HANDICAPPING THE PUBLIC PART ONE "THE MORNING LINE"
HANDICAPPING THE PUBLIC
“THE MORNING LINE”
By Keith Rosintoski
From now until after the conclusion of the Saratoga meet, the Dark Tuesdays will have a weekly column called HANDICAPPING THE PUBLIC. This week’s topic starts at the bottom of the ladder with “THE MORNING LINE” and we’ll climb our way to the top each week trying to help you learn how to handicap the public and make a profit at the race track.
Most everyone who bets on horse racing is familiar with the Morning Line. By definition, it’s a list of entries for a horse race with the probable betting odds as estimated by a bookmaker, track handicapper or whoever else is assigned to the task. I say it like that because these guys aren’t just Morning Line Makers, they do many other things equally or of greater importance to the track they work at than the Morning Line itself. I personally define the Morning Line as a tool created by an individual based on how he views the public will bet the race. Somewhere over the years, probably before my lifetime even, the Morning Line makers lost track of what they were supposed to be doing and decided themselves they need to pick winners. Often times now days, you see ML makers picking the horses they make the ML favorites in exact order. Now is anything wrong with that logic? No, not at all, but good luck trying to make money with that logic. See the Morning Line is not supposed to assess the probability of a horse winning the race, it’s supposed to assess the probability that a horse goes off at certain odds, and believe me there is a difference. The public is very simple when it comes to betting, they want the easy way out, they want to be right. They realize the favorite wins 1/3rd the time and that’s generally how they bet too, losing 2/3rds the time.
Probable betting odds can be very difficult to depict, and understanding why horses will be certain odds can be profitable for that very reason. The public generally speaking wants 3 things in the horse they bet, the fastest horse (speed figures, time wise), the most successful horse, and the overall best horse on paper. All of these angles that hit at a rate above the standard deviation for the average race, making the public look smarter for being right. What they fail to realize until they are broke, and even sometimes then, is that these 3 angles offer almost no chance of profiting long term at the race track. My mentor who I won’t name on here always told me, if they ran the race on paper, they wouldn’t print the programs for people to read. Now I always say, if all the information was in the programs, PP’s would never exist.
The ML as we know it today, can still be useful tool for a bettor, but you have to use your own opinions, not just rely on the guys that are making them, but getting paid to do many other things. Fact of the matter is, I highly doubt any ML maker spends as much time depicting the odds of each horse in the race as somebody like myself. I respect the opinions of the ML maker because they are supposed to understand the betting of the public at the particular track they work for, but it seems they don’t use this information all the time. You do see it from time to time, like Pletcher first time starters at Saratoga, but the public is very trendy and the better you understand the trends, the better off you’ll be. The public will ride being right over anything, and you can bet if something hits 30%, even though it loses 70% they will play it 100% of the time.
Making your own ML can be very tough to do when you first start, but slowly you’ll start to realize the more you handicap the public that it’s really a set of limited factors they account for in each race. As mentioned before, they generally want the fastest horse in the race, and they don’t care that the fastest horse in the race doesn’t win every time. I always ask people that if you aren’t making your own ML, then how do you know what good value is and what’s not good value? Before Wal-Mart price match guaranteed everything, you wouldn’t go into the store and trust the salesman that the best price was in his store, you’d have done the research yourself to find the best value. It shouldn’t be different for horse racing or wagering on sports, and the sooner you figure that out, the better off you will be trying to survive this game. The truth is that the betting public is the only thing that can create underlays and overlays, not the Morning Line makers. The sooner you realize that being right doesn’t ensure profits in this game, the better chance you will have to make money.
I used to frequent Vernon Downs as a kid with my family, mainly my dad. They didn’t let kids in but I and my 5 brothers and sisters always found a way to be allowed in, probably because my dad all but paid for all the employees there to have jobs. I don’t want to say when I was young because I still am, but at a very young age I learned to read the program and the ML odds. My dad would run a contest with us all when we went to the track, we had to pick 1 horse each race, and at 2 wins we’d get popcorn ($1.00), at 3 wins we’d get a pretzel or candy bar ($2.00) or the prize of the night to the “top handicapping child” was the nachos ($3.50). Anytime you went home with nachos, you knew you had a good night at the race track, but my dad always seemed to lose money. That’s when I realized my AH HA moment that JJ (@dmrsurfside) spoke of in his most recent column. I used to come out with nachos on the regular after I realized that the ML favorite wins 1/3rd the time, it was too easy, I was always going to be top dog as long as my brothers and sisters didn’t find out. I didn’t realize until I was old enough to have somebody wager for me, or wager on my own that this was just a long term success of losing at the race track. Being right isn’t the most profitable thing in horse racing, in fact being right is rarely profitable. Until you can sacrifice being right in this game, best of luck to you with making a profit.
The Morning Line now days is different at each track but they still use the same fundamental approach to make them, because they know what the public likes to wager on. My advice is to make your own ML each day. Either fold the page over, or cover it with a bookmark like piece of paper when you handicap the race. At the end of your handicapping, make your own Morning Line, and when you compare it to the “publics Morning Line” which is the one printed in the program, you’ll likely have your underlays and overlays long before the public gets to see them on the toteboard live. You know what I’m talking about, you get to the 3rd leg of that big Pick 4, and all of a sudden the horse you thought was going to jog at 5-2 as your single, isn’t the only horse in the race on the toteboard. That happens because people do their homework, and if you don’t do yours then you are really at a disadvantage when it comes to trying to make money in this game.
I find the Morning Line to be very useful today when handicapping a race as it often helps me determine what value the race itself offers. Understanding the Morning Line makers tendencies can also play a major role in coming up with your own Morning Line. Each track has trainer/jockey combos that generally speaking are lower odds in the ML and it has nothing to do with the horse’s ability. After all, we see how often Pletcher firsters get hammered at the windows, and not only have they never run in a race before, they lose twice as often as they win, but rarely are they not favored. If you want to be successful in this game long term, sacrificing being right is key, and the Morning Line can help you determine whether you’ll make the right decision the next time you wager. That’s exactly why I say “Lots of People Can Handicap, but Can They Make Legend Bets?” I would gladly be wrong in every race with my top choice if my wagers made me a profit, and using The Morning Line is one way of Handicapping the Public to give yourself an edge in the tough game of horse racing.
If anybody has any questions regarding this post or any upcoming post or even just a handicapping question in general, please feel free to contact me. Follow me on Twitter @legendbets or email me at legendbets@outlook.com with any questions you may have. Don’t forget to pick up your Saratoga Packages so you can have the information needed to be successful this summer.