The greyhound racing tips.

The Betfair Daily Tips service will provide 2-3 greyhound selections per day on average, with a minimum of 1 daily selection. With only a few days a year off, greyhound racing is the perfect daily market.  

Selections are chosen purely by studying race cards and form, assessing a variety of different factors and trying to determine the probability of a given outcome. A detailed article called “Greyhound Profits” is available, outlining some of the variables that are factored in the process. Also, here is a screenshot of the racing card that is being used-it is actually the standard Racing Post card with some added custom build features and calculations that speed up the process of assessing the information.  

Subscribers should be aware of a purely practical problem with the Betfair greyhound markets - the timing. Real trading starts as late as 5 minutes before the off, which leaves only that short window to try and get the best possible price. Same applies to the bookmakers - they price the races 5 minutes before the start, sometimes as late as a minute. I have to mention this so that every subscriber makes his own arrangements as to how exactly he is going to place orders in the market. Luckily internet access is now available anywhere with the wide spread use of portable devices, and Betfair do provide a mobile application for smart phones, please check their website for more information. Bottom line is that in the 3-5 minutes before the start of the race internet access must be made available in some shape or form. Only the best possible prices should be taken, most of the times those will be Betfair’s, but occasionally a selection can shorten quickly and be available at a better price with the bookmakers, if only for a short while, as they correct such discrepancies pretty quickly. So it would be advisable to have an account with a bookmaker. There is no need to use more than one bookie, as for the greyhound racing the odds of all bookmakers are exactly the same (for the average daily races). 

Every greyhound tip will be supplied along with a recommended value price range and the actual type of bet. There will be 5 types of bets in total, in 2 different markets: 

Win market – win bet 

Win market – dutch bet (2 or maximum 3 selections) 

Win market – lay bet 

Place market – win bet 

Place market – lay bet 

Most tips will fall in the categories of win selections for either the win or the place markets, dutching tips will appear less often, and lay tips – least often. 

Dutching is preferred to laying as it reduces the liability (compared to laying). It requires some stake adjusting, if you want to have equal profit on all the dutch selections, some trading applications have this feature built in, but the assumption will be that most subscribers will not have access to such, so the option will be to do it manually (Betfair’s “what if” option will work just fine when entering the stakes).  

When a dutch selection is provided, the term “combined” odds will be used, meaning that we treat all the bets as a single bet with a decimal value. If we dutch 2 greyhounds, priced both at 4.00 for example, combined odds of 2.00 will be quoted, so we use the same total liability (for both bets) as we would on a single selection, and we simply treat it a single bet with odds of 2.00. Another option advised occasionally will be the dutch saver - again bet on say 2 selections, but leave 0 liability and 0 profit on the weaker one (the saver, or the insurance bet), and move all the profit to the stronger selection.  

The place market is a relatively new addition to the Betfair portfolio, and quite a welcome one, as many selections will be targeted at that market. Very often a strong contender is noted, but 2 others have some sort of claims, so provided the prices are high enough the place market is a viable betting option. Alas, place markets tend to be quite illiquid and volatile, and it is not always possible to use them. In any case a value price will be advised beforehand, and should be adhered to, as in an illiquid market people get carried away in chasing prices and end up getting matched at very poor odds, which is not the way to be profitable.  

Also, and this applies not only to the place market, but to any greyhound market, it is a very good idea to “drip feed” larger stakes into the market, simply divide it into small chunks and start submitting each one, the downside is that this is only practical if you use one click software (Geeks Toy or Betfair Rapid, for example). When people on the opposite side of the market see money coming in, they tend to pull their orders out and wait, so one has to be very patient if he wants the best price and has to do his best not to scare the others away. 

Value (or recommended) prices will be advised on all selections. Now with greyhound racing this can be very tricky indeed, as the only pre-market guideline is the racing card itself and the forecast/tissue prices of the Racing Post. Huge discrepancies occur very regularly, a dog has a tissue price of 7.00, does not look great on stats/form, but trades at 3.8 or even lower, for example, does this mean it is a value lay? Maybe, but the point here is this: subscribers should not be surprised if they encounter any such discrepancies, as they do and will occur regularly and are part and parcel of the quickly moving greyhound market.  

