The Problem with Morning Lines

[ReplayRandall]

Two horse racing info items that are highly suspect and needless, the Morning Line and the Handicappers Selections.......BTW, if you want proof, look at the laughable display of ineptness at Gulfstream.

[EQUIPACE]

Robert,

Just my opinion of course, and as everyone knows they are like butt holes...
Everyone has one...

All of your Morning Line facts above are on the money...
Same with your UOB points and especially your update to fact #2...

It is no surprise that the crowd will always over bet the ML favorites in most cases. I think that's a good thing! Because our goal, if were smarter handicappers is to always find the horses they under bet that stand out with whatever handicapping system/methods/software we use.

If I'm not mistaken we call them OVERLAYS !

THE PROBLEM:
A Lot Of Players Have Become More Educated These Days!

It's so obvious too... That's why there are fewer betting opportunities for the smart player. You just have to play the waiting game longer for a playable race. HAS ANYONE ELSE NOTICED IT TOO?

That... along with increasing track take outs is why this game has become increasingly a tough one to beat consistently.

As a Win bet player, I find myself looking for value in the exotics or even place bets more these days...

There are a lot of people out there that want to see the ML go away...
On that side of the coin I say fine... LETS DO IT! It would be great for those of us who create our own Morning Line/Fair Odds Lines. At least we might even make some decent money again.

At least for awhile... Just another opinion, I mean butt hole (sorry)...

John
~¿o

[Robert Fischer]

Originally Posted by EQUIPACE

Robert,

Just my opinion of course, and as everyone knows they are like butt holes...
Everyone has one...

All of your Morning Line facts above are on the money...
Same with your UOB points and especially your update to fact #2...

It is no surprise that the crowd will always over bet the ML favorites in most cases. I think that's a good thing! Because our goal, if were smarter handicappers is to always find the horses they under bet that stand out with whatever handicapping system/methods/software we use.

If I'm not mistaken we call them OVERLAYS !

THE PROBLEM:
A Lot Of Players Have Become More Educated These Days!

It's so obvious too... That's why there are fewer betting opportunities for the smart player. You just have to play the waiting game longer for a playable race. HAS ANYONE ELSE NOTICED IT TOO?

That... along with increasing track take outs is why this game has become increasingly a tough one to beat consistently.

As a Win bet player, I find myself looking for value in the exotics or even place bets more these days...

There are a lot of people out there that want to see the ML go away...
On that side of the coin I say fine... LETS DO IT! It would be great for those of us who create our own Morning Line/Fair Odds Lines. At least we might even make some decent money again.

At least for awhile... Just another opinion, I mean butt hole (sorry)...

John
~¿o

would be an interesting experiment

Tracks believe it helps them advertise the races to potential players.

[speculus]

Morning line is a worthless concept in any country with no bookmakers (like the U.S.).

Your morning line maker has no fear of losing his job even if he fails drastically to predict the race time odds.

Not so with countries that allow bookmakers.

In my country (India), one of the leading bookmakers, helped by his expert handicappers, publishes the morning line and those (other bookmakers and big punters) who do not agree with that assessment will immediately start disputing the odds by placing hefty bets, and a bookmaker cannot refuse a bet at those odds, at least for the stipulated minimum liability.

The so-called "correction" in the line is thus swift--and sometimes savage-- and generally, within a couple of hours, the actual betting odds (known as "opening odds") settle down which only marginally change at race time.

[EQUIPACE]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

First thing that jumped into my head was "Name 3."

Dave,

As Fars as Track Morning Line Odds Makers go.
Here are two more track line makers to fill out your request of 3.

Joe Kristufek for Arlington (previous post)
Ed Burgart for Los Alamitos (Who is also the Track Announcer As Well)
and
Russ Hudak for Del Mar and Hollywood

Any others would just be figment of my imagination...
These people seem to be invisible.

The people at other tracks are likely office workers I'm guessing...
Perhaps they'll step up to the plate and introduce themselves...
But, that's like dreaming in technicolor.

No wonder the ML's can get so skewed sometimes.
My Question: Is there a reason this information is so hush hush?...

[Dave Schwartz]

I am amazed that so many people want to measure ML as a handicapping factor (for which it is worthless).

Not the smart guys here, but the general public does not understand that. As such, the ML is (by its very nature) a self-fulfilling prophecy factor.

Because of that (I believe) ML does a better job of predicting the final odds than any other factor.

I do not mean that a 5/2 ML means the horse will go off at 5/2. Of course not. The line maker is not that sharp. As mentioned before, they are too conservative.

But, if you adjust the "booking points" of the ML to the number of normal booking points at the track and skew it towards the favorite by raising the values to a power of around 1.08, you will find that it is a remarkably good predictor.

Sure, sometimes it says 4/1 and the horse pays $3.80, and other times it says 5/2 and the horse pays $16, but, hey, guess what? The tote board at 2 minutes to post will do that too.


All I can tell you is that I use it to make value-based assessments (although not the way you would logically assume) for a long time without EVER using the tote board. In fact, when I attempt to use the tote board instead, it causes me to miss-bet the race consistently.


IMHO, you guys are seriously underestimating the use of the morning line. It can be used to your advantage.

