Greyhound Racing

Overview on greyhound racing

Greyhound racing, a popular form of gambling in UK, involves a race of 5 or 6 greyhound dogs in greyhound tracks, with people betting on the tote, or with bookmakers, who may be within the track, or outside it.

Details on greyhound racing

Nowhere is greyhound racing as popular, or even heard of, as UK, where it is an extremely popular medium of gambling. You can gamble on the greyhound track betting on the tote or betting with bookmakers. If you want to bet away from the track, you can do so, with bookmakers at starting prices, or rarely, at tote prices.

 Unlike horse racing, where the number of runners vary from race to race; greyhound tracks have fixed number of runners, which are either six, or five. Thus limits are set to the type of bets that you may have. You can have win, place and forecast bets on the tote, on a greyhound track. Additionally you can have multi bet pools, with the results of more than one race. The track bookmakers take winning bets only. Bookmakers away from the tracks take win bets, and each-way bets at starting prices, besides forecast bets.

 Unlike horse racing, which has one universal organization, the Horserace Totalisator Board, governing and controlling all tote betting on horses, each greyhound track has a different tote betting regulatory body. They however follow the controls laid down by law. License is required from local authorities for every greyhound racing track. NGRC, or the National Greyhound Racing Club is an additional private licensing body, having under its affiliation, license, and authority, a number of greyhound racing tracks. The reducing number of tracks under the license and affiliation of NGRC are still not less than 50. 

 The official training program for the new greyhounds is called ‘trials’. Although the official results of the trials are recorded, and published in racecards for race-goers; betting is not allowed for trials.

 Place betting is for the first two dogs and you have to forecast the names of no1 and no2, choosing from the possible 30 combinations in case of 6 dog races; and from 20 combinations for 5 dog races. The racing tracks deduct a percentage which varies. Often they deduct a higher percentage (up to a maximum of 12%) from multi bet pools and forecast pools, than win and place pools.