Saratoga Morning Line

[SoCalMan2]

Fairmount1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Travis Stone making an auctioneering school in St.
> Louis proud apparently!
>
> I won\'t make any assertions beyond the Fact that I
> wonder if some of you were at the top of your game
> when you did something for the first time for your
> job or at age 31?  (EDIT:  Upon re-reading I want
> to clarify I mean that he still has much to
> improve upon and understandably so at his age).  
>
> Two links here---one an article on Travis Stone
> and his linemaking at Saratoga.  Second a link to
> his Twitter account which includes a
> self-deprecating tweet about today\'s
> \"performance.\"  
>
> Be sure to watch the call of the Pharaoah Derby on
> there.  At race calling, he is precise, accurate
> and right on the money in that race.  Give it a
> watch and a listen.  He missed one today and
> others this meet but his line making will improve
> in time.    
>
> http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2016/aug/03/0803_
> maccolumn/?dgzrg
>
> https://twitter.com/TravisStone


Nobody wants to be mean to a kid.  And, it is not the kid\'s fault.  It is the NYRA\'s fault.  

As a practical matter, the NYRA needs to understand the product IT IS PUTTING ON THE MARKETPLACE. The NYRA should be wanting to entice people to bet.  It is what they are supposed to be doing.  They should be making things easy for bettors to put their dollars down.  

So long as the ML is being done incompetently (today\'s last race a perfect example), anybody whose time is limited is going to be analyzing a lot less races and betting a lot less races.  My handle has gone down at least 50% since I realized the kid didn\'t know what he was doing.

We operate in a free country and a free marketplace.  The NYRA is allowed to do whatever it wants to do.  Me, I am going to bet Mountaineer on Saturday rather than the Spa.  Never been tempted before to do something like this, but why not.  It might be not bad.  As it is, it is aggravating to have to do work that normally the track offers as a courtesy for its bettors -- If I am going to have to do this, why not do it somewhere else rather than the place that is choosing to inconvenience its own customers.

The kid seems like a nice kid.  Who knows, maybe one day he will get it.  However, my time is precious, and I need to make choices. The NYRA is the big leagues and it makes choices too.  They should be choosing people who have already done the job elsewhere and shown they can do it rather than giving a novice a shot at the big league level.  What baseball team plucks a kid out of high school and puts him on a big league roster?  If such a teenager fails in the big leagues, it is not the teenager\'s fault, it is the club that put him in that spot who is to blame. The kid is a nice kid and none of this is about him.

[FrankD.]

SoCal,

You are 100 % correct. One can argue the actual validity, personal effect or impact of the ML per individual plunger.

No one can argue the longest running off Broadway show of NYRA\'s complete and total incompetence. Once again they show their disdain, ignorance and the you don\'t count as much as a picnic table attitude towards the dreaded gambler!

To put a virgin line maker in place SPECIFICALLY for the Saratoga meet is incomprehensible. Klueless (Claude Rains) Kay must have awoke from a 3 day drunk shocked to find out there was gambling going here! One would think senior vice president of racing operations Martin Panza would have known better after a mere 30 years in the business?

And the beat goes on and on,

Frank D.

[jimbo66]

Spot on guys.

It is egregious.

He isn\'t just making \"tough to read\" mistakes.  He is making horrible ones that are obvious.

Nice guy or not, he is not ready for prime time.

Of course NYRA doesn\'t care.  Highest takeouts of any gambling game, poor customer service, incompetence in public facing roles, any wonder why almost nobody under the age of 50 plays this game.  Dying, soon to be dead game.

[Edgorman]

Race 8 today.  #1 Daddy\'s Boo.  Any TG user will love his figures.
20-1 morning line!!!!!???

[toppled]

I don\'t love her figures, especially at high weight and at a distance where her one number was average. Other than a pace factor, having the lead down the backstretch, I don\'t see Boo as a contender for the top 2 spots. So even at 20/1, she\'d be a toss for me.  Value is only value when you have a chance to cash a ticket.
 
To me this is a cold exacta 2-9. Although at her lone speed Daddy\'s Boo could hang on for 3rd.  While I handicapped this mixing Thoro-Graph figures with other data, I\'ll start with the sheets to explain my thoughts.  #9 is proven at the distance and has numbers that tower over the field for the distance. But...#2 is now a 4 year old off the layoff.  Her sire\'s TGI indicates we may see a 2.5 improvement. That puts her in #9\'s league.  Additionally, we often see big jumps when Euros come to NA & get Lasix.  

Here\'s some non-sheet data: This filly\'s only defeat was to a grade 1 filly.  Her works say she\'s ready for a big effort. Her siblings were prolific winners in Europe. Trainer Clement can get them ready first in NA. Basically, #2 towers over this field and getting back to the ML, I\'ll never see anything near 4/1 on her.  I\'ll be lucky to get 2/1 on her, because she should run like a 3/5 shot.

