Betting on Greyhound Racing

Pari-mutuel betting on races in the United States (and sometimes also in Ireland, the United Kingdom or Australia) can be offered in a Las Vegas race book, which will provide simulcast broadcasts of the races. The mechanics of betting function much like horserace betting, in that the wagerer needs to provide the money for the bet at the window, announce the amount, the track, the greyhound and the finish. Of the exotic wagers offered by tracks (mentioned above), casinos usually do not offer those with little or no margin for them. This includes the Daily Double, Superfecta, TwinTrifecta, and the Pefecta/Exacta.

Some race books will accept advance wagers, that is, bets placed well in advance of a specific race.
Choosing the Right Bet. Coming out ahead in greyhound racing requires mastery of the terms offered on all the bets terms as well as skill at handicapping. The first of these involves understanding the “track odds,” that is, where the public is putting its money, and where the best bets are. The second is all about assessing what the physical expectation or “true odds” really are.

In Las Vegas, bets placed on the greyhounds is not co-mingled with the track’s pari-mutuel pool (unlike horse racing), so it is possible to bet on show or place without causing the payoff odds to change adversely. This is an immensely beneficial situation for the bettor from the race book. Greyhound racing pools at a given track can be fairly small, so that a fairly modest bet at a track can easily shift the pari-mutuel odds from a long shot (like 5:1) to a chalk favorite (at 1:5 for example). This can frustrate the bettor trying to identify and bet on the overlays. From a race book in Las Vegas, the overlay can be bet on without shifting the track odds adversely.

The downside of this benefit is that the casino is taking the risk for the “handle” rather than the track. To avoid too much risk, the casino will enforce “maximum payoff limits.” A common example is no more than 300:1 for a trifecta, which might be only one-fifth of a track payoff. The other limitation in Las Vegas race books is the requirement for “supervisor approval” of any wager over a certain amount, like $20. This is to prevent “sharps,” who really understand greyhound racing, from making too much money at the expense of the casino. Bets of $50 or more are unlikely to be accepted. This is not an issue with horse race betting, as the wagers are paid out of the pari-mutuel pool. If it becomes important to make bets over the rather modest limits of the race book, try placing bets with a different teller or going to multiple race books.

Even so, show and place betting often provides too narrow a margin of profit to make it worth the risk to enter, and “plunging” by betting strongly to show will not be permitted by the book. A conservative player may wager on certain animals to win in one or two races out of a card of 15, where the handicapping is really clear, and possibly can come out ahead. Unfortunately, prior performance is not as good a predictor of the next performance in greyhound racing as it is in horse racing. Prior performance data is less readily available and more disperse, as there are more potential racers to keep track of. Favorites win only slightly more than 25% of the time. Even if a great handicapper could improve that performance to win 33% of the time, it would still be difficult to stay ahead by playing only the win pool.

Thus, the best strategy is to bet into the exotic (or semi-exotic) pools that link bets either across starters or across races or both. However, the critical objective is to predict those places where there is the most “fan money,” i.e., where a lot of money has been wagered for the wrong reasons or by inept people. This will improve the payoff odds for someone with reasonable handicapping skills, creating an overlay in the same sense as in horse race betting.
Most serious greyhound race experts commit considerable capital to betting on the multiple race entrants and multiple race combinations like the perfecta or exacta and the trifecta. They do get it right often enough to stay ahead of the game.

A seasoned greyhound bettor in a Las Vegas book often has the choice of where to place his or her action. Again, the objective is to find the track at which the fans are less likely to identify the potential winners and hence drive down the payoffs. When the track odds do not offer enough pay for any decent bet, the money-making option is not to bet at all. How does a bettor come to understand which bets make the most money at which tracks? The answer is using 20-20 hindsight. By keeping good records of wagers and of the outcomes, it may be possible to identify which combinations (or straight bets on occasion) make the most sense at which race tracks. Other than handicapping specific greyhounds, the two main components of this decision are (1) the total amount of money bet in the different pools and (2) the distribution of that money across winners and losers.