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E-mailbag: Setting the line
QuestionNow for a really hard question! I've been reading tons of stuff about how bettors should make their own morning line and compare their odds to the public's in identifying an overlay. This makes sense but how does one accurately generate probabilities for a group of horses? If I ever get something called free time, here's what I might do: get the past performances for winners of races at specific distances and classes and see what factors are common to race winners. Some things to look at would be pars, Beyer numbers, class drops, etc. For example, 25 percent of all winners at a certain class/distance may have been class droppers, had a leading rider and gained lengths in the stretch of their last race. Using this knowlege, I would assign a horse a 25 percent chance of winning the race and use this percentage to convert to an odds line. What do you think? -- Anthony. AnswerBy Doug Parry You definitely asked a tough question there! No matter how much studying of past performances you do, there is a certain amount of this game that is going to be left to chance. You can handicap every conceivable aspect on paper, but you are dealing with horses that are flesh and blood and may or may not feel like running on a particular day. One thing I wouldn't do is set any strict rules like you do in your example, because there are always a lot of variables in a race. A horse that has a 25 percent chance of winning one $5,000 claiming race might have a 10 percent chance of winning a different one, just based on the strength of the rest of the field. Also, while the numbers might tell you class droppers win under certain race conditions 50 percent of the time, that doesn't translate into even odds for each class dropper (there may be several in a race). I think by studying past performances, watching races, and studying trainers' tendencies, you can at least get close to figuring out each horse's chance of winning. For example, say there's a horse stretching from a sprint to a route race for the first time. From the past performances, you can tell the horse is a contender based on speed, class, pace, etc. But through your own experience you can apply other knowledge that will help you decide the horse's chance of winning. Maybe this horse is by a sire that does better with routers than sprinters, or from a trainer who excels at this move. Or possibly the horse's previous races were better than they appear on paper because he encountered traffic problems. All of these things can help you decide if the horse has a better or worse chance of winning than the odds you're being offered, and that's the name of the game. Have a question for the Fan Zone handicappers? Write to questions@emeraldracing.com. |