Win at the Dog Track With Eb

I usually sit in the same place when I go to my local dog track. Very often there’s a guy who sits near me and we shoot the breeze from time to time. After I’d talked to him a couple of times, it dawned on me that he hardly ever watches a race, even though he bets on almost every one.

Andy looks at his program. He looks at the odds board. He looks at his laptop. He does some calculations on the laptop’s spreadsheet program and then switches to another window that has a handicapping program on it. Then he looks back at the odds board and so on and so forth until the race is over. Then he looks at the odds board one last time to see if he won. The man might as well be listening to the race on the radio.

Me, I look at the dogs as they’re led to the boxes. Sometimes, I even go down and watch them as they’re weighed in and checked before the program starts. It’s not that I’m expecting to discover some hot clue as to who’s going to win. It’s just that I love greyhounds and never get tired of watching them.

I don’t see them as a bunch of statistics or money on the hoof - or paw, I should say. I see them as professional athletes who happen to be dogs. I know that they love what they’re doing - like the best athletes always do. I know they’ll run their hearts out, no matter whether people bet on them or not. And I know that they’re intelligent, gentle, friendly animals, who get along well with other animals and people. Most of all, I know that they’re individuals.

To Andy, they’re just numbers. While they’re parading down to the boxes, he’s crunching numbers and figuring out if the 1 box is still the best box for winning percentage. While they’re listening to the lure squeal around the rail toward them, he’s looking for that last flip that the odds board does that tells him whether his bet was a good choice based on past statistics.

While they’re rounding the first curve and the rest of us are holding our breath, hoping our dog won’t get bumped or blocked, Andy is doing a “what if” scenario to see what the 7 will pay over the 3 and vice versa, because the spreadsheet told him to bet both of those combinations in a complicated tri wheel with four other dogs.

And when they get to the finish line and everyone is asking their neighbor whether it was the 7 or the 6 in front or did the 3 get in there, Andy is running calculations on the next race, completely oblivious to what’s going on around him. He’ll just wait until they put the dogs up on the board and then he’ll know if he won. It doesn’t really matter to him what happened during the race. All he cares about is whether he can cash his tickets.

I can’t understand how anyone can go to the dog track and not watch the races. To me, people like Andy might as well buy lottery tickets or play the slots or some other mechanical betting deal. What in the world is the point of betting on dogs if you don’t watch them? Where’s the connection with what you’re trying to figure out i.e. who’s going to win the race?

I guess people like Andy would say that it’s best if you keep your feelings out of betting. To them, handicapping is a scientific, mathematical operation that has no room for emotions. Well, I beg to differ. I think handicapping is more than numbers, statistics and percentages. I don’t think you can predict what greyhounds will do in any given race with mechanical formulas and odds board calculations.

Sure, you have to use intelligence and good judgment and you have to bet sensibly. But I don’t believe that there’s any way to consistently predict the results of dog races based on statistics and spreadsheets. I think people who bury their heads in this stuff and pay little or no attention to the races miss the best part of going to the dog track - the dogs. I also think that the best handicappers are the ones who have a deep connection to the greyhounds they bet on and would watch dog races even if you couldn’t bet on them.

If you’re serious about handicapping, invest in The Marks Method or the Two Key Trifecta System and benefit from 30 years of handicapping know-how.

A lot of people can only get to the track on weekends, because they work during the week. Maybe they don’t want to go on weeknights, because they have to get up early the next morning. So they go on Friday night, Saturday afternoon or Saturday night. Maybe, Sunday.

Then there are people who go to the track on weekdays. Maybe they’re retirees or night workers. Maybe they work on weekends. They have a different track experience than the people who go on weekends. The track is generally quieter and less crowded during the weekday performances. There aren’t usually stakes or special races, because they’re held on weekends to attract a bigger crowd.

There’s another difference between going to the track on weekends and going during the week. I think it’s harder to make money during the week, and I’ll tell you why. It’s not because of the quality of the races, although there may be better races on the weekend when the bigger crowds come out. It’s not because the track rigs the races during the week to let the “insiders” make money, as many people think. In my opinion, it’s harder to make money at the dog track during the week because of the other bettors.

