Morning line

[dirty moose]

I'd love to see a day of races with no morning line. What do you guys think of that? What do you think would be the outcome?

[thaskalos]

I can't think of a more trivial piece of information than the morning line. And the racetracks must agree...since most of them assign this responsibility to the most inept member of their staff.

[Augenj]

Originally Posted by dirty moose

I'd love to see a day of races with no morning line. What do you guys think of that? What do you think would be the outcome?

Yes. Do it for the Derby when the proletariat is out in force and betting. THAT would be very interesting. The favorite at 10/1?

[cj]

Useless these days.

[dirty moose]

Originally Posted by cj

Useless these days.

Agreed, I don't use it. Do you think a lot of people at the track still use it?

[Longshot6977]

Originally Posted by dirty moose

Agreed, I don't use it. Do you think a lot of people at the track still use it?

I think many of the uninformed and casual horseplayers use the toteboard favorites instead of using the morning line. I see many casual fans at Monmouth don't have a program and simply look at the toteboard to see who to bet.

[Dave Schwartz]

I must slightly dissent on this.

ML is worthless as a handicapping tool. However, it can, with other high-level factors, be used to predict what the odds today will be.

[Stillriledup]

I think that big bettors and experts don't care what the morning line says, they have their own opinions...but the 2 dollar bettors who are putting in a small pick 3? Maybe they need "help" in legs 2 and 3 of the bet.....if there's no ML, you're really going to have to handicap and formulate.

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

I must slightly dissent on this.

ML is worthless as a handicapping tool. However, it can, with other high-level factors, be used to predict what the odds today will be.

From what I've seen...the morning line does a LOUSY job of predicting what today's odds will be.

[Dave Schwartz]

Thaskalos,

Correct. However, it is better than anything else and, when combined with some other key factors that correlate well with the tote, together they do a "good" job.

On a scale of 1-10, I'd say about a 7.

[thaskalos]

Dave...I submit that the two of us, with no further modifications, would rate higher than a 7 in the odds-predicting department.

[Dave Schwartz]

I completely disagree that I could consistently produce a smaller R^2 for the predicted odds across all horses in all races.

Perhaps you could, but I KNOW I could not.

Morning line is consistently slandered beyond what it is deserved. Consider that if we looked at (say) speed rating in the last race as critically as we do morning line. That is, suppose we expected the last Beyer number to predict the precise order of finish in every race and tore it apart when it didn't get the top 3 finishers in order.

Sounds ridiculous to be that critical, right?

Yet, that is precisely how we criticize the morning line. The problem is that WE expect it to be right all the time.

I did a show on ML once. On BlogTalk, I believe. This is from memory, but the ML favorite is one of the top 2 public choices 84% of the time! It does a far better job of predicting the odds than the last Beyer (or anything other way of looking at speed ratings) does of predicting winners.

For that matter, ML picks winners, too. Far better than MOST other factors.

The problem, of course, is that it DOES correlate so highly with the final odds. (Even more so than the Beyer number, HDW's PSR or BRIS Prime Power.)

As an example:
I recall when a well-known horse racing scientist said to me that he would put more time into pedigree research if he could just find any ped factor that could come close to the prediction ability of the morning line.

Your opinions may differ from my statistics, of course.

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

I completely disagree that I could consistently produce a smaller R^2 for the predicted odds across all horses in all races.

Perhaps you could, but I KNOW I could not.

Morning line is consistently slandered beyond what it is deserved. Consider that if we looked at (say) speed rating in the last race as critically as we do morning line. That is, suppose we expected the last Beyer number to predict the precise order of finish in every race and tore it apart when it didn't get the top 3 finishers in order.

Sounds ridiculous to be that critical, right?

Yet, that is precisely how we criticize the morning line. The problem is that WE expect it to be right all the time.

I did a show on ML once. On BlogTalk, I believe. This is from memory, but the ML favorite is one of the top 2 public choices 84% of the time! It does a far better job of predicting the odds than the last Beyer (or anything other way of looking at speed ratings) does of predicting winners.

For that matter, ML picks winners, too. Far better than MOST other factors.

The problem, of course, is that it DOES correlate so highly with the final odds. (Even more so than the Beyer number, HDW's PSR or BRIS Prime Power.)

As an example:
I recall when a well-known horse racing scientist said to me that he would put more time into pedigree research if he could just find any ped factor that could come close to the prediction ability of the morning line.

Your opinions may differ from my statistics, of course.

I happen to think that the morning line deserves all the criticism it gets...and then some. And, no...I don't expect the morning line to be "right all the time". What I expect is for it to do the job that it purports to do; make an honest effort to predict what the closing odds of the race are likely to be. The job that the morning line does in this regard is shameful.

We have a 5-horse field, and a BLIND man can tell that the favorite will be no more than 4/5...and yet, THERE is the morning line, beckoning us at odds of 2/1. And I don't mean occasionally...I mean EVERY FREAKING TIME! I can't REMEMBER that last time I saw a horse listed at 4/5 in a morning line. And on the opposite side of the spectrum...I can't recall a horse listed at odds of 50-1...even though such horses are commonplace in virtually every full field that we see.

It's not the "inaccuracy" of the morning line that angers me. It's the DISHONESTY associated with its stated purpose that I can't tolerate.

[TJDave]

You guys want the last of casual money gone?

Cause that's what you're gonna get.

[banacek]

The quality of the morning line, of course, is dependent on which track you are dealing with. I agree with Dave that in general it is helpful (with some adjustments necessary)..I'd probably give it a 6..but track-by-track..that might vary from 2-9.

I would have to disagree about making my own morning line...I could easily do better. I make two lines....my estimate of the public's odds (my ML), and my estimates based on my probabilities for wagering decisions. My ML is certainly more accurate than the track's. But I concentrate on one track at a time generally, so that helps.