Win at the Dog Track With Eb

Greyhound racing handicapping is tough enough when you’re only trying to pick a winner at the dog track. It gets even more complicated when you’re trying to figure out which 3 dogs out of 8 will come in first, second and third. That’s why trifectas pay more than Win, Place, Show or Quiniela bets.

If you’ve been passing on playing trifectas because they cost more to hit, here’s a tip that can help you break out of your rut and dare to win trifectas. It does take a little more strategy and thought, but it’s a proven approach to winning trifectas more often.

First of all, a lot of people will tell you that - if you can pick a quiniela - you can pick a trifecta. Boy, do I wish that was true. I’m pretty good at picking quinielas with 3 or 4 dog boxes. Picking trifectas with the same number of dogs, isn’t so easy. For me and many other bettors, it’s that third dog that gets you.

You bet the 1/2/3 and the 1 and the 2 come in first and third with the 6 in between them for second. There goes your bet. Now, if you’d handicapped the race, decided that you like the 1/2/3 and 6 to be in the quiniela, you would have made money on that bet.

But deciding that you like the 1/2/3 and 6 for the trifecta means you have to spend $24 to bet a trifecta box. Well, you say, what’s $24? Any trifecta is going to pay at least that and probably a lot more. True, but - and this is a very important “but” - only if it comes in.

What if you miss three trifectas and then hit one that only pays $200? With a box bet, you get half. If you bet $24 a race and hit even one out of four races and the trifectas don’t pay that well, you’re losing money. And hitting one out of four is pushing it. Most bettors are lucky if they hit one or two trifectas a program.

So, we’re back to 3 dog boxes for $6, right? Well, that’s not your only option. My favorite trifecta bet is a tri-key bet. If you key two dogs over two other dogs, you can get more options for your money. For instance, I handicap a race and decide that I like the 1/2/3 and 6 dogs. I don’t want to spend $24 on a box, so here’s what I do.

I pick the two dogs that I think have the best chance of winning and play them over the other two dogs like this: 1/2 over the 1/2 over the 3/6. That way, if it comes in 1/2/3, 1/2/6, 2/1/3 or 2/1/6, I collect. I’ve spent $8, not $24. True, I’ve only bet 8 combinations, but they’re combinations that I think are more likely to come in than the rest of the combinations with those numbers.

Let’s face it, a lot of times when you bet four dog trifecta boxes, you’re not as crazy about two of the dogs as you are about the other two. So if you don’t think all four of them have an equal chance of being first and second, why bet them that way? Why not give more weight to the two that you like the most?

Try this next time you handicap a race and find four dogs that you like with two that look more likely to be in the quiniela. Use a good system to handicap and bet the tri-key bet like the one I just showed you.

To win at the dog track, you need a winning system. You can learn the basics of handicapping from a program or online, but to really make good money at the dog track consistently, you need proven Greyhound Handicapping Systems.

In return for a family of its own, a retired racing 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 were a greyhound, would you be a sprinter or a router? Are you fast out of the box, but then fade in the stretch? Or do you start out slowly, gain speed and really pour it on at the end? Dogs have different styles of running and bettors have different betting styles also.

I’m a router. I take a while to go over a program. I examine each race, carefully looking for the factors that I use to throw out three or four dogs, before I get down to really handicapping. If you’re a router, you probably take an hour or more to go over your program.

Sprinters, on the other hand, open their programs, glance over each race, looking for winners and quickly flipping to the next race where they do the same thing. They can “go over” a program in five minutes or less.

However, when it comes to winning, routers like me do a lot better than sprinters do. We do a much better job of weighing the dogs’ odds of running in the money. When the races go off, we have more information to work with as we figure out what to bet and even WHETHER to bet.

That’s a very important difference between handicappers who take their time and speedballs who rush through their programs. If you go too fast, you miss things. If you only look for winners, you don’t know enough about the other dogs to really decide which dog is best.

I’m not saying there aren’t people who are good at making snap judgments. Some people are very good at analyzing data quickly. But, even so, there’s enough data on a program page to take even the fastest handicapper at least fifteen minutes a race.

If you find that you’re finished going over a race in less than fifteen minutes, you might want to think about doing a more in-depth job of handicapping. Ask yourself if you’re missing essential information by just scanning, instead of really reading, the dogs’ lines.

