The answer to this question might be different depending on who you are asking, but to me greyhound racing has always seemed like a lottery. You might as well pick a dog at random as a win or a lay selection. Having said that I know that there are greyhound owners who race their dogs and make some good money. The odds can be good and shrewd owner bettors will choose their intended races carefully in order to minimise the competition. They know their own dogs well of course, and probably are acquainted with other like minded greyhound owners in the area who also race their dogs.
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With greyhounds there is, as with horses, plenty of form statistics information published to indicate their likely performance such as at the Racing Post, but whereas horses are separated by distance when the results of a race are published, greyhounds are separated by times; and by times that are only a few seconds or parts of a second apart. That is because greyhound tracks are shorter than most horse racing tracks and usually the races are over within a minute or two. This would indicate I think that there is not that much difference between most of the contenders in a greyhound race. The winning outcome is therefore more likely to depend on luck, and in particular, which dog gets a clear run. Since the dogs are close together in their respective lanes there is often bumping and interference in running between the dogs, and this can easily hamper what would have been a winner. Unlike human athletes, dogs do not respect their lane markings and will often run across in front of others to cut a corner or because they simply prefer to run close to the rail.
If you wish to back or lay greyhounds then you can get software to simplify the otherwise laborious task of sorting through the various dogs previous form ratings, and the Racing Post has an expert who gives an opinion on all the runners. There is also I believe, a software that gives a pictorial representation of how the race is likely to run and show the expected winner.
It is even possible now to automate greyhound backing or laying with patented softwares termed autobots or just bots, and here you simply have to put in the various parameters you want for odds and stakes and let the software run on your computer. It may be too early as yet though to determine how successful these might be.
Basically greyhound betting is probably only profitable for those with genuine information about when a dog is on song and likely to win their next race. There are certainly alternatives such as football which are easier to approach for the average bettor.
If you have more questions, contact me [email protected]
