Here at UK Bet, we love our Greyhound racing. So much so, we decided to put together a guide for anybody looking to get started in one of the more traditional racing events on the British calendar. Weirdly enough, Greyhound racing is one of the more unique betting options, but we will look at that soon. We won’t be able to tell you everything about Greyhound racing here, but we want to introduce you to the absolute basics.
In the past, Greyhound racing was a spectator sport. There were hundreds of dog tracks across the country. Now there are a little over 20. There are still spectator events running at most of these tracks, but, honestly, the bulk of the income from Greyhound racing comes from when nobody actually watches the events at the track.
In its current form, Greyhound racing has been designed specifically for betting. Every single day, nearly every track in the country runs a few events. These are not events you can watch. Instead, they are events you can only bet on. Most companies will run a live stream of the event so you can see what is going on. Part of the reason for this is to keep costs down.
As you can probably tell, nearly every dog track in this country is either owned by a betting company or sponsored by a betting site. This is because they want the events listed on their racing calendar.
This is going to be dependent on the track. However, you may be surprised to know that many tracks run events up to 7-days per week. There may be 10-15 races on each of these days. A lot is going on. Most of these events can be found at your favourite bookmaker (but not all of them!)
This is where things start to get interesting with Greyhound racing. You see, traditionally, when you bet on an event, you would bet on a specific participant. You can still do that with Greyhound racing. However, you will find that many pros will go beyond this. They will bet on specific trap numbers (I.e. the part where the dog is released from). This is because each course has unique quirks on each of the traps, and getting to know what these quirks are is a key part of Greyhound racing. In fact, there are whole communities dedicated to this style of betting.
If you are new to Greyhound racing, we suggest that you stick with the typical method of choosing a specific dog based on its race history. It will make things easier for you, even if racecards can be a bit tricky to understand if you are jumping into this sort of bet online for the first time.
Greyhound racing is fantastic to bet on simply because so many betting options are available. In this section, we want to take a little look at some of the more popular bets. This is not a complete list. We doubt we could ever produce a complete list simply because every bookmaker is different, but this page should give you a decent idea of what you are in for when it comes to bets. Plus, for a beginner, it is a good guide to the ones that you should be sticking to at the start:
Obviously, this is the most popular type of bet. Some people may say it is the least fun, but at least it is easy to understand. You are simply betting on which dog will win a particular race. Simple stuff.
Choose a dog. If it comes first or second, you win. Although, do bear in mind that the odds will be lower than selecting a race winner.
Is there a favourite in the race that is almost certainly going to win it? Great! Don’t bet on it. Instead, go for Betting Without. You can exclude any dog from the race, and then place a separate bet on the new race you have created. So, for example, you exclude Dog 1. This leaves Dogs 2,3,4,5 in the race. You may want to bet on 2 to win. So, if Dog 1 won this race, that doesn’t matter. What matters is if 2 came in second place officially.
This is a weirder type of bet. You are, basically, betting on a dog NOT to win. The aim of this bet is to have every dog who is not your named dog come before that dog OR, if you want, you can bet on that dog to beat all the others.
If you have ever bet on roulette, then this may seem familiar. With this, you bet on specific traps to win. So, for example, if you bet on ‘odds’ and any dog starting from an odd trap wins, you get a payout.
This is a bet on at the start of the event. Your goal is to determine which trap will have the most winners throughout the night.
Looking for uk gambling sites to do a spot of Greyhound racing? Check out the list below. Our team of researchers will keep this list ‘up to date’ with awesome places you can flutter at.