Maybe it would help if you went over the races a second time. Maybe you should think about leaving yourself more time to go over the program by buying it or printing it out earlier. Or maybe you’re doing your greyhound handicapping with friends and paying more attention to them than to your program.

The bottom line is that there’s only so much you can absorb in five minutes. If you’re sprinting through your program, slow down and really take in the information that helps you make money - or lose it.

To win at the dog track, you need a winning system. You can learn the basics of handicapping from a program or online, but to really make good money at the dog track consistently, you need proven Greyhound Handicapping Systems.

In return for a family of its own, a retired racing 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.

How many programs do you have in your car? In your bathroom? In your trash can? Your answers could be a real tipoff as to why you’re not winning money at the greyhound track. Rather than costing you money - a dollar at most tracks - programs can be a goldmine if you save them and use them to win another day.

Even if you print your programs off the Internet, like I do, they still cost you something. Not just the paper and ink that your printer uses to print them. They also cost you time. Time to go over them. Time to handicap them. Time to mark down who you’re betting on and why.

You DO mark up your program pages, right? Whatever system you use must call for some kind of notation, so there’s no way your program should be unmarked when you throw it on the floor because you lost on the last race. Oops, I mean, it should be marked when you put it into your pocket and take it home with you so that you can go over it later when you’ve gotten over being angry at losing on the last race.

Getting angry is normal when you lose. But if you just get angry and complain and rant about your lousy luck and how the races are rigged, you won’t be any wiser as to why you lost when you go back to the track again. And no matter what you say when you leave after losing, most bettors go back and I’m betting that you will too.

So, next time you go to the track, take notes. Write down what happened in each race that you bet on. If you can, make a note about what happened to the dog you bet on. Did it break but get blocked? Did it run a good race but just get outclassed at the end? This is stuff you’ll want to know the next time that dog runs in a race.

If you write it down while it’s fresh in your mind, you won’t forget it or mis-remember it. The best greyhound handicappers in the world all take notes. It’s not like in the movies where they stand there with a far-off look in their eyes and “pull a dog’s name off the top of their heads” and bet on it and it comes in.

Take notes. Go over them. Work what the notes tell you in with whatever handicapping system you have. After a while, you’ll get used to reminding yourself about important handicapping factors that you notice. Believe me, I’ve been writing notes to myself for over 30 years and I can tell you that it’s a very important key to picking winners.

To win at the dog track, you need a winning system. You can learn the basics of handicapping from a program or online, but to really make good money at the dog track consistently, you need proven Greyhound Handicapping Systems.

In return for a family of its own, a retired racing 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.

Many years ago, a woman knicknamed Longshot Lil used to go to a track in the Northeast. She and her brother were at the dog track several days a week and they were fun to watch. He was methodical and had a pretty good greyhound handicapping system. He made quite a few trips to the window to cash tickets at every program.

She had a system too, but methodical she wasn’t. A few times on every program, I’d see her trying to convince her brother that a dog was a good bet. He’d shake his head and point to the program where the dog’s racing lines showed that it hadn’t been able to win at this grade before, so it had dropped down.

Then she’d shake her head “no” and argue with him that the dog had won after only two races in the lower grade, so it was a good bet to win at the higher grade. Her brother would roll his eyes and tell her to bet it if she liked it. Sometimes, he’d even put up a dollar to get in on half of the win bet she made.

The funny thing is that more than half the time, Longshot Lil’s dogs came in and paid good money. How did she know which dog was ready to win, even though it hadn’t won at that grade before? Well, Lil said that she knew because she followed the dogs.

While her brother was handicapping, she was watching the dogs from the time they started in M grade all the way up the ladder. She made notes on her program when she thought a dog was ready to win and those were the dogs she bet on.

I don’t know how she knew which dogs would drop down and win and then come back to win when they moved up a grade. Something in the lines or in the way they raced tipped her off. All I know is that she was the kind of handicapper who wins through watching, not through calculating.

It might sound funny coming from someone who sells greyhound handicapping systems and uses them to win, but if you’re the kind of person who learns best by watching rather than reading, Lil’s system might be the best one for you. Maybe you should try watching the dogs for awhile to see if something they do tells you that they’re ready to win.

If it doesn’t work for you, then maybe you’re not a visual learner. Maybe you need to read to learn and then use a pen and a piece of paper to figure out how to pick winners at the dog track. If so, you can still pick longshots. You can watch the dogs, take notes and then use the notes along with a good handicapping system to pick those longshots that other people miss.