Speaking of sheets, bad ML odds & layoffs, the 4th race is a good example.  Indulgent will be the favorite as the ML suggests, but Midnight Visitor will never be 10/1.  The good news is her sheets are much better than her Beyers, so her form is a little hidden, but unless Indulgent dramatically improves, or there is a future star among the 1st time starters, if Visitor has the normal progression from 2 to 3, if she\'s fit she\'ll crush this field.  When I handicapped this race I found a shocking statistic on Formulator: Todd Pletcher is 0 for 16 with first time starting 3 yos in 3 & up maiden races at Saratoga over the last 5 years.

[BitPlayer]

While I am no fan of Chris Kay, I have to believe there is more to this story than has been made public, perhaps something personal to Eric Donovan.

Saratoga has to be an especially tough gig for the linemaker, with all the 2yos and horses coming from everywhere.

[ChiTownJoe]

Donovan is directing the Saratoga Live FS2 show, if NYRA had any clue they would have him checking the work before publishing.

[Thehoarsehorseplayer]

Kurt Vonnegut warns us in Cat\'s Cradle, \"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.\"

Anyway, for a variety of reasons I haven\'t been to a track for many years, (it\'s not the same game I fell in love with) but for twenty-five years of my life I was at one, or an OTB, every chance I got. And for most of those years, I tracked the odds of every horse in every race. Always what I was interested in was how the horses were bet in relationship to the morning line. It is my conviction that the butcher\'s thumb on the scale, if it exists in any race, is to be detected in the relationship between the morning odds and how a horse is bet. But I don\'t want to oversimplify the process. One cannot read an odds board well without having a keen understanding of past performances. And always one must distinguish between Veritas and verisimilitude. Nor can I encapsulate twenty-five years of experience into one posting. Still, this question needs to be asked, In the race under scrutiny the second place horse was listed at 15-1 and went off at 15-1. Was that a bad morning line? Or was the odds board telling you something? I mean, a 12-1 morning line got crushed in the pools, and the 15-1 never drifted? Might be a horse worth using in a horizontal. (No, I\'m not redboarding. Just illuminating the process.)

I also noticed that on each of the first two days of the meet (maybe two out of the first three) a horse listed at 20-1 won at 20-1. Were these good or bad morning lines? And, since 20-1 morning lines generally drift higher, was the density of the betting maybe telling you something?

I guess I\'ll leave with this thought: A good lines maker should definitely be able to recognize the betting favorite. No excuse not to be able to do that 80% or more of the time. But on the other hand, most discrepancies in the morning line will be self-corrected in the pools, or better yet, to the astute observer, self-revealing.

[BitPlayer]

Thanks.  My mistake.  I had read Donovan was doing something else, but I had not read what.  Guess it\'s just a career move for him.

[SoCalMan2]

Thehoarsehorseplayer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Kurt Vonnegut warns us in Cat\'s Cradle, \"Beware of
> the man who works hard to learn something, learns
> it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is
> full of murderous resentment of people who are
> ignorant without having come by their ignorance
> the hard way.\"
>
> Anyway, for a variety of reasons I haven\'t been to
> a track for many years, (it\'s not the same game I
> fell in love with) but for twenty-five years of my
> life I was at one, or an OTB, every chance I got.
> And for most of those years, I tracked the odds of
> every horse in every race. Always what I was
> interested in was how the horses were bet in
> relationship to the morning line. It is my
> conviction that the butcher\'s thumb on the scale,
> if it exists in any race, is to be detected in the
> relationship between the morning odds and how a
> horse is bet. But I don\'t want to oversimplify the
> process. One cannot read an odds board well
> without having a keen understanding of past
> performances. And always one must distinguish
> between Veritas and verisimilitude. Nor can I
> encapsulate twenty-five years of experience into
> one posting. Still, this question needs to be
> asked, In the race under scrutiny the second place
> horse was listed at 15-1 and went off at 15-1. Was
> that a bad morning line? Or was the odds board
> telling you something? I mean, a 12-1 morning line
> got crushed in the pools, and the 15-1 never
> drifted? Might be a horse worth using in a
> horizontal. (No, I\'m not redboarding. Just
> illuminating the process.)

This point above looks interesting, but I am not sure I follow -- are you saying that since the guy rated the two horses in the same ball park and one got crushed and the other didn\'t that makes the one that didn\'t get crushed represent value?  In theory, they are supposed to be the same price because of the crowd\'s opinion, not because of their ability.  To be honest, I am a little lost here.


>
> I also noticed that on each of the first two days
> of the meet (maybe two out of the first three) a
> horse listed at 20-1 won at 20-1. Were these good
> or bad morning lines? And, since 20-1 morning
> lines generally drift higher, was the density of
> the betting maybe telling you something?


