Worst Morning Line of the year?

[njcurveball]

As computer handicappers we are at the mercy of inaccuracies in the data. One of the best things for us is a guy who can make a good morning line. One of the worst, a guy who wouldn't know a class drop from a gum drop.

As I review races almost on a daily basis, some lines are spot on, some a little off, some head scratchers, and others just dead wrong. Even worse is dead wrong with no excuse.

Value is in the eye of the beholder which is why Zenyatta was 7-1 on Betfair, yet the favorite in California. But here is my early favorite for worst Morning Line of the Year.

Check out the 2nd at Remington Park on Sunday, October 18.2009. A quick click on the TLC screen shows #12 Lincoln County as the not only #1 first fraction, but also having over a 2 fps advantage. Early speed wins Maiden claiming races. A nice 1 point advantage in Early Pace for this horse as well.

A quick check to make sure the line wasn't from a cheap track, and it shows the horse ran in a Maiden Special Weight at Remington and went off at 3-1. Also shows that race was 6.5 furlongs and he was withing a length at the half. A drop to an 8k maiden claimer today seems a perfect fit for this horse.

The crowd made this horse a 9-5 favorite. The win part is beside the point as those odds seemed close to fair value. The morning line on this horse? One of three 30-1 shots in a twelve horse field.

The other two 30-1 shots? They both deserved to be 30-1. My theory on things like this is sometimes there are typos and this horse may have been 3-1 in the morning line and someone made a mistake typing the morning line into Equibase.

Bottom line is we have a 30-1 horse with a huge pace advantage dropping from MSW to Maiden Claiming (obvious to any ML maker) and going off the favorite.

Any more candidates?

[km]

Wow - what an oddity that was NJ, thanks for posting. My first thought was that maybe it was "3/1" typo: "30/1" and they announced the error at the track, and that triggered the betting action.

At a lot of smaller tracks the ML is made by someone in the publcity department or even the track announcer does it. It doesn't seem like there would be a lot of research behind it, yet there must be a 'book' of general guidelines somewhere though as virtually every ML put out have some things in common.

1) Horses that are deemed to have little or or no chance are 'capped' at 30/1. ML > 30/1 are extremely rare, except in major high profile events. Normally they just lump them all together in the 30/1 group.

2) A distinct ML favorite is chosen. It is very rare to see a tie in orginal ML for the ML chalk. And in, most cases, they are hesitant to list the ML fav below 2/1, even though it becomes obvious that almost all 2/1 ML favs are bet below those odds.

Now how is it that all the ML makers seem to abide by these and other clear guidelines and where did they learn this?