You’ve seen them. Those one-sheet wonders that you can buy for a buck at the gate. Or maybe there are “selections” printed at the bottom of the programs from one or more tipsters. Everybody looks at them, but do people really bet them? Some do.
Should you bet them? Well, I wouldn’t recommend blindly betting every dog that tip sheets pick, but I do think that you should pay attention to them for a couple of reasons.
1. The crowd bets the tip sheet picks. If you see what the tip sheet picks are as you go over your program, you’ll know in advance who the favorites are likely to be. This can help you decide whether a dog is going to pay if it comes in.
2. If there are two or three tip sheet selections on the program, along with the track handicapper’s picks, and they all pick the same dog or dogs, you probably should give that dog a good look as you handicap that race.
Some of the tipsters aren’t much better than the crowd when it comes to picking dogs, but if all of them think a dog has a good shot, there’s a reason for it. Sure, it might just be that the dog is a phony who looks better than it is. But it might be that the tipsters have seen the dog run often enough so that they know that it’s ready to win this time.
I would never advise anyone to use tipsheets to pick dogs without handicapping. That doesn’t make sense. However, some like Gordon Waite’s Stat Attack and Stat Force tipsheets are pretty good at picking winners. He’s been handicapping greyhounds for years and knows a thing or two about how they run.
But with a lot of the tip sheets, it’s like betting numbers. Fun and sometimes the dogs come in, but most of the time they don’t. Good solid handicapping is the way to pick winners. You either have to develop a handicapping system yourself or get one from someone who has the experience to pick winners consistently. No tip sheet can do what your own good handicapping can do at the dog track, although the good ones can help.
