By ITM Staff
ITM Plus · Breeders’ Cup Package
This One’s on Us
The piece below is a free preview of the kind of analysis that’s part of ITM Plus’s Breeders’ Cup package. Members also get proprietary trip notes and speed figures for the foreign horses, in-depth coverage of every race, and grid picks from the entire team, plus all of ITM’s Keeneland Fall Meet coverage.
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David Aragona is widely considered among the best morning line makers in the business, and he has shared his lines for each Breeders’ Cup race at the pre-entry stage over at DRF.com (we highly recommend you click over to see them all). But as great as any morning line might be, not one dollar is bet at those prices. So we thought it might be interesting to compare David’s lines with actual betting prices from the English bookmaker PTF generally refers to as “the sharpest book.”
Several caveats apply.
A morning line and a betting price measure different things
David’s line is a forecast of how the betting will go: his best guess at where each horse’s odds will end up once the public has its say. It isn’t a statement of how likely he thinks each horse is to win. That’s an important distinction, and it’s one reason no bettor should treat a morning line as a value line. More on that below.
Futures bets are “action”
These are ante-post prices, and if your horse doesn’t run, your bet loses. A morning line assumes the horse is in the gate. A futures price also has to account for the chance that he never gets there.
Cross-entries
Thirty-three horses were pre-entered in two races, with a first and second preference. David prices them in both as if they’ll run in each. The book has to guess where they’ll actually go. That makes those horses a story of their own (see below), but it means we have to leave them out of the head-to-head. In the Dirt Mile and the Filly & Mare Turf, the cross-entered horses make up so much of the market (Knightsbridge, Further Ado and Napoleon Solo in one; Diamond Necklace, Blue Bolt and Survie in the other) that we’ve set both races aside.
Neither line adds up to 100%
Turn every price in a race into a win probability and add them up, and you’ll get well over 100%. For a bookmaker that extra is the margin, the overround, which is how the book makes its money. A morning line is built the same way, because it’s forecasting a betting market with the takeout baked in. David’s lines total roughly 128-137% in races where cross-entries aren’t a factor. The book’s lists, which include horses that won’t make the field, run from 121% to 211%.
To compare the two fairly, we turned both sets of odds into win probabilities and scaled each so the same horses add up to exactly 100%. That normalization to 100% strips out the margin and leaves each market’s view of every horse’s chance. Bookmakers tend to load more of their margin onto longer prices, which may flatter the book’s longshots a little.
That 100% step is worth taking to heart as a bettor, too. When you make your own odds line, make it a value line: your honest estimate of each horse’s chance, adding up to exactly 100%, with no overround. Then the comparison with the tote or the book tells you something. A horse you make 4-1 (20%) who is 6-1 on the board is a bet. A horse who is 3-1 on the board isn’t, however much you “like” him. Build in an overround the way a morning line does, and you’ve marked your own prices down before you start.
That leaves 121 horses in 12 races. Here’s where the two disagree most.
Where the book is keener than David
| Horse | Race | David | Book | David’s chance | Book’s chance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great Barrier Reef | Juvenile Turf | 9-2 | 7-4 | 14% | 27% |
| Sun Goddess | Juvenile Fillies Turf | 6-5 | 4-6 | 39% | 47% |
| Forever Young | Classic | 5-2 | 2-1 | 30% | 37% |
| Libertango | Juvenile Turf Sprint | 3-1 | 13-8 | 21% | 31% |
| Bacio | Turf Sprint | 5-2 | 11-8 | 22% | 32% |
| Miss Monica | Juvenile Fillies | 5-2 | 7-4 | 24% | 32% |
| Sweet Azteca | Filly & Mare Sprint | 12-1 | 6-1 | 6% | 11% |
| Notable Speech | Mile | 8-5 | 11-8 | 32% | 37% |
| Test Score | Turf | 30-1 | 14-1 | 4% | 9% |
| Mussab | Juvenile Turf Sprint | 15-1 | 8-1 | 5% | 9% |
| Super Corredora | Distaff | 20-1 | 10-1 | 4% | 8% |
Where David is keener than the book
| Horse | Race | David | Book | David’s chance | Book’s chance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fully Subscribed | Distaff | 2-1 | 3-1 | 30% | 22% |
| Brickyard Belle | Juvenile Turf Sprint | 7-2 | 5-1 | 19% | 14% |
| How’s Al Today | Juvenile Turf | 4-1 | 6-1 | 16% | 11% |
| Ways and Means | Filly & Mare Sprint | 7-5 | 7-4 | 33% | 28% |
| Harper’s Corner | Juvenile Turf Sprint | 8-1 | 16-1 | 9% | 5% |
| Joe Shiesty | Turf Sprint | 8-1 | 14-1 | 9% | 5% |
| Cy Fair | Turf Sprint | 6-1 | 9-1 | 11% | 8% |
| Golden Tempo | Classic | 6-1 | 9-1 | 15% | 11% |
| The Puma | Classic | 10-1 | 16-1 | 10% | 7% |
| Citrus Springs | Juvenile Fillies Turf | 15-1 | 33-1 | 5% | 2% |
The obvious theme is on the turf, where each side of the Atlantic seems to like its own. The book is far keener on George Boughey’s Libertango, Aidan O’Brien’s Great Barrier Reef and Sun Goddess, Wesley Ward’s Bacio, who did his winning in England this summer, and Mussab. David’s line is the bigger fan of the U.S.-based turf horses: Miguel Clement’s Brickyard Belle and Cathal Lynch’s Harper’s Corner in the Juvenile Turf Sprint, Riley Mott’s How’s Al Today in the Juvenile Turf, and Eric Foster’s Joe Shiesty and George Weaver’s Cy Fair in the Turf Sprint.