[traynor]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

I am amazed that so many people want to measure ML as a handicapping factor (for which it is worthless).

Not the smart guys here, but the general public does not understand that. As such, the ML is (by its very nature) a self-fulfilling prophecy factor.

Because of that (I believe) ML does a better job of predicting the final odds than any other factor.

I do not mean that a 5/2 ML means the horse will go off at 5/2. Of course not. The line maker is not that sharp. As mentioned before, they are too conservative.

But, if you adjust the "booking points" of the ML to the number of normal booking points at the track and skew it towards the favorite by raising the values to a power of around 1.08, you will find that it is a remarkably good predictor.

Sure, sometimes it says 4/1 and the horse pays $3.80, and other times it says 5/2 and the horse pays $16, but, hey, guess what? The tote board at 2 minutes to post will do that too.


All I can tell you is that I use it to make value-based assessments (although not the way you would logically assume) for a long time without EVER using the tote board. In fact, when I attempt to use the tote board instead, it causes me to miss-bet the race consistently.


IMHO, you guys are seriously underestimating the use of the morning line. It can be used to your advantage.

Agreed.

[Capper Al]

Originally Posted by traynor

Agreed.

Agree also.

[ReplayRandall]

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

All I can tell you is that I use it to make value-based assessments (although not the way you would logically assume) for a long time without EVER using the tote board. In fact, when I attempt to use the tote board instead, it causes me to miss-bet the race consistently.

Dave, would you go into a little more detail concerning your above statement....

[DeltaLover]

I have to agree with Dave, that M/L can be useful for handicapping and betting purposes as they not only express the opinion of a skilled handicapper (not always of course) but also (to some extend) the affect the betting decisions of the crowd.

Here you can see a comparison of BPP vs M/L

[thaskalos]

Has anyone pointed out the way in which the morning line is beneficial to the competent horseplayer?

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

Has anyone pointed out the way in which the morning line is beneficial to the competent horseplayer?

Thask, in my models (especially the one we talked about yesterday night), I always need a rating that results to a valid ranking (where higher ranked horses win more than lower) and the one that I am currently using for this purposes is BPP. I have to believe that M/L can be used as an alternative, although in this case we have the additional complexity of refining our models in a per racing secretary (or whoever else is making the ML)..

[GameTheory]

We've had this discussion before a few times, so I will quote myself from an old post:

The idea is that the ML influences the way the public bets. In this era of whale money, I'm not sure if that influence is still strong enough, but in years past the ML was at least partially a self-fulfilling prophecy. So you know people would see a horse was 2-1 on the ML, but at 10 MTP he's only 8-1 or something. Just the fact that his ML is low will attract money to him as non-sophisticated players start to think overlay.

But what if the ML is say 4-1 and the horse is bet down to 2-1 on the board? Even though he is a big "ML underlay" there is some portion of the public that will now try to beat him not only because his odds are low but because that 4-1 ML is bugging them. So what I'm saying is that same horse, if his ML was 2-1 instead of 4-1 would probably be bet down even more to 7/5 to 6/5. And the people betting him down usually have good reasons, and so it is now likely that that horse is a true overlay at 2-1 because he should be 7/5 and the 4-1 ML line is propping him up by influencing the betting. Follow?

And so, as a believer in using the public odds to alter my own lines, I have no problem adjusting my probability upward on a horse that the public is rating higher than me. So what happens when I bet against the ML instead of the real line? Well, maybe I rate the horse at 2-1. His ML is 4-1. The ML is the proxy for the odds, so that makes him an overlay. But now in real life he's bet down to 2-1 making it a break even or underlay. So I've just screwed myself, right? I'm making a bad bet by using the ML. Well no, because as I just explained, if he got bet down to 2-1 against a 4-1 ML, he had to "overcome" that 4-1 to do it and he really should be 7/5. Which makes him an overlay, and a good bet. (I LOVE low priced overlays.)

The reverse situation where the horse goes off even higher than his morning line, which should mean super overlay, was the more problematic situation as it often meant (if I had the horse at lower odds, meaning I would bet him against that ML) I had overestimated his chances and he was a false overlay, or would win very seldom anyway.

This is something I actually used to do so I didn't have to grind all day, just use the ML in the morning, make my bets, and that was that. AND I used the ML as if it were the public line to model "what actually happens" as described earlier, so I was actually betting against THAT line, which was already adjusted by the ML. (Further advantage of the ML is that there is no guessing what the odds are going to be, they are fixed.) So the whole method was tuned for using the ML. And it worked, and it puts you onto those low-priced overlays that a traditional real-odds approach will keep you away from. But whether it would still work now, I just don't know if the ML has that much influence over the odds anymore...

That was from this thread: http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...d.php?t=116932

[Fingal]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

Has anyone pointed out the way in which the morning line is beneficial to the competent horseplayer?

Instead of absolutes, I'll break it down to 3 segments-

3/1 & lower will be those the public latches on to & will be pounded at the windows.

4/1 to 12/1 are where the solid price plays come from. If my selection lands in this range it's betting time.

15/1 & up can usually be dismissed without too much regret.

[DeltaLover]

Originally Posted by Fingal

Instead of absolutes, I'll break it down to 3 segments-

I use rankings instead