Over the past couple of weeks we have taken a look at the new 3-Way 
Virtual Sports betting options available at 10Bet, including a look at 3-Way Virtual Basketball last week and before that, 3-Way Virtual Football.
In our next article, which will be later on in August because I’m on holiday for a few weeks, we will take a closer look at the 3-Way Virtual Horseracing game, but for this week, we are going to turn our attention to our canine friends and take a closer look at 3-Way Virtual Greyhounds.
3-Way Virtual Greyhounds
The 3-Way Virtual Greyhounds game is similar to the standard Virtual Greyhounds available at 10Bet, although it has been significantly polished and the improvement in terms of graphics, presentation and sound is abundantly clear from the off.
Unlike the 3-Way versions of Basketball and Football, there is no ‘season’ as such in the Greyhounds, but what does happen that is different to the other game, is that the data for each of the dogs that race is collated and each dog starts to develop its own history over time.
Each greyhound race lasts two minutes in total and that includes the betting time as well as the full race. As with the original version, the presentation goes through each of the six runners in the race, which all use the same traditional greyhound colours. Listed next to each dog is the form over the last five races and the odds of the selection in the race, shown as a decimal.
What is great about this is that the races are divided into meetings. Each meeting has a set number of races, such as 12, and each race can be over one of three different distance, Sprint is the shorter distance, Middle is the middle distance and Stayer is the longer distance. Of course, the game is designed so that some dogs run better over different distances, which helps create further differentiation in the betting.
The Race Calendar to the left of the screen shows you the number of race in the current meeting we are on, the venue of the race, the number of the meeting and there is also a countdown to the start of each of the races at the meeting. You can click on graph icon next to the race listed and it will bring up data on the race.
3-Way Greyhounds Data
The data section lists all six runners in the Racecard section and 
clicking on the runner brings up the key data for that runner, including the rating of the runner in the race. You can even click on the camera icon in this menu to see the photo finish of the race that the dog last ran in.
The Race Calendar section lists the meeting in full, while the Results section is updated with the results of each race in the meeting, although you can alter the time and date to look at results of other meetings too.
The final section in the Data sub-menu is the Race Tracks section which gives you details of both the tracks used in the game, including the distances run on the Sprint, Middle or Stayers races in each The distances are the same for each track, 255m for a Sprint, 452m for a Middle and 657m for a Stayers race.
The end of the race sees the photo finishes of all six dogs in the race and a recap of how the result finished. This is only on screen a short time before the next race begins.
Bets available
As with all 3-Way Virtual Sports there are just three types of bet available on a race, these are to bet on the winner of the race, a bet on whether the dog will finish in the first or second places in a race or a Forecast or Tricast bet where you try to pick the top two, or three, finishers either in the exact order (at greater odds) or in any order.
Verdict on 3-Way Virtual Greyhounds
There isn’t quite so much difference between 3-Way Virtual 
Greyhounds and the standard Virtual Greyhounds that has been available on the 10-bet site for a while as there is between some of the other 3-Way Virtual sports. The main differences tend to be somewhat cosmetic, with the better animations and sounds a good example of this.
The way the races run more quickly is a positive though and it is great for players that want quick betting action to see that the whole race is conducted from start to finish in just two minutes, that includes the longer distance races as well as the sprints.
The really big positive with the new 3-Way Virtual Greyhounds is not just the presentation but the addition of the data element in the game. No longer is all the form of the dog just generated randomly for that event. Instead, the races the dog performs in are tracked and this generates data that players can use to research their chosen dog that they want to bet on. If Virtual Sports want to emulate how people bet in real life, then the addition of this data element was key and it does add a great deal of cosmetic depth to the game.
One thing that will be interesting to see would be the effect of the data. Does a dog have tremendous form and continue to show that throughout races, or does the random element mean that dogs form will be up and down and very much more random? It is hard to judge that over just a handful of races, but it would be interesting to see what the results are over the longer term.
I think in terms of the general experience, 3-Way Virtual Greyhounds offers more for the typical punter than the standard version of the game and I think its enhancements and additions give it greater depth and reality. However, I would have liked to have seen perhaps a couple more betting options (although with the name 3-Way, this does seem to be a conscious decision by 10-Bet to only offer three betting options on each of the Virtual Sports available in this section of the site).
If you enjoyed a flutter on Virtual Greyhounds, then the 3-Way version is even more realistic and is organised in a more structured way. It takes another big step towards Virtual games appearing to be even more lifelike and for that reason alone is well worth spending a few quid on having a few bets to see how your luck holds up.
