Worst Morning Line odds maker

[SpotPlays]

Is there a worse ML maker than the guy at Delaware Park? Every day huge underlays. Saturday, Hardest Core, tops of prime power, is 15-1 ML, goes off 5/2 and wins easy.

[letswastemoney]

I'm convinced some ML oddsmakers make the odds high on purpose to bait handicappers into giving the race consideration, with the logic that when handicappers find their "value" gets pounded, they play the race anyway since they put effort into handicapping.

Not many people will agree with that.

[HuggingTheRail]

Granted it is a very low level track, but the ML @ Hastings this year has been brutal many times.... It doesn't impact what I do or do not play, but if you're going to provide one, at least be in the ballpark...

[Stillriledup]

Originally Posted by letswastemoney

I'm convinced some ML oddsmakers make the odds high on purpose to bait handicappers into giving the race consideration, with the logic that when handicappers find their "value" gets pounded, they play the race anyway since they put effort into handicapping.

Not many people will agree with that.

But you know how horseplayers are, if they constantly see longshots getting bet down to favoritism and winning, it "looks bad" looks like the races are shady......and we know that's not true, but if the perception gets a horseplayer to stop playing, it hurts all of us.

[pandy]

It's just a bad line, don't read anything into it. Either the person doing the line doesn't care or they have a 3 day draw and he or she has to do the line for the third day off of entries, which happens more than you know. Many tracks don't care about the line (although they should).

[Silver florin]

Originally Posted by SpotPlays

Is there a worse ML maker than the guy at Delaware Park? Every day huge underlays. Saturday, Hardest Core, tops of prime power, is 15-1 ML, goes off 5/2 and wins easy.

At most minor league tracks like De the hotdog vendor or the bathroom attendant double as ML makers,and that is no lie.

[banacek]

Originally Posted by HuggingTheRail

Granted it is a very low level track, but the ML @ Hastings this year has been brutal many times.... It doesn't impact what I do or do not play, but if you're going to provide one, at least be in the ballpark...

Yeah. It has to be someone new, isn't it? I've always been fairly impressed with the ML maker at Hastings in the past. Whoever is doing it this year has to be new...and confused. But the last couple of weeks seems to be a little better, so maybe they are figuring it out.

[jballscalls]

Originally Posted by banacek

Yeah. It has to be someone new, isn't it? I've always been fairly impressed with the ML maker at Hastings in the past. Whoever is doing it this year has to be new...and confused. But the last couple of weeks seems to be a little better, so maybe they are figuring it out.

They had to replace Matt Jukich who left to go to Northlands and does a real good job with the M/L in my opinion.

Not sure who does it now.

[cutchemist42]

Originally Posted by SpotPlays

Is there a worse ML maker than the guy at Delaware Park? Every day huge underlays. Saturday, Hardest Core, tops of prime power, is 15-1 ML, goes off 5/2 and wins easy.

Wow, thats bad....

[HuggingTheRail]

Originally Posted by jballscalls

They had to replace Matt Jukich who left to go to Northlands and does a real good job with the M/L in my opinion.

Not sure who does it now.

Matt was/is awesome. He is starting to get more comfortable with his race calling at NP as well

[therussmeister]

Originally Posted by Silver florin

At most minor league tracks like De the hotdog vendor or the bathroom attendant double as ML makers,and that is no lie.

Just as long as the bathroom attendant doesn't double as the hot dog vendor I'm ok with that.

[Dark Horse]

It bothers me a little, because it slows things down, that Southern California tracks are always the last to post the ML's. Check out Equibase right now. All tracks for Thursday have ML's (it's Tuesday today), except Del Mar. Same goes for Santa Anita. Jon White is just too bloody slow. And then he ends up with lines that add up to 135%... So he's not even using the extra time for greater accuracy. If you can't get the lines out in the same time frame as everybody else, get someone else to do it.

[VeryOldMan]

Isn't this susceptible to a proof?

I assume the first level is making sure the implied probability of success across the field equals 100% minus the takeout, give or take a little slack. But isn't the data available at the next level to see how well: (i) the final odds correlate with the ML, and/or (ii) how well the ML correlates with the probability of success? Seems like we could test these levels.

ML oddsmaker strikes me as a thankless job, particularly at the smaller tracks where there is a lot of pool manipulation. I'll defer to the racetrack guys on the board to correct me if I'm wrong about the nature of the job.

[Dark Horse]

It should be easy enough to write a little ML program, based on pp's (past performances/public perception), workouts, etc.

I usually catch the conversations between Jon White and Michelle Yu. Jon is the linesmaker and he's as square as they come in terms of betting; he's focused on the favorites. Michelle is ten times sharper, and correctly picks many a longshot. So setting morninglines is probably really bad for the betting mindset. The ML's should reflect public perception, but Jon rarely, if ever, separates that from his own choices.

[VeryOldMan]

Originally Posted by VeryOldMan

I assume the first level is making sure the implied probability of success across the field equals 100% plus the takeout, give or take a little slack.

Sorry - trying to fix the probabilities with takeout.