I've been promising for a while now that I will teach some winning greyhound strategies so today I'm going to explain how the form is recorded for the dogs. I'll then go on to share a strategy that I have used for years whenever I bet the dogs.
This is going to run over a number of days and I might spread it out a bit so as to not bore those readers not interested in the dogs, but we'll see how it goes.
So below you will see a screenshot of some greyhound racing form and below that a list of what the various items mean.
Greyhound racing form – Click to Enlarge
[1] Starting with the easy, this is the trap that the dog will run from
[2] The dogs name & (W) indicates that this dog is a wide runner and consequently it will be allocated one of the outside traps each time it runs. You may also see (M) which indicates a middle runner and this dog will be allocated a middle trap.
[3] The best recent (Calculated) time that the greyhound has achieved along with details of the grade and the date. In this case the best time came in a trial, a trial is a qualifying race which helps the racing manager to know how to grade the dog IE what is it's ability what race should he put it in. Trials will usually have less than 6 runners, 3 in this case, and there is no betting on trials.
[4] The name of the trainer.
[5] This is the Racing Post rating for the dog. It is time based and personally I don’t pay much attention to it.
[6] A description of the animal in this case a F b which is a fawn bitch (female) a male will be indicated with a d for dog. This is followed by the name of the dogs sire (father), dam (mother) and the date whelped (Date of Birth).
[7] Date last in season. Bitches only!
[8] This is the Racing Post's tipsters comment, often vague and and can sway your judgement.
Now we get to the past form for the dog in question. Each line represents one race with the top line being the most recent.
[9] The date of the race.
[10] The track where the race was run.
[11] The distance of the race in metres.
[12] The trap number that the dog ran from on that occasion.
[13] The sectional or split time. This is the time from the traps to the winning line the first time the dog passes the line. This is useful to hep you understand the pace of the dog and whether it is likely to lead early.
[14] Position in race at the start (IE out of the traps), quarter (In a 4 bend race this will be between the 1st & 2nd bends), half and three quarter stages.
[15] Finishing position.
[16] The distance beaten by or if the winner the distance won by.
[17] The name of the winner or the second if this dog was the winner.
[18] The Racing Manager's in running comments for that run
[19] The time that the winner took to complete the race.
[20] The allowance made for the going. N = normal otherwise plus or minus in hundredths of a second EG – 40 means that the time was adjusted down by 40 hundredths of a second.
[21] The starting price of the dog.
[22] The grade of the race.
[23] The calculated time for this dog. This will be calculated from the distance the dog finished behind the winner and adjusted for the going allowance.
Now that we understand the information (form) that we have available next time we can look at how we can use that information.
Now we know how to read the card check out these posts that deal with finding a winner.
Who is the fastest to the first bend
Image courtesy of Saris0000 under Creative Commons 2.0
SP Before the Off
Malcolm explains how we can know the Betfair SP and bet based on Betfair SP before the off!
Here's Malcolm…
Just about every system you come across on the web would first have been created using past data.
If this is the case then the result will be shown using either SP (Industry Standard starting price) or BSP (Betfair Starting Price) for results.
There is nothing really wrong with this because it is the only way of giving people the chance to check the results they are seeing as being accurate.
But where it does cause an issue and pose a problem is when it is a price sensitive system or a system that relies on being on a particular ranked runner, like the favourite.
BSP and SP are calculated at the off.
You may think by looking at the ranking a few seconds before the off will tell you who was favourite, second favourited etc…
But often this isn't the case. The BSP/SP announced ranking can be different to the just before the off rank.
A short test we did with Betfair some time back clearly showed that the rankings can differ by as much as 1 or 2 runners in every 10.
Maybe this doesn’t sound too bad…
…But when you consider you could be following hundreds or even thousands of bets over the course of a year…this could easily change the results you were expecting or the results being advertised.
The same is true of price. The price before the off is often different to BSP/SP causing even more inaccuracies in your system.
So what can you do to make sure you are on the correct runner or within the correct price range?
You may already know that just as Betfair's market goes in-play the BSP price and ranking is made available through their API.
So we have developed a great feature on the Grey Horse Bot that allows the bot to read the BSP price and Ranking as soon as it happens.
This gives the Grey Horse Bot user the opportunity to choose which ranked runner to bet on or to only place a bet into the market if it is within the price range you require.
When you create your own system it should be part of your testing to determine if you get better prices before the off or in-play. You can test both automatically with the Grey Horse Bot.
Thank you for reading I really do appreciate it.
Malcolm
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Malcolm is the creator of a number of Betfair automated betting products like the Grey Horse Bot. He also writes articles for Betfair. Apart from automation Malcolm likes creating and testing systems and believes his readers should have all the statistical facts available to make proper informed decisions.
If you have any questions about bots or automation please add a comment and we'll try and answer them.
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