After all, pari-mutuel betting means that you’re betting against the other people at the track. That doesn’t change, no matter how many or how few people are there. However, I think that there’s a much smarter crowd betting on the greyhounds during the week, than there is on weekends.

The weekend crowd tends to be people who go to the track mostly for entertainment. Friday night is date night and you see a lot of couples out for dinner and a good time. They have a nice meal, bet their favorite numbers and maybe have a little luck. Then there are the casual bettors who only come to the track on Friday and Saturday and don’t pay much attention to the dogs the rest of the week.

They have no clue what’s going on beyond what they read in the program. This makes it easier for someone, like yourself, who does their research and has a good handicapping method, to out-handicap them and win their money. Unlike the people who are serious about winning at the dog track, the casual weekend bettor doesn’t usually have a good plan. They just quickly pick a dog or rely on a friend’s judgment or what the tip sheet says.

During the week, on the other hand, you’ll find that more of the bettors have done their homework, researched the dogs and are ready to bet wisely. This is why you might notice that you don’t make as much money when you go to the track on a Wednesday afternoon, as you do when you go on Friday night. You’re betting against bettors with more experience, self-control and information on weekdays.

Of course, no matter when you go to the dog track, there are always people who are serious about handicapping. This is why you need to do your homework before you go and give yourself every advantage that you can against the crowd, whether they’re weekend bettors or the smart-money bettors who go during the week. But if you want to give yourself an edge, go on the weekends.

Whenever you go to the dog track prepare to win with The Marks Method or the Two Key Trifecta System.

It took me about three years of handicapping to discover something that everyone should know about playing the dogs: almost everything works for awhile. I had been going over programs from Lincoln, now called Twin Rivers, a track with decent dogs where speed mattered. Still does there, as far as I know, because the dogs are still good compared to a lot of the tracks that have gone downhill.

Anyway, I was going over past programs, trying to figure out how to narrow the dogs down to three dogs and then trying to handicap the winner from those three. So, for every race, I underlined the dogs with the best time in their last race. Then I handicapped and picked the dog I thought should win. Then I checked the results.

I was amazed when I discovered that even when I didn’t pick the winner, the dog I picked and the other two dogs with best times in their last races were very often the quiniela and at least two or three times on a program, they’d be the tri and pay well. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Could it be this simple, I thought? Had I been making it too complicated? Was the secret to making money at the dog track at Lincoln just a matter of boxing the three dogs with the best times in their last races in quiniela and trifecta boxes? I was flabbergasted and so eager to try it out, that I only did a few more programs - which it worked on - before taking it to the track for a test drive.

I started on a Wednesday and hit six quinielas and two tris to the tune of $126 more than I spent. This was magic! There was no racing on Thursday, so I waited and went back on Friday. Same thing, only I didn’t make as much. Only $80 profit, but any profit was better than the losing streak I’d been on.

On Saturday, there were two programs and I handicapped both of them very carefully, then went to the track with enough money to play both of them. I bought my tickets and sat up in the stands away from everyone else so that I could really watch the races and keep track of what was going on. Only, for me, there was nothing going on.

I cashed one quiniela ticket for $18 on the second program and nothing on the first. I was down over $200 and the wonderful system I had discovered didn’t pick one quiniela or trifecta and very few winners. And when it did pick a winner, some longshot would get in for second and I wouldn’t get the quiniela. I was really discouraged, but I told myself that I just had to be patient and keep trying.

I tried until I had blown over $500 and then I came to my senses and realized that it wasn’t going to work. The simple system I had “discovered” was just a fluke, a temporary thing that I took for a pattern. If I had checked it out on more past programs, I would have realized that without spending so much money.

That was my first introduction to how easy it is to think that you’ve found the secret to winning at the dog track with some simple formula. Believe me, there isn’t one. The only way to win at the track is with handicapping. Of course, methods like the ones I sell on my site can help. It’s a lot easier if you work with the knowledge and insight that other people have spent time learning instead of always starting from square one and doing everything yourself.

But as much as we’d like to believe that there’s some simple mechanical way of picking winners at the greyhound races, I think we really know that there isn’t any such thing. That’s why learning to handicap from people who have put the time in to learn the ropes is so important. Most everything works for awhile or some of the time, but nothing but handicapping, good judgment and self control works in the long run.

