March 26 Fairgrounds Points Picks go here . . .

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by JolyB

Some morning line makers are just better than others and really try to calculate what the betting odds will be on each of the runners in a race. Others seem to take a more lackadaisical approach, especially once they have gotten past the top couple of choices.

I noticed that the odds maker at the Fair Grounds has used 6-1 and even more so 8-1 as his default settings once he got past the top couple of picks, sometimes assigning 8-1 odds to as many as 5 horses in a race. To me, this is a disservice to the betting public who are entitled to a more professional approach. I know that many serious handicappers pay very little attention to the ML or even make their own. But, there are a lot of casual horseplayers who use the ML as a basis of their wagering and deserve something more precise, rather than a line that looks as if it was sort of slapped together.

OK, rant over - have a great day in NOLA tomorrow.

I just finished handicapping the whole card and when I start this analyze every entrant without respect to ML odds, figure out in what order I think they'll finish then compare my selections to the ML. Usually it's pretty close but tomorrow's card at FG has lots of ML odds that don't seem very well thought out, and like you wrote I saw 8/1 and 6/1 on many horses often in the same field, horses that upon examination did not seem likely to have equal odds at post time.