Recorded audio commentary for every race is availble online, use this link to access it, then select "Greyhounds" from the top menu, then select the race you want. This will give you an exact picture of how any selection performed in any given race. The commentary is availble only for the day's races, so the recordings will be availble any time of the day but not on the next day. Live commentary is availbale too, although william hill radio is the better option.

What every subscriber should be aware of – the gambles.  

These are selections that attract “smart money”, money from people with inside knowledge, probably owners, trainers or people related to those, or well connected pro-punters. Smart money has to be respected at all times, the obvious difficulty is to identify them and to not mistake them with aggressive betting from loss-chasers or system followers. A tip that a subscriber receives could be in a race where a gamble develops. In such instances if the tip actually becomes a gamble, that is fine, but not great, as it confirms the form selection for the race, but almost surely value would be wiped out as the money comes in and the price shortens. So probably value will be gone and bets will be off as the price will move out of the recommended range. On the other hand, if the tip is not the gamble, then we have to question the form study for fear of non-form inside knowledge and the wisest thing to do will be to give that particular race a miss altogether.  

Why do gambles exist? 

The fact is that bookmakers do not tolerate consistent winners, so an insider will not be able to put four figure amounts down on the “sure” thing with the bookie, and Betfair is his only option. If a punter wins 2-3 consecutive bets on the dogs, even with medium double figure stakes, most bookmakers will impose bet size restrictions on his account. Some will do this within days, others will take a few weeks. Worst offenders in this regard are bet365, Betfred, Bluesquare, Skybet. The most “patient” one is William Hill. That is one of the reason why Betfair greyhound gambles exist and will always do – there will always be people who can’t bet elsewhere and they want to get involved with substantial amounts. 

Another reason is the poor prize money (around £100 for a win), which makes owners resort to carefully planning and implementing “surprise runs” of “out of form on paper” dogs so that bets can be placed and won at bigger odds. No one can blame them, as animals cost money to keep. This is a well known practise in horse racing as well, allegedly there are cases in which a gamble on a horse is planned as long as a year before the race, and sometimes those win at astronomical prices. 

This is all very good and interesting trivia, but how to spot the gambles? 

It is relatively easy, first – bookmakers shorten their prices more than once, for example on the first show the dog is priced at 4.00, bookies than change the odds to 3.5, and then again to 3.00. Sometimes they can reduce the odds more than twice; a strong gamble is shortened more than once, bookmakers are well aware of the “smart money” phenomenon and their trading team controls risk and exposure (liabilities) at all times.  

The second way to spot gambles is by briefly examining the Betfair chart of the selection in the last minute before the off. There must be unrelenting and consistent support for the selection to qualify as a gamble. This is very easy to spot in real time, when trading on the race with a ladder-interface one click software (Geeks Toy is a free one that is recommended), but do not be alarmed, you do not have to use software, as the graph shows enough information on its own.  

Here are some screenshots taken recently of Betfair graphs of gambled dogs. It takes literally a few seconds to study the graph and spot the gamble. 

First example – consistent shortening of prices with no drift at all, big spike in the middle, followed by regular smaller spikes. Any spikes of over £300 should be noted in these markets, obviously the bigger the more significant, four figure ones being the most notable. 

This is an example of a high-priced gamble, they win less regularly, but still do and at very good prices. You will not see huge spikes here, as the dog is trading at 6.00, but the graph is pretty much self-explanatory. 

Now this is a more serious one – trades at lower odds, close to 2.00 (evens), three four figure spikes, and high volume.

And finally another example – just have a look at the consistent shortening of the odds, the four figure spike in the middle surrounded by high three figure spikes. Absolutely classic gambled dog.

