Greyhound Handicapping: Are You Losing Money On This Type of Dog?
The first time I heard someone call a dog a phony, I didn’t have a clue what they meant. How can a dog be a phony? I know a lot of people who are phonies, who act like something they’re not. But dogs don’t “act” at all. What you see is what you get with dogs.
Over time, I learned that a “phony” dog at the greyhound track is a dog who looks better than he runs. It’s not that the dog is trying to fool you or anything. It’s just that its performance can sucker you into betting it when you really shouldn’t.
An example of a phony is the dog who had won in A by six lengths and was now running in a stakes race. He looked really good, because I had seen the race where he won by a mile and he just blew by the other dogs like they were standing still.
When I bet him, he was at 4-1, but by the time the race went off, he was the favorite, even though there were some other good dogs in the race. So what happened? He was last - six lengths behind the other dogs, this time.
When I looked back over his lines at the last race where he’d won for fun, I realized that the race was a “phony” race. Sure it was an A race, but the dogs in it weren’t the cream of the crop. Most of them had just won in B or had never won in A even though they’d had a couple races in A.
The competition in the stakes race was a lot tougher. All of them had won in A, some many times. They were used to winning. The dog I bet had only won in A once and didn’t have to really try to do it.
So, he was a phony and I was a sucker for betting him. But I learned from this experience and became a better handicapper. Now, I look at the competition in every race where a dog won by a big margin. A lot of times, it’s because the other dogs are second rate, not because the winner is first rate.
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.
