morning lines

[redeye007]

do morning line odds makers read the racing form to come up with the odds or are they using software now? I think some of the morning line odds are too close and anemic to have been generated with anything but a software program.

[Overlay]

It would seem to me that the more closely bunched the horses are in the line, the more that would argue in favor of the line not being the unfiltered product of a software program (regardless of whatever other data or source the linemaker might use). (If a software program were statistically based, I would think that it would produce odds for many horses that would be too high or low to be usable in a morning line, unless the linemaker were to put an arbitrary upper and/or lower cap on the odds in the interest of promoting maximum betting activity.)

Also, it would depend on whether the line represents the linemaker's personal opinion, or the linemaker's projection of how the public will actually bet.

[fmolf]

in the old days when it was done by hand and usually by one person it was an estimate of how that person thought the crowd was going to bet.I hear the knuckleheads on tvg and also hrtv saying that a horse was an overlay when it goes off above its morning line odds!So right there i know that they have either not handicapped the race or do not make a personal odds line and have no concept of value.The morning line harkens back to the days when bookies roamed the tracks and the morning line ws a general starting point for them to accept wagers on.

[exiles]

Originally Posted by redeye007

do morning line odds makers read the racing form to come up with the odds or are they using software now? I think some of the morning line odds are too close and anemic to have been generated with anything but a software program.

Some morning lines are so bad that i think these tracks let let the dishwasher or the hot dog seller do the morning lines as their 2nd job.

[horses4courses]

Originally Posted by exiles

Some morning lines are so bad that i think these tracks let let the dishwasher or the hot dog seller do the morning lines as their 2nd job.

Good players focus on tracks with weak M/Ls...nice to have public money following a bad M/L.

[exiles]

Originally Posted by horses4courses

Good players focus on tracks with weak M/Ls...nice to have public money following a bad M/L.

Didn't say that i wasn't taking advantage.

[traynor]

In US and Canadian racing, the morning line is an estimate of how the public will bet, not how the horses will run. In Australia and the UK, it is one of the most valuable handicapping aids available. An accurate morning line is expert opinion of the relative probability of each entry winning the race (what many US bettors believe the morning line here to be).

Because wagers are made with a (usually) licensed bookmaker, rather than dumped into a pari-mutuel pool, you know what the return will be for each bet when you make it--rather than after a whale from Sha Tin using automated software dumps $5000 on your prime bet selection at the last second.

Of the two methods, the Australian style is much to be preferred--if you make a bet at 2-1, those are the odds at which you will be paid. If you know that at odds of 2-1 your selection is a great bet, it is dismaying to see the odds drop to 3/5 after the race is off. Especially if you would have passed the race at those odds.

[46zilzal]

Originally Posted by traynor

In US and Canadian racing, the morning line is an estimate of how the public will bet, not how the horses will run.

yup, exactly

[upset]

In the U.S. the morning line makers don't want to offend owners by making their horse 50/1 or higher thats why you don't see a true line. It would make the owner complain to the trainer and say "why are we racing when we have no chance" or drive some out of the game if they saw 50/1 99/1 70/1 to many times. They can deal with 20/1

[therussmeister]

Originally Posted by upset

In the U.S. the morning line makers don't want to offend owners by making their horse 50/1 or higher thats why you don't see a true line. It would make the owner complain to the trainer and say "why are we racing when we have no chance" or drive some out of the game if they saw 50/1 99/1 70/1 to many times. They can deal with 20/1

I have also heard that the tracks don't want the morning line favorite to be too low, because they believe it will cause some people not to bet the race.

[johnhannibalsmith]

Originally Posted by therussmeister

I have also heard that the tracks don't want the morning line favorite to be too low, because they believe it will cause some people not to bet the race.

I can say that in my experience, management would prefer that I offer up the most accurate prognostication possible regardless of the actual odds.

If there is a certainty when it comes to making a line, regardless of whether or not your line is largely on the mark race after race - the first time you peg a second time starter that got beat 20 lengths in its debut at 15-1 and it gets hammered to 9-5 and wins like a good thing - every armchair quarterback with an email account is riding you like an Arabian going a mile and three-quarters.