On average there are 1-3 big gambles a day, which is actually quite insignificant in relation to the total number of daily races. Sometimes there could be more, for example 2 in the space of half an hour. We are only minding the big gambles, as defined above, if a selection is simply well supported, it does not mean anything and we carry on as usual, with no change of plans regarding our own selections. 

This is explained in great detail as it is important not to take unnecessary risks, it will not be often when a tip’s race coincides with a gamble, but when it does we’ll have a plan to follow.  

Remember - only consistent unrelenting support with big orders being fed into the market qualifies as a gamble, confirmed by bookies’ fear manifested by quick and repeated shortening of their own odds.  

And to reiterate this once again – if the tip is in a gambled race, but is not the gambled dog, do not get involved. If the tip is the gambled selection – only get involved if the price matches the recommended one. 

Another important point to remember - reserve runners. If a tipped selection runs in a race with a reserve runner, this automatically makes the tip void. The reason is simple, really - reserve runners' form is not assessed in advance, which changes the structures of the whole race. This should not be a frequent occurrence so hopefully would not be detrimental to the overall selections volume.

The biggest gamble witnessed this year was a true record breaker. On first show bookmakers priced the dog in question at 4.5, they then quickly started shortening the odds and the starting price of this same dog was…1.65 !!! Yes, 1.65. The dog obliterated the opposition and won by a few lengths. No screenshot can be provided as an element of surprise was present, not to mention the dismay.  

The basketball tips.

Only USA basketball will be used, mostly NBA (professional basketball) but occasional NCAA (college basketball) too.  

The market that subscribers will get involved in is the “spread” market. For those unfamiliar with the term, the “spread” is simply a point value that is either subtracted or added to any team’s real score line, obviously the spread is decided before the game starts. Hence a strong team’s spread will be negative, for example -9, and the opponent will receive the exact same value, but obviously opposing the first, in this case +9. This means that the strong team has to win by more than 9 points to “cover the spread”, and if it doesn’t, the weaker team, or the “underdog” covers the spread. In theory the spread makes every team’s chances of winning equal, so that is why the odds for the spread bets are equal in value (or very close) and relatively high for a 2 outcome event.  

Luckily Betfair’s basketball markets are picking up and volume is reasonable. So every tip will be accompanied by 2 quotes – the price range and the spread value. Betfair do not change the spread value, unlike bookmakers, and the only thing that can change is the price, but it is a fairly stable market so a quote made a few hours earlier should not be far off the current traded price. 

The active NBA season is approximately 6 months long, but during this period activity is daily and this coupled with the fact that the event has 2 outcomes (no draw) makes it an ideal, although hugely underrated market.  

During the active season there will be at least 2-3 tips a week, but the number will fluctuate to some extent. 

The soccer tips.

Again the number of tips will be subject to fluctuation, but on average 3-4 weekly selections will be the target. The area of specialization here is low scoring tight games. Most of the times one of the following options will be offered to the subscribers: 

Over/under 2.5 markets – pre-match straight back bet on the under 

Over/under 2.5 markets – back the under pre-match and trade off in-play at a recommended time/cut off point 

First Goal Odds – pre-match lay bet on the 0-10 min., or lay both 0-10 and 11-20 min. 

Other options will be available too. 

If a subscriber is willing to monitor the event in-play then this will offer more opportunities and flexibility in terms of managing the risk/liability and maximizing the profits. There will however be a choice of options at all times. 

General information.

It will be left to every subscriber’s own discretion to choose whether or not to use any particular tip. Same applies to staking plans and bet size and liability exposure. All past results’ profit and loss stats will be quoted to 1 point level stakes. Staking plans information can be found both on this website and elsewhere on the internet. The two recommended staking plans are level stakes and percentage of bank staking.  

Disclaimer. 

BETGEM.COM strongly recommends you bet within your budget and only with money you are prepared to risk.  

BETGEM.COM is not responsible for any decisions made, financial or otherwise, or any profit or loss sustained, based on information provided by BETGEM.COM.  

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