There’s usually a hot kennel at any dog track. Their dogs are burning up the track by winning more than their share of races. Sometimes, they’ll win several of the fifteen races on the program, one right after the other. You go over your program and look at your picks and wonder why you didn’t see it before you bet the other kennels. Geez, if you’d bet on dogs from HotBox kennel, you’d have cleaned up.

Or would you? Sure, a bunch of HotBox’s dogs came in first and second. And, yes, the kennel does seem to be on a winning streak. But before you go back to the track determined to bet on only that kennel’s dogs, let’s think this over.

No matter how hot a kennel is, it’s not going to have a winner in every race. Statistically, it might have a 30% win average, which is good. But that means that its dogs DON’T win 7 out of 10 races. And when they do win, they’re often favorites at low odds, so they don’t pay enough to cover the times they don’t win.

Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t keep track of the kennel standings, especially the ones that aren’t doing as well. I think it’s more important to notice a kennel that might have problems with sickness or poor quality dogs or maybe they’ve just wormed all their dogs which can affect their racing performance significantly. But I don’t obsess over it. It’s not a major consideration for me when I handicap the dogs.

My main considerations are the same no matter which kennel the dog comes from. (See my article on Handicapping to Beat the Competition). Class, Post Position Preference, Running Style and Pace of the race are my main considerations. If the dog that has the best of all of the above is from a hot kennel, that’s all the better, although it might lower the odds and make it pay less if it wins. Still, you have to play them the way you handicap them.

Kennels have streaks, just like dogs and bettors do. Trying to pick winners on the basis of kennel standings just doesn’t pay. One thing that does pay is picking a good handicapping method or system. Improve your odds with The Marks Method or the Two Key Trifecta System.

It doesn’t take too long for greyhound handicappers to figure out that the best post positions at almost all dog tracks are the 1, 2, 3, and 8 boxes. If you look at the statistics in the program, you’ll find that the three inside positions and the far outside one account for way more dogs in the money than the other boxes. So, why don’t we just bet 1238 quiniela and trifecta boxes and clean up at the track?

Well, some people DO bet those numbers, but I don’t think it works too well. For one thing, everyone knows about it, so when they come in, they don’t pay that well. For another thing, even though dogs come in more often from those boxes, they still come in from the other boxes too. There’s no way of telling in any particular race whether the winner will come from the golden boxes or from one of the other ones.

My take on post position is that it’s more important whether a dog likes the post position it’s in and whether it’s moving to a more favorable post position or a less favorable one - for that individual dog’s running style. To my mind, post position isn’t a static thing, it’s a dynamic.

Let’s say there’s a dog - we’ll call him Sparky - who’s had six races in inside boxes and hasn’t been in the money in one of them. Today, he’s in the four box. You look at all of Sparky’s previous races (read about how to do that in Winning With Connections) and see that he’s a solid midtrack runner with early speed. That might explain why he’s had trouble in almost all of the races he ran from inside boxes.

When Sparky breaks and zips over to the middle of the track, he’s probably had breakers beside him, some of whom were probably trying to get inside. They bumped Sparky and he bumped them and that explains why he didn’t come in. But now, Sparky is right where he wants to be and probably pretty dadblamed sick of getting knocked around. This time, things will be different.

To me, this situation is ripe for a betting opportunity. Sparky looks lousy to the bettors who are only looking at the six races they can see in the program. But I know from looking at Greyhound Data that he’s had some very good races from the middle of the track, so I have good reason to think that he’s a contender in this race due to his favorable post position. I also know that if he’s ever going to do anything, it will be in this race or one like it. And I know from the past performances that Sparky DOES come in.

If you want to check out how often this kind of situation happens, look over your old programs for dogs who win and pay well. Many times, it’s because they looked lousy in their last six races because they weren’t in the post position they wanted to be in. Pay particular attention to dogs who have been in outside boxes and then move to the 1 or 2 box. Just remember that post position is just one of the things you need to consider when you’re handicapping races. Improve your odds with The Marks Method or the Two Key Trifecta System.