Making Your Own Odds Line

[Sea Biscuit]

When you sit down to handicap do you ever bother to make your own odds line?

Every professional handicapper does and you should too. If not for the whole field then just for the one or two or three contenders in a race at least. I know its difficult but you must try.

A odds line essentially is to assign odds to every horse in a field in relation to its todays chances of winning the race.

How do you go about making a odds line?

Please let me explain how its done.

Suppose you have a race where you give two horses equal chances to win the race.

Their chances of winning would therefore be 50% to win the race.

To calculate the odds for these two horses this is how its done.

100/50=2-1 ( the 1 is constant here)=1

The odds for the above two horses should be even money.

Now if one of the horses goes off at 50 cents to a dollar and the other horse’s odds drifts to 4 to 1 at post time which horse should you bet?. You are darn right if you say the 4 to 1 horse because he is an overlay. Now its entirely up to you to decide what represents an overlay price for you.

Some handicappers go for double their own odds line and some even go for 2.5 or three times their odds line and a few I know demand 4 times their odds line which in my opinion is a bit too much too ask.

Has it ever happened to you when you come across a race where you say that such and such horse would lay over the field and win by 3 or 4 lengths. I am sure it has. But he is the pick of the resident track handicapper and you also figure he will be the post time favorite and you just turn the page and totally forget about this race because you are not a favorite bettor.

Now assuming your handicapping is up to par and the horse indeed has a advantage over the rest of the field by over 3 or 4 lengths, the chances of this horse winning the race is a whopping 95%

Let us take a minute and calculate your own odds line for this horse.

100/95=1.05-1=.05

The odds for this horse should really be 5 cents on the dollar. In other words this horse should not pay more than $2.10 for a $2 win ticket.

Now if this horse is going off at even money at post time that would be 20 times your own odds line.

Like the proverbial saying goes for horse players,

Knock down little old ladies in the line to make your bet on the even money over-layed favorite.

Have fun at the races.

[Claiming King]

I can tell you the vast majority of bettors are going to try to "pick winners", regardless of how well you or I or anyone can explain to them why that is a losing game over time.

[pigland1]

I can tell you the vast majority of bettors are going to try to "pick winners", regardless of how well you or I or anyone can explain to them why that is a losing game over time.

its not easy making a profit year after year . you need to be good

[3 wide and wingin]

its not easy making a profit year after year . you need to be good

I do that by only betting one small track where I attend every single race at and know most of the people involved.

I really still don't know how people can make a consistant profit betting the TVs. I know I could not.

Lost 20 bucks sat night betting on the big M.

And I do not make a morning line.

[Racetrackdaddy]

IN making your own line, do you avoid using the retention rate (around 18% in the win pool)?

If you take that into consideration, a match race between two evenly bet horses would not end up at even money on both, but rather (without doing the math) something like 3/5 on both horses....

If u do not take into consideration the takeout, then both would be even money.

Would not have a clue on to handicap and then produce a morning line for the race. In creating a morning line, is it the job to produce what the public will bet by post time or the estimation of the odds maker on the ability of said horse winning the race???

rtd

[Sea Biscuit]

 In creating a morning line, is it the job to produce what the public will bet by post time or the estimation of the odds maker on the ability of said horse winning the race???

rtd

The morning line odds reflects the track oddsmaker’s estimate of what each horses odds will be at post time.The actual odds are established by the amounts wagered on each horse in the win pool.

Supposing the track morning line man hates a horse and thinks his odds should not be less than 10-1 but he thinks that this horse would be the  public's choice come post time, so he puts down the horse as the ML favorite.

I however do not agree with this concept.