The Mystery of Horse Betting Odds Explained. Articles | Horse Betting

By: Richard Bleuze

The Mystery of Horse Betting Odds Explained.

Understanding how horse betting odds are created and knowing which groups influence these odds will help you make better handicapping decisions and help you to know which horses should be bet because they are better odds than they should be.

The way to make money at the races is not by picking winners.  But by picking winners that pay more than they should.  Anyone can pick a winner simply by following the public betting favorite at post time.  However, betting on the favorite at post time by watching the odds being displayed on the tote board at post time which are influenced by three groups of people who are wrong 66 percent of the time can be a losing propsition for the horse bettor.

Morning-Line Makers, Public Handicappers and the General Public

The first group of people that influence the odds displayed on the tote board at post time includes those who create the morning line (the pre-race odds that appear in the racing programs and other racing publications).

Morning-line odds are created by anyone from race office employees to public relations hacks to newspaper handicappers. These morning-line odds makers have to predict what the public will bet on each horse in each race up to many hours prior to post time, meaning that late workouts, scratches and other changes cannot be taken into account. 

In addition, many morning-line makers may be influenced by the fact that neither the front office at the track nor the horsemen want to see horses listed at 99-1 or 60-1 since those odds make the horse unattractive as a betting proposition in addition to insulting the owner, despite the fact that those odds may be correct.   Instead, 99-1 shots are commonly listed at 30-1.

Public handicappers working for newspapers and other offline and online publications are also influenced by the morning line.  In fact, many of the public handicappers are not really handicappers. Many of these so called handicappers base their selections on a combination of inside tips (almost always wrong) and the aforementioned shaky morning lines.

The public looks at the morning line in the program and then looks at the public handicapper selections to see that they are basically the same.  Thus, the public mistakenly assumes that these guys must know what they are talking about and compounds the inaccuracies even further by betting more money on their selections.

Casual players who would not bet a horse listed at 99-1 on the morning line might not have a problem betting the same horse listed at 15-1, especially if the horse is picked to finish in the money by a public handicapper.  The same is true of a horse that is listed at 7-2 on the morning line but then shows up as a 3-2 favorite on the tote board after some early betting.  The public believes this horse to be a good bet simply because the odds are lower than the morning line.  Thus, they jump aboard to make the horse pay even less that it should.  Thus, the opposite can happen if a horse is paying 4-1 when the morning line says it should be paying 2-1.  This might cause the general public to avoid the horse - thinking that the horse is cold on the board and the smart money is elsewhere.

In addition, many horse bettors and those who work with the horses in the backstretch mistakenly assume that a "hot tip" from someone who works in the backstretch is a great bet.  On the backstretch a "hot tip" can spread like wild fire until it makes its way to the betting windows through both the racetrackers and the public who invariably gets wind of the "hot tip".  These so-called "hot tips" can come from anyone including trainers, jockeys, exercise riders, owners, grooms, clockers, and hotwalkers.  They are usually, but not always, a disaster.

Why are "hot tips" usually disasters?  Well, because the people who create the "hot tips" are usually concerned only with their own horse.  These tipsters may know their horse is feeling good, but they fail to take into account the competition in the race.  And like any other facet of the working world, only the very best really know their stuff and most of them are not going to tell a stranger.

The worst touts are owners, who are biased in favor of their own horse to start with, followed by jockeys, trainers, jockey agents and exercise riders. Owners take advice from trainers, who in turn are influenced by jockeys and exercise riders.  Owners are also influenced by trainers who are trying some new, such as equipment, on a horse. 

You will occasionally see certain trainers who have operated at a 10 percent win clip for their entire careers, inexplicably start winning at an amazing 30-40 percent or higher win clip. If you think these proven losers have all of a sudden became master horsemen and exceptional horse trainers,  think again!  You are mistaken. These trainers get hot for a few seasons and soon disappear into oblivion.  However, while they are hot, you have to bet their horses.  Their edge, however, quickly becomes public knowledge and they fall outside the realm of hot tips.

The worst kind of "hot tip" you can get is on a first time starter who has been working well.  Besides the fact that the tipsters (exercise riders, jockeys, trainers, etc.) have generally not considered the other horses in the race, the trainer usually will not have the horse ready to go the distance in an actual race.  Long gone are the days when a trainer would work a horse up to 10 times out of the gate and seven furlongs in company before staring in a six furlong race.

Many of the trainers today will give their horses as few as three gate works before entering them in race and you will seldom see a workout longer than six furlongs on a first-time starter.  So even if the horse can run, it will not finish in the money.  This happens almost everyday at every racetrack in North America.  If you are going to bet a horse like this, MAKE SURE the trainer has a strong winning record with first-time starters.

In addition, many horse bettors like to watch for big money bets that occasionally flow into the mutuel pools just before post time.  These types of bets can make a horse a favorite on one switch of the tote board.  Sometimes a horse will be 2-1 at post time only to show up at even money or less after the race has run, due to a big late bet at 10 seconds to post time.  Despite the fact that these big late bets are often based on superior insider information and/or information products the general public does not have access too. It has been statistically proven that they predict success at about the same rate as the public - a big loss!

Taking Advantage of Mistakes in the Betting Pools

With three different and often misinformed groups influencing the odds at various stages of the process leading up to post time, it pays to do your homework and wait for the odds to work in your favor.

As money from the different groups pours into the mutuel pools leading up to post time, you should try to avoid being influenced by movements in the odds that appear to indicate a hot horse, unless your own handicapping indicates that this horse should logically be taking money.

The most profitable approach is not only to become a proficient horse handicapper, but also to become adept at creating your own odds line. You will than be ready to pounce when the influencing groups above make mistakes that turn your top selections into juicy overlays.