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Bonus Strategy: Cracking Greyhounds

Introduction

For more years than I care to remember punters have been trying to crack the greyhound code.

It’s a tough nut to crack despite only having 6 runners to choose from.

Obviously the higher the grade the better in terms of reliability of form, even then your selection can get bumped badly and one bump and you’re out is the general rule in greyhound racing especially if that bump comes on the first bend.

The greyhound markets on Betfair can be notoriously difficult to interpret with prices fluctuating widely between the Back and Lay price every second. With that in mind we have to get the odds in our favour on every race played if we are to get the edge long term.

Over the past I’ve received numerous requests on whether I have any greyhound strategies that I use on a regular basis. Well the answer is Yes & No.

The ‘yes’ part is when I get inside information from a small group of owner/trainers. The ‘No’ part is that I don’t operate a strategy as part of my main portfolio. However I do on occasions use a few methods to get an edge if playing the morning and afternoon BAGS cards. BAGS stands for Bookmakers Afternoon Greyhound Service.

Below is a couple of angles I use that can reap some good benefits and is pretty low risk with short losing runs when they occur.

Remember, this is not part of the Profit Plans and should not be taken seriously with large stakes. Having said that, it quite often produces a profit over stakes invested and as such is worth investigating further with small stakes and having a bit of fun along the way.

The first one I call ‘Round The Bend’ and here are the rules.

1). Go to Betfair Greyhound Market here;

 

2). Once you have clicked on ‘Greyhounds – Todays Cards’ make sure you are on the morning and/or afternoon races.

The morning cards start every day at just after 11.00am, and the afternoon BAGS card starts just after 2.00pm just after the morning cards.

Here are the morning and afternoon greyhound meetings we use;

  • Belle Vue
  • Central Park
  • Crayford
  • Doncaster
  • Hove
  • Kinsley
  • Monmore
  • Newcastle
  • Nottingham
  • Perry Barr
  • Poole
  • Romford
  • Swindon
  • Sunderland
  • Sheffield

3). We then check on each race in timed sequence order and begin the process of looking for a qualifying pick where we will be placing two individual bets.

The first is a ‘LAY’ in the place market, and the second is a ‘BACK’ bet on the same selection in the WIN market.

4). For the first bet we head to the place market of each race around 3-4 minutes before the race is due off and look to LAY the one that is priced at 2.10 or BELOW. (All greyhound races we use pay out on 2 places)

Here’s one I placed below at 1.98 before the price bounced back to 2.06. My liability for this £2.00 Lay was £1.96 should the selections finish 1st or 2nd.

5). Once having placed the first of the ‘2’ bets, we next move onto the second bet which is a ‘BACK’ bet in the WIN market.

So let’s move over to the WIN market as shown below and place the same unit stake as we did with our Lay bet in the place market on the same selection.

So next make sure you move over to the WIN market as shown below;

 

Possible Outcomes:

Favourite Wins:

We WIN our BACK bet on the favourite and lose our Lay bet of the favourite in the PLACE market. Overall we will clear a nice profit.

Favourite Loses: (finishes outside first 2 places).

We lose our Back bet of the favourite in the WIN market but have our stake covered with our Lay bet of the favourite in the PLACE market for the same stake as the Back bet. You can Lay slightly more stake to cover Betfair commission.

Favourite Loses: (finishes 2nd)

Here we lose both our Back and Lay bets and it’s the only outcome where we don’t get a return back to our bank.

Let’s look at the result from the above example…

With the above example we broke even with the full stake returned from the Lay of the favourite in the place market as our selection was unplaced.

Real Life Examples…

Here’s one morning session I took that bagged just shy of 3.5pts (£6.97) profit from 8 races. Example using £2 back and £2 Lay stakes.

With the last qualifying race (13.33) I actually backed and layed two qualifiers as the favourite 2 minutes before the off quickly became the 2nd fav so I ended up backing them both.

