Win at the Dog Track With Eb

I’ve mentioned before that I used to like to bet on closers, dogs who put on a burst of speed at the end of the race. There’s nothing more exciting than a finish where one of these dogs comes from behind and nips the leader at the wire in a surprise win.

Of course, it’s only exciting if you have the closer on your ticket. Most of the bettors won’t have it, because most of the bettors bet early speed. They have a logical reason for that. Early speed wins a lot of races. However, there’s a place for closers. The bettors who know how to tell when a closer has a good chance to win are the people who cash big tickets.

There’s a myth out there about closers. Many people think that closers only win route races, not sprints. This just isn’t true, as you can see if you check over your old programs. (You do have your old programs, right?) Closers come in much more often than most people think they do in sprints.

Oftentimes in a sprint, one of the dogs in a trifecta is a closer who worked its way steadily through the pack, got to within a couple lengths of early speed leaders and then closed on them until it was second or third at the wire. The reason that people don’t notice this is because the early speed dogs are flashier when they get out of the box like gangbusters and race to the wire.

The closer, in the meantime, gets out of the box in the middle or back of the pack, takes a while to get going and steadily gains on the leaders until the end of the race where it has worked its way up to second or third. There’s nothing exciting about a closer with this running style and most people don’t even notice how this “slow and steady” approach wins the race.

Of course, this is all relative. “Slow and steady” and “takes a while” in a greyhound race is a matter of seconds. Closers are still fast, like all greyhounds. It’s just that their speed doesn’t show until later in the race.

If you want to cash in big on closers, you have to handicap very carefully, taking into consideration whether the closer will be able to do what it does when it runs in the money. Because they need running room and the right setup, give a lot of consideration to post position and the running styles of the dogs next to the closer.

Be especially aware of whether the early speed dogs in the race are liable to fade in the stretch. If they are, the closer’s chances are a lot better and you should definitely give it consideration in your handicapping. Likewise, if the early speed dogs don’t have as much class or consistency as the closer, the closer has a better shot at passing them near the end of the race.

Closers can be goldmines, but only if you bet them when they have everything going for them. Don’t bet them when the race favors the early speed dogs. Wait until you see a race where closers have a good chance and are at long or decent odds. Like the closers, you have to hang back and wait until everything comes together to help you win.

There’s a lot of buzz around speed handicapping nowadays. But before we get into how to use speed to pick longshot winners, let’s make sure that we’re on the same page with the term. Here’s how I find and compare speed when I handicap greyhound races. First of all, I look at the type of speed each dog has.

Very Early Speed dogs are the ones who burst out of the box and immediately take the lead and keep it through the 1/8th call. These dogs are a good bet, because they’re out in front, away from the bumping and blocking that can impede a dog’s progress, especially on the turns. They’re essentially running their own race with no one to hamper them, unless they trip or fly the turn.

Then there are the Early Speed dogs who aren’t first out of the box, but are in the lead at the 1/8th call and accelerate as they go into the stretch. Many of these dogs are very good at snaking through the other dogs right after the break. However, because they’re not all alone out in front like the very early speed dogs, they can still get into trouble on the turns and even on the straightaways if another dog catches up with them.

It’s easy to spot a Very Early Speed dog, because they’ll have a “1″ in almost every race for the Break call. My friend, Lou, used to call them “shot from guns” dogs, because they just about explode out of the box like they’d been fired from a cannon.

To me, it seems like their momentum from the fast break carries them right past the other dogs who got out more slowly. Unless they stumble, they’ll at least start the race out in front. The trick in handicapping these dogs is to figure out if their Very Early Speed will be enough to overcome any significant other factors in the race.

This is where you have to know the secret of speed handicapping, which is that you can’t just compare speed between the dogs. Even using mathematical formulas, there’s no way to use pure speed, alone, to predict which dog will win a race. The only way to use speed handicapping is in conjunction with a thorough comparison of the other factors that determine a race’s outcome.