It isn’t all flag-waving, though. The book is also the keener of the two on American dirt horses Miss Monica, Sweet Azteca and Super Corredora, and on Graham Motion’s Test Score in the Turf. In the Classic, the book is the bigger believer in Japan’s Forever Young; David is keener on Golden Tempo and The Puma. On the other side, David leans toward Chad Brown’s Distaff and Filly & Mare Sprint favorites, Fully Subscribed and Ways and Means. And in the Juvenile they barely disagree at all: Hughes is 6-5 on both lines and Coach Pope 4-1 on both.
What the book thinks the cross-entered horses will do
Because a futures bet only pays if the horse runs, the book’s price folds in a guess about which race a cross-entered horse will choose. David’s line assumes it runs in both. So comparing the two for the same horse in each race gives a rough read on where the market expects it to go. “Rough” is the key word: it assumes the book and David broadly agree on how good the horse is.
Diamond Necklace Turf
Clearly the Turf. The book rates her chance in the Turf about one and a half times David’s, but in the Filly & Mare Turf at less than half his. That fits her first preference.
Splendora Distaff
Her Filly & Mare Sprint price (10-1 against David’s 5-2) is the clearest “not running here” signal on the card.
Built, Iron Man Cal and T Kraft Sprint
All first preferences. The book prices each at about half of David’s chance in the Dirt Mile.
American Stage Sprint
His second preference. That makes sense, because he sits eighth in the panel’s order for the Turf Sprint, outside the also-eligibles, so he may not get in there.
Lugal Mile
His first preference, where he’s currently an also-eligible, rather than the Turf Sprint.
Coin flips No lean
Blue Bolt (Filly & Mare Turf v Mile), Survie (Turf v Filly & Mare Turf), Force Noir (Juvenile Turf Sprint v Juvenile Turf), Hymn and Moonlight (Sprint v Dirt Mile). The book isn’t leaning either way on any of them.
The Classic/Dirt Mile group: this is where it gets interesting.
- Forged Steel: clearly the Dirt Mile, his first choice. The book rates him well above David’s line there and at about two-thirds of it in the Classic.
- Knightsbridge and Napoleon Solo: lean Classic, their first choice, but only mildly (roughly 58-42 and 57-43).
- Further Ado: a slight lean the other way, toward the Dirt Mile, even though the Classic is his first preference.
None of the three is a strong signal. That fits a market that is still waiting to hear about Sovereignty. David’s own Classic comment on DRF notes that a foot issue interrupted Sovereignty’s preparation and asks whether he’ll run.
Domain Expansion and Voyager Juvenile Fillies
Both lean Juvenile Fillies (dirt). For Voyager that’s her second choice; the Juvenile Fillies Turf is her first.
One caution: the method can’t tell “won’t run here” from “the book just doesn’t rate her as highly.” Lush Lips shows the problem. On this measure the book seems to “expect” her in the Mile, where she’s currently outside the also-eligible list. That’s simply the book liking her more than David does there.
We’ll run the same comparison against David’s final lines after Monday’s draw, when the cross-entry guessing will be over. For that one, you’ll need an ITM Plus subscription, where you’ll also find more content like this, trip notes for all the runners, Beyer equivalents for foreign horses, extra shows, and grid picks from the team.
