What Are Morning Line Odds?

Morning Line Odds are the odds the track oddsmaker assigns to each horse that best represent the chance the horse has to win the race.

There is something the race track is not telling you, though.  Factored into the Morning Line Odds is the track takeout, or vigorish, that is hoisted onto the back of the bettor.  This is similar to the 10% taken out of the winnings on a bet on a football game.  The track typically takes out anywhere from 14% to 20% on a win, place, or show bet.  Takeouts for "exotic" wagers, such as the exacta, quinella, trifecta, superfecta (it doesn't matter if it is a 10-cent superfecta), daily double, pick three, pick four and pick six, are generally significantly higher.

Imagine a race with eight horses of equal caliber running where there is no takeout.  Another way of looking at it is that all the money the bettors wager will be returned to the bettors who hold the winning tickets.  No money will be kept by the race track (clearly this is a fantasy I am asking you to imagine).

Here is what the Morning Line Odds will look like.

Program Number	Morning Line Odds	Chance To Win (%)
1	7-1	12.5
2	7-1	12.5
3	7-1	12.5
4	7-1	12.5
5	7-1	12.5
6	7-1	12.5
7	7-1	12.5
8	7-1	12.5
		100.0

Notice four things:

(1) Everybody knows if you bet $1 to win on a 7-1 shot, you get $8 back if it is a winner.

(2) The odds are the same for all horses because we stipulated the horses are of equal caliber.

(3)  The Chance To Win is the probability a horse has to Win the race.  There are eight horses, each with a one-in-eight chance to win.  One-in-eight is equal to .125 , which is the same as 12.5%.

(4)  The Chance To Win for all the horses adds up to exactly 100%, which is just what you would expect. 

Well, you know and I know the track doesn't put on races for free.  So let's examine a real world race this time.

There is a fun exercise you can do with your favorite track's Morning Line odds.  Pick any race, such as the following actual race picked at random from a racing program.
 

Program Number	Morning Line Odds	Chance To Win (%)
1	8-5	38.46
2	8-1	11.11
3	9-2	18.18
4	3-1	25.00
5	6-1	14.29
6	8-1	11.11
7	20-1	04.76
		122.91

There is a way to compute the Chance To Win, as a percentage, straight from the Morning Line Odds.  

Chance To Win = (1 / (Morning Line Odds + 1)) X 100

In English, this means to add one to the Morning Line Odds, then divide that number into one (you will get a fractional number), and then multiply that number by 100.  The answer is the chance the horse will win out of 100.

For example, for Program Number #6 above, the formula is

Chance To Win = (1 / (8 + 1)) X 100 = (1/9) X 100 = 11.11%

Notice the sum of all of the Chances To Win  is 122.91%, well over 100% .  A little alarm should be going off in your brain that this cannot be right.

Theoretically, the Chance To Win cannot exceed 100%.  So what's going on? The track is bleeding vigorish from the parimutuel pool, that's what is going on.  The Morning Line Odds are accounting for the track mutuel takeout, and this inflates the Chance To Win to a higher number than it actually should be.

I didn't mean to confuse you.  Think of it this way.  The oddsmaker's job is to show the bettor what the toteboard should look like, based on his expert analysis, and also based on the track takeout.  So the odds are going to be smaller than they should be because the track is taking its cut from the bettors.  And the smaller odds, when plugged into the formula I showed you above, yield a higher, or inflated, Chance To Win. 

How do we know what the actual Chance To Win really is? We can go in the back door to do this.

In our example, the actual track takeout for mutuel bets happens to be 17% (Remember, I am using an actual race).  So we will simply undo what the oddsmaker did to alter the odds.  We will multiply the Chance To Win for each horse by the ratio 100/117 , which will reverse the effect of the track takeout.

Remember, this has the effect of reversing the 17% mutuel takeout, and reflecting the actual Chance To Win for each horse.

Let's take a look at the results.
 

Program Number	Morning Line Odds	Actual Chance To Win (%)
1	8-5	32.87
2	8-1	09.50
3	9-2	15.54
4	3-1	21.37
5	6-1	12.21
6	8-1	09.50
7	20-1	04.07
		105.06

Notice that the sum of all the Chances To Win is closer to 100% than it was before.  It should be exactly 100%, but it is off due to estimation error by the track oddsmaker.  He is probably using some horse race odds computer program to assign the odds and he has no idea that he is making a mistake.

If you are really clever, you can use the new Chance To Win for each horse and compute the Morning Line Odds without the effect of the track vigorish.

The tote board, in effect, plays a trick on the bettors by reflecting odds that represent an inflated chance to win for each horse.
This is the world of parimutuel betting, where the house always wins.

But now you know better, don't you?  That does not mean you should never make a bet again.  It just means that you should seek value for your wagering dollar.

That's where Horse-Race-Handicapping.Com comes in.  Value is our middle name.  Just check our Archives Page for cold, hard proof.  We even have photographs of our winning 2005 Belmont Stakes betting tickets on our Home Page.  So remember us when you need professional and extremely reasonably priced handicapping services or go to our Products Page right now.

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