The morning line puzzle: How I make the Morning Line

[Steve Martinelli is the assistant racing secretary and morning line maker at Golden Gate Fields]

It's a thankless job. Some horseplayers rely heavily on it. Others do their best to ignore it. However one treats the morning line when it comes to handicapping a race, it is difficult to escape the fact that it's there. And the work that goes into constructing it is somewhat of an art form.

I've constructed the Golden Gate Fields morning line for nearly nine years. Like everything opinion-based in life, there have been some spectacular lines, some good ones and some I'd surely like to forget. I like to joke with cohorts that I am wrong numerous times every day. It's one of those "people never forget when you're wrong but they never remember when you're right" kind of phenomenon.

I still get reminded of a debuting filly in early 2020 from a local high-percentage barn I laid at 20-1 off a series of pedestrian works only to see her break from the gate at 5-1 and win by what seemed like a pole.

It is not like I print out the set of PPs for a day's card and set out to look foolish. The times you can nail a winning horse's odds right on the button, or correctly decipher a post-time favorite in a race you knew was difficult, really leaves a good feeling in your line-making soul. Ask any line maker in the country and they will without a doubt tell you the same.

Also, ask any line maker in the country whether horseplayers and racing fans really understand what the morning line's purpose is, as well as what goes into making a morning line, and many will without a doubt shake their heads.

To start, there might be a slight misconception among racing fans as to the true purpose of a morning line. The morning line is designed specifically as a look at one person's opinion as to what the closing odds of each horse in a race will be. The line maker is not a tout. Simply because a horse is laid the favorite does not mean the line maker necessarily thinks, as a handicapper, that horse is the winner.

At Golden Gate Fields, for instance, the bottom of the program has the "Morning Line Selections," which list the top four choices on the morning line as if the line maker is touting these four horses. However, all I am doing is merely telling the betting public these are the horses I think will be the top four choices.

Even people I work with who have been in the game for years still do not understand this and will comment to me that I nailed the morning line when my top four choices all run well. But then I look up at the tote board and the closing odds are not what I had predicted — so in my mind, it was not a good morning line. I just want to yell out to them sometimes that it is a prediction of the approximate closing odds at post time. Nothing more.

A proper morning line is not constructed simply by the line maker randomly assigning an odd to each horse in a race. Besides the fact that the line is done at least 48 hours before race day in order to make the Daily Racing Form (I am lucky being in the Bay Area that I do not have to worry so much about weather concerns), the line maker must assign odds in relation to a specific formula. Each individual odd (i.e. 7/2, 5-1, etc.) has a value that when added all together should come out to about 122-125. This is "balancing the line."

I am essentially trying to mirror the track takeout, so the morning line odds can match only if the odds' values are close to that. The takeout plus 100 would give a total somewhere in the 114-118 range, depending on the track. Since a few points are "lost" because of breakage (a horse at 6-1 on the board might actually be 6.80-1) a few points are added in, depending on the size of the field. Below is a simple depiction of odds and their corresponding values to add up to 122-125.

Odds Points  

4-5:   55 

1-1:   50 

6-5:   45 

7-5:   42 

8-5:   38 

9-5:   35 

2-1:   33 

5-2:   28 

3-1:   25 

7-2:   22 

4-1:   20 

9-2:   18 

5-1:   16 

6-1:   14 

8-1:   11 

10-1:  9 

12-1:  7 

15-1:  6  

20-1:  4 

30-1:  2 

50-1:  1

Just like a toteboard at post time, if a horse is laid at 4-5 or even money the rest of that field will comprise mostly higher odds to offset the fact that so many points have been devoted to a huge favorite. On the other hand, if a morning-line favorite is 3-1 or 7-2 the rest of that field will be in the mid-range of odds as the line maker has more points to play with.

There have been plenty of times when I have wanted to lay a horse lower than I did and just could not find where to tweak the line. This is of course especially difficult in races with a lot of high-percentage human connections, horses that are dropping facing sharp horses at the level, or just a bunch of sharp horses in a race in general.

You can usually tell when a line maker has no clue who to make the favorite. There will be a morning-line favorite of 3-1 or 7-2 and then a bunch of horses in the 4-1 to 8-1 range. The line maker can't just put all these horses at 4-1 or 9-2. He or she has to take a stand in order to balance the line. It's nothing short of putting together a puzzle and making sure each piece fits into the whole.

There's certainly not a better feeling for a line maker to skim the program of the odds after the horses have crossed the wire and see each horse's final odds closely mirror the line. When the jigsaw puzzle of a morning line can come together and every piece fits in nicely to a 122-125 bubble, it makes all those "How could you lay my horse so high?" complaints from horsemen and horseplayers alike seem much more muted. Even if it is just for a half hour or so until the next race, when the jigsaw puzzle pieces fall into disarray.