecking order. The dog who has run in A knows that he’s classier and faster than these losers he’s running with today and he gets cocky. Maybe that’s why, when the box opens, he’s out of there like a shot, unlike his usual closing style. He may be tired of trying to close on A dogs who always beat him out of the box and that might be why he takes advantage of this race where he’s able to take the lead for once.

Of course, that’s just my theory. I base it on seeing dogs break in lower grade races when they’ve never broken in higher grade races. Now, when I see a dog who always closes in higher grade races, and he’s in a lower grade race, I go to Greyhound Data and check to see if he’s ever broken fast out of the box when he was in lower grade races. If he has, especially if it’s the grade he’s running in today, I consider him a contender. If I’m lucky and he’s up for it, my dog just might surprise the other bettors, but not me. I’ve done my research. Don’t be surprised if you win more races when you invest in The Two Key Trifecta System. Another great system is The Marks Method which is on the top right hand side of this page.

I sell systems. Right now, I have two for sale, both of which I use myself. Can you win millions if you buy them and use them? I doubt it. Can you improve your handicapping to the point where you can win more money than you lose? I do that with them, consistently. Should you buy either or both of them? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on what you expect a system to do for you.

All this palaver about systems came about because someone emailed me recently and asked me if I just blog to sell systems. No, I don’t. I blog because I discovered that blogging is a lot easier than trying to get my track buddies to listen to my advice and opinions. When I write a blog post, I can go on and on as long as I want to and no one tells me to put a lid on it. If someone reads it and agrees or doesn’t agree, they can leave a comment or email me. Several people have emailed, which kind of surprised me. I was beginning to think I was the only greyhound handicapper on the internet, except for the people who only sell systems.

And we’re back to systems again. I guess maybe I’m supposed to be embarrassed to sell them or apologetic or something. I’m not. One sells for $35 and one sells for $50 and they’re worth at least that and possibly much more. If you spend the time and energy to learn one of my systems …If you use it on paper until you really know how it works from the inside out … If you tweak it for your track and only use it on races where it works, instead of on races that you know you should pass … You’ll do a lot better than with whatever hit and miss approach you were using.

However, if you want an “automatic” system … One of the ones they advertise that earns you $500/day with no handicapping and no risk … Or a system that picks winners for you in every race … You’re not going to find it here. There’s no such thing. Anyone who says they have that kind of system is lying to you. And think about it, if someone had that kind of system, would they sell it to someone else? Not likely.

So, why do I sell mine - outside of the fact that - like most people who are getting on, I can use a little extra? Well, for the same reason that people sell their recipes and sewing patterns and how-to plans for woodworking and all like that. I’ve figured out how to do something and I’m willing to sell that knowledge. I’m happy because I make some money and the customer is happy because he wins some bets. It’s a win-win situation. And whether I sell anything or not, I get to blog about what I know, so if you don’t want to buy anything, just read the articles. They’re free and I think they’re worthwhile. True, they don’t get into as much depth as the systems do, but there’s a little nugget of practical wisdom in each one. And, by the way, the two systems I sell are The Marks Method or the Two Key Trifecta System.

No, not those kind of connections; there’s no godfather of greyhound racing, no matter what anyone tells you. I’m talking about the kind of connections that give you a lot more information than the track program. Access to information that 99% of the other people you’re betting against don’t know about and won’t look for.

To them, it’s too much trouble. Easier to buy a tip sheet, play your dog’s birthday and complain when your “numbers” don’t come in. When will people learn. You play numbers on your Powerball ticket. You play dogs at the greyhound track. In order to play the right dogs, you have to handicap with as much information as possible. Six races back isn’t gonna make it for some races. Most races, if you’re a serious handicapper.

But who wants to keep every program from every card or go over the online programs until your eyesight is blurry from trying to find what you’re looking for. There’s a better way and it all begins with a few links. The most important one, in my opinion, is this link to Greyhound Data. They’re the goods.

You can find out everything you’d ever want to know at this site - except whether the dog is going to win her next race, of course. Although, after you get done looking at the data here, you should certainly have a better idea if the dog can win. If the dog has raced anywhere in the world, you can see all of its statistics: where it raced, when it raced, who it raced against, who its sire and dam were and its litter mates.

You can search by dog, by track, by race. Want to find out the best times at Derby Lane between February 2008 and March 2008? You can go to “races” and search on those terms and many, many others. Want to see what a dog did at its former track? It’s only a click away. So are Simple Race Statistics, Time Based Race Statistics and Advanced Race Statistics.

One word of caution. Don’t get carried away and miss the first race. I’ve done that. I love researching. I also love keeping up with what’s going on in the world of Greyhound Racing, but that isn’t as easy to do as it used to be when there were magazines that followed the sport. In lieu of that, there’s The Greyhound Daily News from the National Greyhound Association. It has news on stakes races and what’s going on at the tracks.

The more you know, the more likely it is that you’ll have the winning edge on the other bettors. I don’t know how many times I’ve caught something in the database that made me realize something I didn’t see on the program. Connections can make all the difference and these are just a click away.

