Win at the Dog Track With Eb

It’s the end of summer and I’m off to spend a little time at my favorite track in NH. I’m taking a break from blogging, because we all need a change now and then. I’ll be back at the old stand here, posting, sometime after Labor Day.

Until then, stay safe, bet wisely and if you get bored, there are 60 some-odd posts on this site just brimming with helpful information and track tips.

All the best,
Eb

The systems I use to pick winners at the dog track are The Marks Method and the Two Key Trifecta System

You can adopt a retired racer. In return for a family of its own, your greyhound will give you lots of love. Hey, you can sit on the couch together and watch the dog races. Who knows? You might even get some inside information from your fast friend.

If you’ve been going to the dog track for any length of time, there are probably moments when you ask yourself if the races are fixed. You bet on a dog that has dropped down from A into B, has good early speed, has good win and quiniela percentages and is a favorite with the bettors. This dog has everything going for it, including being in a race where none of the other dogs should be able to outbreak it. But they do. Big time.

He comes in fourth and, as you rip up your ticket and call him a pig, you wonder how the hell a good dog like that can run such a lousy race one day when he was competing and beating “A” dogs just a week or so ago. As you leave the track, you think to yourself, “They did something to make this dog lose. I know they did.” Maybe. I won’t say that where there’s as much money at stake as there is at the dog track that people don’t try to pull some funny stuff.

But it’s more likely that the dog just wasn’t ready to win that day. Maybe, he was recently wormed. Maybe he’d recently gotten an immunization. Hey, I don’t know about your dog, but my Black Lab sleeps for hours after she gets her yearly shots and she’s not really herself for a few days. Why would greyhounds be any different?

So, how the heck can you tell, when you see a dog that looks good, whether it’s likely to come in or just go through the motions? Well, there are indications if you know what to look for. The biggest thing I look for in a dog is whether it’s showed any - what I call “spark” - in its last couple of races.

Did the dog break? Did it close a couple places near the end of the race? Did it have a line like “determined effort” or “tried throughout”? Or did its line say something like “followed pace” or “dull effort”? If it looks like the dog made an effort to win in its last race, I figure that it might do something in today’s race.

If it just “phoned in” its performance the last time it ran, I’m not going to put money on it today. If it didn’t break, didn’t close, didn’t seem to even know that there was a lure running in front of it, my money stays in my pocket. But if it had that spark in its last two or three races, then I look to see - in addition to a good attitude - whether it has anything else going for it in this race.

Is its post position one that it likes to be in? Is it better than the post positions where it didn’t do anything? If it runs the rail, is it in an inside box or are the dogs between it and the rail slower to get out than it is? If it likes midtrack, will it be able to break out of the box and take the lead or is there another dog to its right that slashes in to the rail? Or is there a dog to its left that always breaks out of the box and slashes to the right to go way outside? If so, it won’t have the advantage it needs to win today.

I also look at the dogs it’s racing with compared to the dogs it has been racing with in the races where it didn’t come in. Are they solid grade, for instance “B” if the dog is running in that grade today, or are most of them moving up from “C”? If they are, the dog has an advantage because it’s been running with “A” dogs. These are the things I look for that tell me whether a dog is ready to win or not.

One thing that I pay no attention to is the odds on the dog. I don’t care whether the other bettors like the dog or hate it. Why? Because I know that 90% of the crowd loses at the dog track. That doesn’t mean that the crowd is always wrong, but it does mean that betting on crowd favorites isn’t a good way to pick dogs. I prefer to use my own handicapping techniques which, so far, have put me in the 10% of bettors who know how to tell if a dog is ready to win.

The systems I use to pick winners at the dog track are The Marks Method and the Two Key Trifecta System

You can adopt a retired racer. In return for a family of its own, your greyhound will give you lots of love. Hey, you can sit on the couch together and watch the dog races. Who knows? You might even get some inside information from your fast friend.

What is a greyhound handicapping system? Well, for some of us, it’s the method we’ve developed over the years to pick winners in greyhound races. For other people, it’s something they paid thousands of dollars for and use for awhile, then discard as useless.

But should greyhound handicapping systems cost thousands of dollars? My feeling is that they should only cost a fraction of what you can win with them. After all, if you pay thousands of dollars for a system, how much will you have to wager to get your money back? And, ideally, just getting your money back isn’t what you’re looking for in a handicapping system.

You want to make a profit, of course. I believe that what you should expect from a system is at least five times what you pay for it, over the course of five programs. In other words, if the system costs $20, once you get used to using it, you should be able to make $100 on 5 programs. If it costs $35, you should be able to make $175 after you’ve figured out how to use it correctly.

So, if you see a system offered for sale for $1,000, the logical return on using that system over 5 programs should be $5,000 at least. The question is, How much would you have to bet to make that amount? For me, it’s too much. Even if you have the bankroll, putting out that much money for trifectas and other exotic bets is just too nerve wracking.

Not to mention that, at a lot of tracks, the pools just aren’t big enough to support the big payoffs that you’d need to make a profit of $5K. Then there’s the scenario that often happens when you’re getting used to using a new system.

You make one mistake, not a big one, but it loses you some money. Bang! There goes $1,000 in profit, because of a missed bet or other error and even if you do everything else right, you’ve lost a significant amount of money.

This is why I would never spend more than $100 on greyhound handicapping systems. I know from past experience that I can make enough on 5 programs to get my money back and more. But even though I’m a better handicapper than most bettors, I’m not sure that I want to go through the strain of trying to get $2,000 or more back PLUS a profit.