Post position, class, consistency, track bias… All of these things must be taken into consideration as you look at the Very Early Speed and Early Speed dogs in a race. Sure, early speed is usually an advantage, but only if the Very Early Speed and Early Speed dog is in the right post position to get out of the box and/or accelerate without getting into trouble.

Speed is also strongly affected by class. A Very Early Speed Dog that has all “1’s” for its break calls in Grade B, won’t necessarily outbreak seasoned Grade A dogs, some of whom have run in Stakes races. An Early Speed dog that gets into trouble trying to weave its way through the pack in Grade A, may do just fine in Grade B or C.

So, how do you use this speed handicapping information to pick winning longshots? Simply put, you use it to determine TRUE EARLY SPEED. True Early Speed is a combination of Speed, Post Position, Class, Consistency and Track Bias. If you handicap using all these factors, you’ll be able to tell whether a dog with Very Early Speed or Early Speed is really a good bet.

Most people who depend on early speed to handicap, never look beyond the numbers in the columns under Break or 1/8th call. If they see that the dog is almost always first out of the box, they mark it as an Early Speed dog and make it a favorite. You, on the other hand, have also taken into consideration the other factors that influence who wins the race.

You know when a dog is in over its head, even though it looks like a good bet. You also know when a dog who doesn’t burst out of the box, but does a good job of sliding through the other dogs to be first or second at the 1/8th call, is a good bet even though it’s at long odds. You, my friend, have learned the “secret to speed handicapping” that picks longshot winners.

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

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.

Have you ever thought about how one little thing can change your life? Maybe you stopped to let someone cross instead of speeding up and making them wait a minute. Maybe they were elderly and walked slowly and you sat there for five minutes, wishing you hadn’t stopped. And then, maybe you get down the road to where a bad accident has just happened and you realize that - if you hadn’t stopped to let that old man cross the street - you would have been the guy the paramedics are trying to get out of the car with the jaws of life.

Sometimes, when little things affect our lives, they aren’t as dramatic as accidents we miss or pianos falling on our heads out of 10th floor windows. Sometimes at the dog track though, little things can affect whether we go home winners or losers. The worst thing is that we might not even realize that it’s happening, so we just keep losing and wondering why.

Other people can be a big distraction at the dog track. Whether it’s friends who keep talking when you’re trying to handicap or strangers who yell and swear and carry on when they lose, people can certainly take our mind off our handicapping. I once bet the wrong track because I was so distracted by a father who was yelling his head off at his three kids, who were running around and spilling their drinks all over the floor and other people.

Friends are wonderful things to have, but even good friends can be a pain if they push you to bet a dog they like or try to discourage you from betting a dog that you like. Probably the worst distraction from people at the track are the negative vibes that some people put out. You know, the people who are always complaining that the races are rigged, that they never win and that it doesn’t do any good to handicap because they don’t have any luck anyhow.

Somehow, all that negative karma just clouds my mind and I can’t think straight until I move away from them. My feeling is that if you’re negative, you’ll attract negative luck and talk yourself right into losing. I’m not a Pollyanna, but I try to keep a positive attitude both at the track and in life in general. If you think you can’t win and are completely negative about the dog track, why in the world would you go there in the first place? And what’s more, why would anyone bet if they don’t think they can win? That just doesn’t make sense.

Outside of people, there are plenty of other distractions. Drinking and eating can get in the way of handicapping, watching the races and keeping track of your bets. I eat before I go to the track and rarely drink anything other than one or two cups of coffee while I’m there.

Carrying a bunch of stuff with you that you have to keep track of can take your mind off what’s going on and at the very least, it makes it harder to get up and bet. You either have to carry it with you or leave it where you’re sitting and most people don’t like to leave their stuff behind. I’ve seen people juggling coolers and mini-TVs, even laptops, as they tried to make a bet. Heck, they could hardly find their program, never mind handicap it.