If you’re not winning at the dog track, you need to connect with The Two Key Trifecta System. Another great connection is The Marks Method which is on the top right hand side of this page.

When I first started going to the dog track, I loved betting on closers. Not for me the early speed dogs that went off at low odds. Nope. I was the one who bet on the dog that hung back until the last turn, then put on the juice and passed the tiring speedballs that the crowd had bet down to nothing. My closers, on the other hand, usually paid well, because most bettors are fools for early speed and afraid to bet closers because they might get blocked or not make it in time.

My friend, Willie, who got me going to the track in the first place, used to call me Longshot Louie, because I bet on so many closers at long odds. But he had to admit that they paid off well when they came in. And nothing beats the thrill of seeing your longshot pass the frontrunners right at the wire, except the thrill of cashing a ticket on a dog at 10-1. For me, the drama was almost as important as winning.

But now, the thrill is gone. I don’t bet on dogs because they’re closers anymore, unless there are other good reasons to bet on them. Over the last thirty years, I’ve learned that dramatics don’t pay the bills. The thrill I get from cashing several tickets on dogs who pay decent - but not long - odds is much better than cashing one longshot ticket and losing the other longshot bets.

Early speed and the ability to keep up with the pace are more likely to indicate a winner than pure closing ability. Even in a route race, early speed is a good thing. Although closing ability is important, go over your old programs and notice how many times the winner of a route race got out early. Maybe it wasn’t first, but it was out there at the beginning of the race or at least at the 1/8th call.

Every once in awhile, a dog comes along that gets up into stakes races, even though it doesn’t have early speed. When that happens it makes for some exciting races, because so many stakes dogs have early speed. Of course, the really good ones also have stamina and determination. (K’s Flak’s puppies come to mind. They must have been crossed with bulldogs somewhere in the past, because they never gave up.)

I love watching races where closers come off the pace to nip the frontrunners right at the wire, but I don’t bet on many of those races. I don’t bet on whims either, like I did when I first started going to the dog track. Nowadays, I use much better judgment and cash a lot more tickets than I did back then. I still get a thrill, but I don’t have to have a cliff-hanger finish on every race to get one.

If you’re betting on longshots hoping to get big payoffs, you need to invest in The Marks Method or the Two Key Trifecta System and turn your luck around.

Greyhound handicapping is all about finding the keys to winning. Class is one of the things that almost everyone says is one of those keys, but that doesn’t mean that everyone agrees on what “class” really is.

To some bettors, “class” means grade. To them, a “class dog” is one who runs in the highest grade at their track. A dog who can compete with the best dogs at the track and win or at least run in the money often enough to stay in the top grade. That’s one definition of class.

To other people, class just means what grade the dog is running in at the time. Is he a “Class C” dog or a “Class A”? If you tell them you’re handicapping for class, they don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, because every dog has class. It’s right on the program at the top of the race page. “See, this is a Class D race,” they’ll tell you. “It says Grade D on the program.”

In my opinion, and I always have one, class means more than grade. When I handicap to find the “class” dogs in the race, I’m looking for qualities that depend on more than grade. For instance, in a Grade A race, there may be two dogs who have just run in AA and three dogs who have just run in B and three other dogs who run in A and stay in A. So how do I decide which dog is the class dog in the race?

I could just say that the three dogs who are dropping down from AA are the class dogs, because they’ve been running with a better “class” or “grade” of dog. But if I look at those dogs, I might find that one of them has been in stakes races, while another got up into AA and wasn’t able to keep up with the pace, so it ran at the back of the pack in every race or got into trouble. Obviously, the dog who ran in stakes races is “classier” than the one who can’t keep up with the pace in AA.

In a D race, there might be puppies coming up from M or J who have won a race by 10 lengths and with a terrific time, dogs who have been in C or even higher during this meet, and a dog who is shipping in from another track where it was winning in B. So who’s the class dog here? What about the shipper? Well, that depends on the grade of the track it came from. If the track is a better track than this one, I’d have to consider it. If it’s a lower grade track, I’d give it a miss.

What about the puppy, especially if its litter mates are burning up the track in B and even A? Wouldn’t it be a classy dog? Well, once again, that depends on my judgment of the other dogs, although it’s rare that I consider a puppy - no matter how dazzling its wins look in M and J - classier than a dog that has won at a higher grade. Sometimes, there IS no class dog in the race. These are races where the dogs’ records are so similar that not one stands out above the others. These are races to watch, rather than play.

What does “class” mean to you? Do you look for “class” when you handicap the program? Do you ignore it and go with other factors? We all have our own handicapping systems and what works for me might not work for you and vice versa. However, I consider “class” an important factor in greyhound handicapping, and think that it’s impossible to handicap successfully without taking “class” into consideration. How’s the “class” of your handicapping? If it’s not making the grade, invest in The Marks Method on this page or the Two Key Trifecta System and turn your luck around.