If the horse was listed as 20-1 and went off at 20-1, that line was good whether or not the horse won. How the horse performs has nothing to do with whether or not the line was good.  The starting gate can malfunction and the race declared a no contest and you still had all the information you needed to know about whether the line was any good. 20-1 shots are supposed to win sometimes.

If the line were made by a reliable line maker, then the horse getting bet down would be valuable information.  However, when the linemaker is not reliable, then you cannot judge that off his/her line and you need to make your own ML.  Note, no linemaker will ever be perfect.  That is by definition impossible. There is a tolerance for varying and being off (i would say even more so in 2yo maiden races).  We are not talking about a line that is imperfect or off within acceptable tolerances.  We are talking about lines that are missing the side of the barn.  These lines are so far wide of the mark, they are not worth even bothering with.


>
> I guess I\'ll leave with this thought: A good lines
> maker should definitely be able to recognize the
> betting favorite. No excuse not to be able to do
> that 80% or more of the time. But on the other
> hand, most discrepancies in the morning line will
> be self-corrected in the pools, or better yet, to
> the astute observer, self-revealing.

a horse that drops from 20-1 to 10-1 is not providing you any valuable information if the ML for the horse should have been 8-1. You have to know what a reliable ML would have been before you can judge whether there is any unexpected action on a horse.

[Dick Powell]

When Travis got the job, I sent him my condolences.

One thing lost in the translation yesterday was that the 12 horse in the last race was \"not eligible to be claimed per NYRA house rule.\" So Servis claimed him about ten months ago, ate all the costs in the meantime, and was able to bring him back for the same price without risking him for claim. He is not allowed to drop him down and is only able to do it the first start off a long claim. Horses coming off long layoffs can make their first start and not be claimed if the trainer decides to exercise that clause.  

You could tell by the fact that there was no claiming price in his past peformance line and it is in the overnight.

[jimbo66]

Hoarse

All your points aren\'t valid, when the ML sucks

Who cares who drifts where off a bad ML.

When a horse takes significant action from where any reasonably knowledgeable handicapper thinks they should be, it makes sense to take notice.

Same race as yesterday as a case in point.  While I correctly pointed out that Stone was clueless on the 12 at 12-1 ML, I thought he would be no worse than 3rd choice, with the 4 and 10.   When he opened shortest pick-4, shortest pick-3 and shortest double, in the will pays, it represented significant action for a horse with a long layoff right after being claimed.  Throw in that it is a sharp trainer whose horses often get smashed at the windows when they are \"live\" and it would have been foolish to ignore the action when looking at vertical bets.  (Not saying u have to be a lemming and follow the action, but factor the action into your pre-race assessment, and if u feel it warrants a change in strategy, so be it)

Deviation from where a horse should be always worth noting. But u have to know where a horse \"should be\" to take advantage of it.   Like most people that have spent way too much betting  and analyzing horses, I see maybe 1 in 10 or 1 in 15 races where rhe betting is shocking or I was way off (every Kentucky derby it seems).  The problem with Stone is this happens to him every 4th race at saratoga.  Shameful

Jim

[SoCalMan2]

Dick Powell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When Travis got the job, I sent him my
> condolences.
>
> One thing lost in the translation yesterday was
> that the 12 horse in the last race was \"not
> eligible to be claimed per NYRA house rule.\" So
> Servis claimed him about ten months ago, ate all
> the costs in the meantime, and was able to bring
> him back for the same price without risking him
> for claim. He is not allowed to drop him down and
> is only able to do it the first start off a long
> claim. Horses coming off long layoffs can make
> their first start and not be claimed if the
> trainer decides to exercise that clause.  
>
> You could tell by the fact that there was no
> claiming price in his past peformance line and it
> is in the overnight.

One would think that the NYRA house linesmaker would be aware of the NYRA house rules.  It all goes to the question of why on planet Earth would a sane entity hire an extremely young inexperienced guy for the toughest linemaking job there is. It makes no sense unless you just dont care what your customers think.

[Dick Powell]

i didn\'t say that Travis didn\'t know the NYRA house rules. Just that it contributed to way more betting on the 12 than expected because of it.

[TempletonPeck]

jimbo66 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But u have to know where a horse
> \"should be\" to take advantage of it.

Exactly!

I take no position on whether he sets a good ML, but in either case, it\'s still our job as gamblers to make an accurate assessment of where the horse(s) \"should be.\" (And if you are reading toteboard movement off a bad ML, and not accounting for the fact that the ML is wrong, then I wish you very good luck.)

If you aren\'t making your own line on a given race, whether consciously or subconsciously, how are you deciding when to bet and when to pass?