For a while now I have been pondering the possibility of backing the favourite at the dogs to see if there is any money to be made. Even though the rumours that greyhound racing is not the most virtuous sport you can make a wager on it is certainly the most abundant sport with over 140 races each day and that is just the UK. According to the Oxford Stadium website 35% of all favourites win! This however is across all tracks, distances and, classes of race. To this end I decided that the only true way of sorting the wheat from the chaff is to back every single favourite in every single race and use the power of excel to weed out losing statistics from the more profitable. So without ado I will post day by day findings on this blog
My criteria is simple I will back each race favourite 20 seconds before the post time to a liability of just £1.00 so in effect my average stake should be kept to about 30p per race. This means that should the favourite win then the Profit will be £1.00 and if loses the stake determined by the odds that are available at that moment in time on the betfair exchange. There have been instances where the odds of two of the dogs have been exactly the same at the 20 second point and no bet was struck. This is unfortunate but one of those things. After testing that the software worked as required on March 1st testing began in earnest on March 2nd and showed an overall profit of £13.41 with profits showing from all meetings except Crayford and Hove.
Starting with Central Park, there were a total of 6 winning favourites giving a small profit of £2.66 The rest I will put into a table for easy reference.
| Track | Winning Favs | Avg Stake | P/L |
| Crayford | 1 | 45p | -£3.85 |
| Doncaster | 9 (2 Meetings) | 69p | £4.73 |
| Hove | 6 | £1.43 ** | -£0.51 |
| Monmore | 10 (2 Meetings) | 57p | £2.44 |
| Newcastle | 6 | 48p | £1.69 |
| Oxford | 8 (2 Meetings | 63p | £1.26 |
| Perry Barr | 8 | 47p | £1.48 |
| Romford | 10 (2 Meetings) | 53p | £3.03 |
| Swindon | 4 | 49p | £0.48 |
Crayford was quite obviously not a track to back the favourite on this day as just one favourite won, Hove had a few odds on favourites running hence the average stake of £1.43 with the shortest priced favourite of the day losing costing a massive £3.12 All in all not a bad day for the first day.
There were a total of 160 races of which 64 favourites won giving a 40% win rate.
Lets go on to look at the best performing meeting of the day which was Doncaster. Producing an overall profit of £4.73 with 9 winning favourites at the 2 meetings.
Of the 8 winning favourites 4 were in OR class races or Open Class and scored a 100% strike rate as did the OR3 class which accounted for 2 more winning favs.
The sheer volume of information I have collected just over the last 20 days is by no means enough and in subsequent posts I will delve a little deeper into which tracks are more profitable than others using this system and which Races should be avoided on all counts after looking at the stats.
Just as a Taster the best performing track using this system between 2 March and 22 march is Nottingham with a profit of £15.89
The worst Track for winning Favourites is Sunderland with a loss of £22.03
My total profit for this period backing every race is £38.28
Betornot 