I already know that 90% of the people who bet on dog races lose money. I also know that I’ve worked very hard to stay in the 10% who win money. I haven’t done it by spending big bucks on complicated systems that demand that I make big bets. I’ve done it by using inside information to pick winners that the other bettors overlook. It works for me.

The systems I use to pick winners at the dog track are The Marks Method and the Two Key Trifecta System

You can adopt a retired racer. In return for a family of its own, your greyhound will give you lots of love. Hey, you can sit on the couch together and watch the dog races. Who knows? You might even get some inside information from your fast friend.

My regular readers know that I’m a fan of 4-dog quiniela boxes. For me, it’s the bet with the highest rate of return for money spent. When I handicap a program, I’m subconsciously looking for 4 dogs to put in my quiniela box, while I eliminate 4 dogs that I don’t think have a chance at coming in first or second.

But, once in awhile, like everybody else, I like to risk a little more on an exotic bet like a trifecta or superfecta. Sometimes it’s during my winter vacation or when I’m out with folks who want to go halves on a superfecta just for the excitement of it. Splitting the cost of the bet can let us all bet more.

When I bet superfectas, I use the same technique I use with quiniela boxes: eliminating dogs until I get to four that I think have a chance to come in. But, after that, it gets a little trickier, because I’m not just concerned with who’s going to win and place. I also have to figure out who might come in third and fourth.

Once I pick my 4 dogs, I have to figure out how to bet them. I could bet a 4-dog box for $24. Most superfectas pay well, so that wouldn’t be too much if I’m ahead and pretty confident about the dogs I picked. But, if I want to bet several superfecta bets on a program without blowing my bankroll, I opt for a cheaper bet, based on the two dogs I think will be the quiniela.

For $12, I can bet a superfecta key with my quiniela picks first or second and the other two dogs coming in third and fourth. For instance, if I like the 1 and 2 dog for the quiniela and the 3 and 4 for third and fourth in either order, I’d bet a $1 superfecta key: the 1/2 over the 1/2 over the 3/4. So, if the dogs come in 1-2-3-4, 1-2-4-3, 2-1-3-4 or 2-1-4-3, I get half of the superfecta.

This gives me the most bang for my buck as far as combinations go. Of course, it’s harder to pick four dogs than it is to pick two. And it’s also harder to figure out which of four dogs is going to come in first and second, third and fourth. All it takes is one dog out of place for your superfecta to disappear. It’s really discouraging when you have all four dogs, but don’t hit the superfecta because they’re not in the right order. This is when I wish I’d bet the $24 box instead of being cheap and betting the $12 key.

This is one of those lessons that we all learn sooner or later at the dog track. Sometimes, trying to save money keeps you from making money. On the other hand, betting more than you can comfortably afford to lose is a losing proposition. Much better to miss a few winners than bet over your limit and wish you hadn’t.

Superfectas, quinielas and trifectas are easier to hit when you use The Marks Method or the Two Key Trifecta System.

You can adopt a retired racer. In return for a family of its own, your greyhound will give you lots of love. Hey, you can sit on the couch together and watch the dog races. Who knows? You might even get some inside information from your fast friend.

Quick! How wide is your favorite track? Don’t know? Well, if it’s Twin River (formerly Lincoln in Rhode Island) it’s only 17 feet wide, the narrowest track in the US. So, I hear you say, what difference does it make how wide the track is? The dogs don’t race across the track; they race around it.

True, but on a narrow track, those turns can be much harder to get around without bumping and getting in each other’s way. This is why there seem to be more accidents on the turns at Twin River, something I noticed when I went there last time. Can you imagine what a dog coming from Southland, where the track width is an amazingly wide 34′, would think as it got jammed on the first turn at Twin River?

This is a good reason to find out how wide your track is. And while you’re at it, why not find out how long the track is, how long the stretch and the straightaway are too. Each of these figures varies widely from track to track. While many tracks have a length of 1,320 ft, some have much longer tracks - all the way up to 1,485 at Southland, which may account for that 34′ width.

So, when a dog ships into Southland from Twin River say, then schools and gets put into a race, I’m definitely going to give it a good look. If it has any class at all, but maybe had trouble on the turns at Twin River, it might be able to do much better at Southland, due to the wider track. Southland is also a good place for dogs who take a little longer to get going, due to the longer track, stretch and straightaway.

If you’re a serious handicapper, I think you have to give these factors strong consideration. While I know some of the track statistics from memory, I have a little chart that I can take with me, so that I can check on the track a dog ships in from. I don’t know how many times this has helped me see that a dog is a contender because moving to this particular track has given it an advantage it didn’t have at its former track.

Some of the advantages:

• Moving from a track with a longer stretch can give an early speed dog an advantage
• Moving to a wider track can give dogs who have trouble on turns an advantage
• Moving from a shorter track to a longer track can give dogs who close an advantage
• Moving from a longer track to a shorter track can give breakers who fade an advantage

I’m sure there are other things you can figure out for yourself, so I won’t go into any more detail. Suffice it to say that the more you know, the more of an advantage you have and the more you win at the dog track.

Another thing you should know is that you can improve your handicapping skills by investing in The Marks Method or the Two Key Trifecta System

You can adopt a retired racer. In return for a family of its own, your greyhound will give you lots of love. Hey, you can sit on the couch together and watch the dog races. Who knows? You might even get some inside information from your fast friend.