Here’s one from an afternoon BAGS session at Sheffield and Monmore:

Here’ the second page;

With the afternoon session I made 4.35pts from 13 qualifying races.

Between the two sessions (morning and afternoon) I made a total combined profit of +7.35pts (£15.67 at £2 units). If you were to use this with £10 Back and Lay units a profit of +£78.35p would have been banked  – not too shabby for working between the hours of 11.00am – 18.00! Although every race would not have qualified between these times so market observation is required for each race.

Possible Staking Options…

Best to use level staking with this one. Although maybe a slight progressive staking plan could be used as it’s rare to get ‘3’ straight losses where the favourite finishes second.

However, more work needs to be done on that. If a eureka moment is forthcoming you will be the first to know via further periodic Quick-fire newsletter updates.

Please Note: With the above strategy you will see odd prices occurrences. eg. Sometimes when you lay at around 1.95 in the place market you can get a price as high as 3.5 in the win market. On other occasions you may only get 3.0. It all depends on who wants to lay and for how much.

Further Risk FREE Bonus…

As we only lose when our dog finishes second then do look out for Bookie special offers where they offer a refund on certain cards from time to time if your chosen selection finishes second. This would work along a similar principle of the risk free bonus angle given for the 50/50 Horse Racing strategy given in Profit Plan 9 of Quick-fire.

If you can grab these offers then you are betting RISK FREE on every race. You will then break even or make a profit no matter what the outcome – marvellous!

To do this you would place your Win bet with the bookie offering the 2nd place refund bonus and your Lay bet in the place market with Betfair.

Also, some like Corals offer a Free bet up to the value of £25 if you grab a winner at a price of 2/1 or bigger. Here are the type of offers you should be looking out for;

You can see all the daily offers from this site here:

http://www.latestbettingoffers.co.uk/greyhound-racing/

Another Possible Angle?…

Another fun angle to use that will give you some pointers and fun along the way is my ‘Track Bias’ strategy.

This one is all about looking at the traps from each track where the most winners appear from historically.

This information is obtained from the Newspaper version of the Racing Post.

Below you will see I have cut out the meetings from Crayford and Sunderland with comments.

Trap Stats for Sunderland:

 

Trap Stats for Crayford:

You can see from the above that Crayford has a clear trap bias from 6 and 2.

Therefore, if I was to play this meeting or was going there for a night out I would first check these stats to give me some guidance on which way to play these races.

Here’s one way you could use this information:

Dutching Option?

Let’s say you set your unit stake at £2.00, you would then place £2,00 on the two traps that have shown track bias using the above information from the Racing Post.

For Crayford above that would mean I would place £2.00 on both Trap 2 & 6 on every race.

If I bag a winner I would remain on the same stake of £2.00 for the next race. If I lose, I would increase my stake by 50% for the next race and therefore my next stake would be £3.00 on both Trap 2 and 6 for next race. So my total stake would be £6.00.

If the next race were to be a loser I would again increase the stake by 50% for next race. So 50% of £3.00 is £1.50 and therefore add £1.50 to the £3.00 to give £4.50 to bet on both Trap 2 & 6 for the next race and so on. So my total bet would be £9.00.

Conclusion….

Above you have ‘two potential angles for profit but not to be taken seriously as the greyhound markets can be strange betting environments in comparison to the more stable Horse Racing and Football markets. I’ve often seen dogs that are strongest in terms of the volume bet on them yet they are not the favourites on Betfair prices. Strange but true!

See this more as a bit of fun at this stage with a possible edge with both as shown above. Who knows one or both of the above methods could turn out to be long term winners based on my experiences so far and as shown above so I remain hopeful.

Due to the fast moving nature of the greyhound markets in terms of price changes if possible try and use one of the many Betfair interfaces on offer such as Fairbot, Bet Angel etc and set them at a ‘1’ second interval rate to ensure you can get your bets on at the required prices.

Finally, if you have a morning or afternoon free then give it a go, you may be surprised how the amounts can add up when on a winning run and how little we lose when on a losing run.

Good Luck!