Why Greyhound Racing is the Perfect Gambling Sport

Want to use a hash table or build an algorithm to make consistent profits from sports gambling? Task No. 1 is to identify what sport to specialize in.

Such is the massive data input from the millions of individuals and organisations that gamble on football, it is very unlikely you will beat the Premier League football betting markets.

That’s also the case for other headline sports such as golf, rugby and tennis. There’s loads of historical form to use when betting on snooker and darts but player ‘form’ on these games can peak and trough dramatically over the course of a few weeks.

And so, surprisingly maybe, we believe greyhound racing is the best gambling sport to munch the numbers and then convert data into gambling profits. So why dog racing, not horse racing?  The answer is simple, less variables.

The Less You Know The Better

Horses have jockeys, good and bad, they are not infallible and errors of a tactical nature are commonplace. Similarly their trainers may instruct their rider to set the pace one week and then decide a tactic ‘come with a late run’ is a better strategy. Punters, apart from those betting on horse racing in Hong Kong, are not privy to such information.

Racehorses also compete on a variety of different surfaces, courses and distances. Predicting how one horse with form on an artificial surface on a flat track over one mile will fare against another with form over 12 furlongs on an undulating grass track with heavy going in a 10 furlong race around a tight track on fast going is no easy task – and let us not forget the average field size of UK horse races is around 8.

Conversely greyhound races feature six runners and unlike their equine counterparts they simply run as fast as they can for as long as they can from the outset. Even those who appear to come home with a whirlwind finish are travelling far slower in the closing stages than they were at the start.

Beyond the lack of ‘run style’ instructions greyhound betting students also benefit from uniform race distances, track surfaces and the fitness / consistency performing once a week every week brings.

The Clock’s Consistency is King 

In dog racing the ‘clock is king’. 

Times underline the performance consistency of greyhounds which is actually quite remarkable, week-in-week out there is little fluctuation. This consistency means races can be tightly matched or graded. 0.08sec represents a length at the winning line incidentally, with races generally taking between 24sec and 30sec depending on the venue.

Despite this there is uncertainty in dog racing which is brought around by bumping and baulking. In the punters favour dogs which race wide will always race wide and those that run close to the inside rail will always do. This run style will not change at any part of their career.  Likewise, those that are fast away and show early pace will always do so. Those that have stamina will always finish fast and make their challenge late into the race.

In Conclusion

All these factors – and others such as trap draws – are all values which can be converted into data which, when fine-tuned, can provide a ratings system which should, on the odd occasion, see your opinion of probability being shorter than the bookmakers opinion which is reflected in the price. 

Betting at odds bigger than the probability – in gambling and on bet exchanges – is the only guaranteed winning formula. How’s your judgement?