But, in response to the original post in the thread - I don't necessarily think that some linesmakers are using an automated process per se, but I do think that many use a basic "template". I've seen a few of these charts for making a line that give you several options for a generic line based upon field size. You essentially look for the formula that best describes the three main contenders (ie- 3-1, 7-2, 4-1 vs. 8-5, 3-1, 4-1) and then you can quickly assign odds that will meet the percentage criteria without actually having to make adjustments and do the calculations "manually".

Unfortunately, and it is one of my big pet peeves, a lot of smaller tracks have morning lines makers that do it as one of many duties in a long day. With the time constraints of a normal day and then the deadline to post a line for Equibase, it just seems to get low priority by many and you see a super half-assed effort.

One tiny little consideration to remember that always impacts my subconscious - I make a line for the program using DRF PPs which go back a number of starts. The program running lines generally show only three running lines. There are times when I find it difficult to reconcile a line that accurately reflects my opinion based in part upon running lines that appear farther back in the DRF PPs when the person glancing at a program only can see the three most recent. This is when it really becomes an exercise in knowing what type of money is in the pools in a given day and trying to discern whether or not the bulk of play is giving the same amount of weight to "back races" that don't appear in the official program.

I'm done rambling... I need more coffee... I'll probably regret trying to read this mess...

[Robert Goren]

Once in a while you see in the form or the equibase program a note saying the M/L was computer generated.

[kenwoodallpromos]

When are M/L makers and the tote boards going to begin using -1 based numbers and make odds easier to read? (Like just the top digits of the -1 fractions, and colons or decimals for the -2 and -5 broken down into -1, like 3.5 or 3:5 instead of 7-2, or 1.6 or 1:6 instead of 8-5)? Too confusing for seasoned players?
Is it too difficult to do for newbies, or what" I always have to break the fractions down to -1 fractions in my mind every time anyway, and it took me awhile to do when I was first learning.

[johnhannibalsmith]

Originally Posted by kenwoodallpromos

When are M/L makers and the tote boards going to begin using -1 based numbers and make odds easier to read? (Like just the top digits of the -1 fractions, and colons or decimals for the -2 and -5 broken down into -1, like 3.5 or 3:5 instead of 7-2, or 1.6 or 1:6 instead of 8-5)? Too confusing for seasoned players?
Is it too difficult to do for newbies, or what" I always have to break the fractions down to -1 fractions in my mind every time anyway, and it took me awhile to do when I was first learning.

Oddly - when I enter the M/L into the system for publication, I use the decimal odds (ie 3.5 for 7-2) because I make fewer typing mistakes that way. Then the system converts it to the traditional format. If you instead enter the odds in traditional format, it converts them the decimal form, but still uses the traditional format.

I have no answer to your question other than to assume that as slow as change happens in racing when there is an overwhelming cause for it, the priority level on this scenario is probably far off the radar. Besides, it would take two years for the horsemen to figure out who the morning line favorite was if it was ever changed from something they were used to... come to think of it... quite a few have a hard time figuring if 3-2 or 8-5 is lower... maybe they would like it...

[Hoofhearted]

Gents,
A first-time poster on here, so I'm pleading in advance to be forgiven for what will undoubtedly be absolutely clueless posts initially.
I've become hugely keen on American racing only in the last six months -- after 30 years of following European racing. Now I'm watching almost exclusively U.S. racing seven nights a week on satellite. It's outstanding, and I love it.

Anyway, on the theme of the current thread ............... there is one issue that confuses me. If we are to take the Morning Line as a guide either as an indication to the likely betting patterns of the public on the race or as an indication of the compilers estimate of each individual horse's chances, then, I cannot fail to observe a very considerable flaw.
It is that the over-round of the Morning Line is way out of kilter mathematically. For instance, just a cursory glance at the first at Aqueduct this evening shows an over-round of 122%; the first at Keeneland is 130.5%.
I guarantee that Betfair will show a 101% over-round book on each race 3 minutes before the "Off" -- a true book.
So whichever way you kick it, the ML compiler has allocated probability odds to each of the runners but which when totalized are about 25% askew.