Win at the Dog Track With Eb

There’s an old saying, “Don’t reinvent the wheel.” Everyone says it, but yet almost everyone is looking for a new way to win at the dog track. It seems like every week, there’s a new website popping up that touts a new book or software program that will pick winners “automatically” with no effort on your part.

Even the smartest greyhound handicappers want to believe that if we could just figure out some “trick” that no one else has thought of, we could pick winners in almost every race. I’ll admit it, I’ve fallen into thinking that way in the past. Like you, there have been times when I’ve almost convinced myself that there’s got to be a way to predict the outcome of greyhound races automatically.

I’m older and wiser and I know that nothing - no matter how new or highly touted it is - can automatically pick winners at the dog track with no effort on the handicapper’s part. Dogs aren’t that predictable and it takes skill and effort to figure out which of them have the best chance of winning, placing and coming in third.

However, that said, there are “better” ways to do that, whether they’re new or old. And from time to time, even after 30 years at this game, I suddenly realize something about handicapping that I hadn’t noticed before and use it to make more money. That often happens to me when I go to a different track or lay off handicapping for awhile to do other things and then go back to it.

A fresh perspective can help us see anything in a whole different light when we’re stale from doing the same thing all the time. That’s when it’s a good idea to add one more piece to the blueprint that you use to pick dogs at the races. Of course, you should have a blueprint in place right from the beginning, whether it’s your own or one that you’ve gotten from a more experienced handicapper either in person or from their writing.

This is where the program and the pen come in. If you’re not marking your program according to the system that you use to pick dogs, how can you improve it? Write down what you pick and why. If you use another handicapper’s system, keep track of what it picks and how often those picks come in - and under what circumstances they don’t come in.

That way, when you go back over your programs somewhere away from the track, you’ll be able to tell when the blueprint worked and when it didn’t and whether it can be refined and improved to pick more winners consistently or whether you need another blueprint. It’s not rocket science. It’s more like carpentry. You find a plan and construct your project and it works or it doesn’t work.

If your plan works, that’s great. If it doesn’t, you’d better get another plan from someone who knows what they’re doing.

These are tough financial times for all of us. That’s why I’ve reduced the prices of my Winning Greyhound Handicapping Systems. For as little as $20, you can win at the dog track today.

Make a fast friend. Adopt a retired racing greyhound.

Joe and Bob both go to one of my favorite tracks. I see them there all the time, sitting at a table near the window that looks out over the finish line. You’d know the track if I mentioned it, but its name doesn’t matter. I’m sure there are plenty of “Joe’s” and “Bob’s” at your favorite track.

Bob drinks coffee by the gallon and smokes outside between races. He’s a nervous kind of guy. Always moving around, tapping his pen on the table, clearing his throat, tapping his foot. He’d drive Joe crazy if they hadn’t been friends for so long that Joe doesn’t even notice it any more.

While Bob flips back and forth through his program, looking for really good-looking winners, Joe carefully and methodically handicaps his program with a system that he’s been using for years. It hasn’t made him rich, but it helps him consistently pick winners, quinielas and sometimes trifectas. It’s the reason he goes home a little richer at the end of the day.

Bob, on the other hand, doesn’t believe in systems. He thinks they’re all rip-offs and scams. He likes to handicap the program himself. After all, he’s been going to the dog races for twenty years, so who knows more about how to pick winners than he does?

Well, apparently, a lot of people do, because they take Bob’s money every time he goes to the track. Sometimes, he makes a few dollars, but over the long haul, Bob loses from $20 to $75 dollars on most of his track trips. He’s a loser and a lousy handicapper, but he’ll never admit it.

When he gets home and his wife asks him if he won anything, he always says, “I won a little.” He’s lying and his wife knows it, but she loves him and doesn’t give him a hard time. She wishes he’d get a clue about how to pick dogs though, because she knows he hates losing.

Joe’s wife knows that he wins more than he loses, because he tells her what he lost and what he won. He talks a little about the dogs that made him money that day, but only a little, because he doesn’t want to bore her to tears. He knows she just wants to know if he won or lost, not every little detail.

Joe’s wife was a little doubtful back when Joe bought a lot of handicapping books and reports, but now she’s glad that Joe did. It gives him an advantage that the other bettors don’t have. Bob’s wife wishes Bob would get a clue and find someone who could help him figure out the dog races.

Joe and Bob are both smart, sharp and determined to make money at the dog track. One of them will make money at the track, and the other one could if he’d get a winning strategy for greyhound handicapping. If you’re like Joe, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re like Bob, what are you going to do about winning at the dog track?

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.

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.

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.