Greyhound Handicapping – Watch the First Turn

Good greyhound handicappers always watch the races they bet on. They don’t bet and then go get a coffee and watch the race in replays. They watch the race as it’s happening. If they can, they stand outside, as close to the first turn as they can.

See, most race watchers stand at the finish line, so they’ll know who came in even before the race is official. They want to make sure that they can see which nose is over the finish line first. I can understand their need to know as soon as possible who won.

But it makes a lot more sense to stand down the track a little way, right at the first turn. Why would you care what happens there, more than you’d care what happens at the finish line? Well, if you know what happens on the first turn, you’ll pretty much know which dogs are going to be first over the finish line. What’s better, you’ll have a much better idea of what’s going to happen in the next few races.

A high percentage of dogs who are first to the turn, win. An even higher percentage are in the quiniela or tri. Of course, when you’ve already made your bets, this piece of information doesn’t do you any good for this race. But think about the next time you see one of these dogs in a race.

If you know that they were fast enough out of the box to get to the first turn ahead of the other dogs, you have an advantage over the other bettors. And, more important, if you watch the dogs in the first turn and see that they’re having accidents or going wide as if they’re sliding toward the outside of the track, you’ll know how to bet the next few races, until they groom the track, at least.

If there’s a lot of shuffling, bumping and dogs going wide on the first turn, bet the dogs who break and get the lead. Don’t bet the dogs, especially away from the rail, who don’t get out as well, but then close. If you do, your dog is very liable to get blocked, bumped or knocked out of contention on the first turn.

Greyhound handicapping is an art, not a science. There are so many factors that influence the outcome. You have to be willing to look at the art of picking dogs in new ways, if you want to make money at the dog track.

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Greyhound Handicapping – Making the Grade

At most greyhound tracks, the program tells you what grades the dogs have run in. For instance, at Wheeling Downs, look above the race comments. You’ll see, after the weight of the dog, the lowest and highest grade that the dog has run in. This will tell you what the dog has done in the past, but, of course, it won’t tell you what that dog is going to do today.

A better way to use grade to handicap, I think, is to look for dogs that have run in a higher grade recently and run in the money. These dogs drop down because they don’t win, but they’ve still been in races with dogs that are higher in grade than the dogs in the race they’re in today.

For instance, in a Grade B race, look for dogs that have recently run in A and have come in 3rd or better. Ones that are on their first or second race in B after running in A are often a good bet. And they’re an especially good bet if there’s a hotshot in the race moving up from C and taking most of the betting action.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this situation and cashed in on the dog that was dropping down from A, while the favorite, the C dog moving up, ran out of the money or was second or third to the dog I played. Even if the dog who is dropping down doesn’t look half as good as the dog moving up, the dropper has been running with better, faster and smarter dogs, so it just might surprise at the wire.

Of course, a lot of people look at grade in races, so in races where there’s only one dog dropping down you won’t get very good odds on it. I look for races where the dog that is dropping down is “camouflaged” by another dog or dogs that catches the crowd’s eyes. Maybe a young dog that has moved up rapidly from M to J to C and is now in B.

I look at the young hotshot’s times and see if they’re getting slower in each grade, which is often the case. If so, I try to figure out if today’s race will be the race where the pup hits that brick wall and fails to “make the grade.” If so, I know I have a good bet on the dog that has already shown that it can win in B by moving up past it to A.

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