Kids are such a distraction that I won’t even go into it, except to say that I only bring mine to the track when we’re on vacation and I want to give my spouse a break. The day that I bring them, I don’t plan any heavy betting. My feeling about kids is that - when they’re with you - they need your attention and it isn’t fair to them to ignore them while you do something else.

There’s so much going on at the track. There are TV screens everywhere with replays, odds, horse races, other sports events and even news and weather. When I started going to dog tracks, the only screens showed replays. There were no simulcasts. No betting on horse races at dog tracks. No card rooms, slot machines or electronic machines of any kind.

We went to the dog track to bet on ten live races and we paid attention to those races. In some ways, it was a lot easier in those days. Nowadays, it’s hard to find a quiet place to go over your program or even think in peace. So far, I’ve been able to find a place like that at most tracks, but as the live races diminish in importance and electronics and screens take over, they’re becoming harder to find.

If you really want to avoid distractions at the dog track, I suggest that you go alone or with a friend who is as serious about winning at the track as you are. Someone with a positive attitude who doesn’t have to talk every minute. Then, especially if there are no live races that day, go outside and sit.

I do that all the time and sometimes people stop me at the door to tell me that there’s no live racing that day. They always look confused when I tell them that I know there’s no live racing, but I want to sit outside anyhow. Apparently, I’m in the minority when it comes to wanting a quiet place to think. I often wonder if this is why 90% of the people who go to the track lose. Interesting question, isn’t it?

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

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.

Speed comes up almost constantly in greyhound handicapping. Why wouldn’t it? Speed is what gets one dog around the track faster than the other 7 dogs. Obviously, if you can figure out which greyhound has the fastest speed, you can pick the winner of any race. But that’s easier said than done. Believe me, learning speed handicapping in greyhound racing can take a lifetime.

I think most of us handicappers start out by looking for dogs with the fastest times in their last races. When we realize that doesn’t work, we may switch to dogs with the fastest “best time” if the program provides that information. Many of them do. But that’s not really a true picture of how fast the dog will run in any race. Even if the conditions and dogs of the “best time” race were exactly the same, there’s no way to tell how fast a dog will run.

The weather might have been different that day. The track might have been soft near the rail or roughed up or particularly hard if the “best time” is a lot faster than the dog’s usual times. Speed is more than just numbers. Speed has to be compared to grade, class and post position. In other words, there’s no way to compare speed between dogs without taking other factors into account.

There are some dogs who are speed demons if they catch a good break, can see the lure throughout the race and don’t get cut off by other dogs. But when they race against dogs who don’t have quite as much speed, but who run the same kind of race whether or not they get the break or can see the lure, these dogs can lose their speed advantage if things don’t go just the way they want them to.

What I mean is that speed only works if the dog also has determination, catches a good break and is able to run where and how it wants. Trying to figure out whether all of this will come together today for this particular dog is the first step to learning speed handicapping in greyhound races.

There are many, many sports betting systems that purport to translate speed figures into a mechanical formula that allows you to compare dogs’ speed ratings between grades, but I’ve never found one that worked. Maybe it’s partly because I’m not big on crunching numbers with a calculator or software when I’m handicapping. But maybe it’s also because you can’t really use prior speed to absolutely calculate today’s speed in a greyhound race.

True, if you look at a race and see that one or two dogs are consistently faster than the other dogs, you’d make a mental note of that as you look at the other factors in today’s race. But you wouldn’t stop right there and play those dogs just because they look fast. You’d keep handicapping and looking for how they’re going to get out, what their running style is and how the other dogs are going to affect them.

So, speed is one factor in greyhound handicapping, of course it is. But learning speed handicapping isn’t the whole secret to winning at the dog track. If it was, we’d all be rich and it wouldn’t take half as long to handicap our programs. Learn to handicap for speed, but then go on to post position, running style, class and the other factors that help you pick winners, quinielas and trifectas.

Another way to improve your handicapping skills is 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.