By 2YO EdgeMan, 07/07/2023
It’s hard to believe that we are only one week away from the first race of Saratoga’s 2023 Meet – the wait is almost over! It appears from the Conditions Book that the purses will be $105,000 for non-restricted two-year-old Maiden Special Weight (MSW) races this summer at The Spa and there is guaranteed to be some fantastic racing in the 40-day meet that runs through Labor Day. In preparation for the action, we’ve done a thorough analysis covering the past ten years (2013 thru 2022) of 2YO MSW races at Saratoga by doing a deep dive focused on odds.
Specifically, we will look at all of the Morning Line (M/L) odds and ‘Off’ odds of the complete list of over 600 winners in that timeframe. This will then set us up to do a thorough analysis of the differential, or ‘delta’, between the M/L odds and the Off odds for all of these winners. This article is not intended to pick any specific winners, it is instead designed to give you an overall, broad education on odds and odds movement in our wonderful two-year-old MSW races. Our goal is always to provide you with the most in depth, insightful and unique data so that you can be the best-informed player of two-year-old MSW races, not only at The Spa, but also all across the country. We hope that you enjoy it and maybe learn something by digging in with us. OK, off we go…
Morning Line Odds – As you all know, the M/L odds are simply a starting point and set by the track’s handicapper. As you’ll see from the numbers, winners of our races come anywhere from very low opening odds all the way up to what would be considered a ‘long shot’. Not too much should be read into these, but it is interesting to see a breakdown of where all the winners of two-year-old Maiden Special Weight races at Saratoga started over the past ten years. You’ll soon why these numbers are important.
| Odds | # Wins | % |
| <2/1 | 55 | 9.1% |
| 2/1 to <3/1 | 111 | 18.3% |
| 3/1 to <4/1 | 103 | 17.0% |
| 4/1 to <5/1 | 84 | 13.9% |
| 5/1 to 6/1 | 120 | 19.8% |
| 8/1 to 10/1 | 78 | 12.9% |
| 12/1 to 15/1 | 49 | 8.1% |
| >15/1 | 6 | 1.0% |
| 606 | 100.0% |
Off Odds – There has been quite a bit of discussion lately on the topic of Off Odds as Computer Assisted Wagering and wagering ‘syndicates’ (or whatever you choose to call them) have had a significant impact on the final odds. NYRA has taken more action than most against late wagering from these groups, but this discussion is for another day. Clearly, the Off odds, wherever they land, are key as they determine the amount of money that you get back when cashing in on a straight ‘Win’ bet. Of the 606 two-year-old MSW races conducted at The Spa over the past ten years, 194 of them were captured by the favorite for a rate of 32.0%.
Again, it’s not a ‘News Flash’ that you’ll see in our table below that some winners go off at very short odds and they also occasionally get their pictures taken with very juicy odds, but most often, it’s somewhere in between. As with the list of M/L odds above, this will give you an overall sense of the ‘big picture’ when looking at Off odds in ‘our races’ at Saratoga. We’ll then put it all together for you in the next section.
| Odds | # Wins | % |
| <1/1 | 60 | 9.9% |
| 1/1 to <1.5/1 | 57 | 9.4% |
| 1.5/1 to <2/1 | 48 | 7.9% |
| 2/1 to <3/1 | 114 | 18.8% |
| 3/1 to <5/1 | 115 | 19.0% |
| 5/1 to <8/1 | 98 | 16.2% |
| 8/1 to <10/1 | 41 | 6.8% |
| 10/1 <15/1 | 50 | 8.3% |
| 15/1 and over | 23 | 3.8% |
| 606 | 100.0% |
Delta Between M/L and Off Odds – This metric is where the real work begins and allows us to get a reading on how the odds ‘typically’ move in our races. How often do the odds move up on the board for eventual winners and how frequently do they go down? And generally, by how much do they change? This is how we can really take a close look at how many winners are ‘cold on the board’ and, conversely, how often the betting public is onto the soon-to-be-crowned victor. One comment before we dig into the data – since ‘scratches’ are obviously a part of the game, overall, the odds will go down slightly on each entrant whenever scratches occur. However, there is no ‘flip side’ to balance this as horses can never be added after the entries are taken and the M/L odds are set. I guess it’s possible, but it is infrequent and has an extremely minuscule statistical impact, for a horse to scratch and a ‘better’ runner, with lower M/L odds, replaces him/her from the Also Eligible list. All and all, the influence that scratches create is an overall slight increase in downward movement in the delta between M/L odds and Off odds. Let’s look at the numbers…
| Delta | # Wins | % |
| Down10 or more | 1 | 0.2% |
| Down 6 to <10 | 15 | 2.5% |
| Down 3 to <6 | 41 | 6.8% |
| Down 1.5 to <3 | 104 | 17.2% |
| Down 1 to <1.5 | 75 | 12.4% |
| Down <1 | 144 | 23.8% |
| No movement | 8 | 1.3% |
| Up <1 | 84 | 13.9% |
| Up 1 to <2 | 40 | 6.6% |
| Up 2 to <4 | 41 | 6.8% |
| Up 4 to <8 | 28 | 4.6% |
| Up 8 to <12 | 15 | 2.5% |
| Up 12 or more | 10 | 1.7% |
| 606 | 100.0% |
So, in total, the odds moved down from M/L to Off on 380 of the 606 race winners (62.7%), up on 218 (36.0%), and stayed exactly the same on eight (1.3%). Again, as discussed above, some of this is inherently due to scratches, but this information confirms that it is certainly better to be ‘warm on the board’ vs cold. Conversely, it also shows that if a runner is drifting up in odds on the board, that it definitely does not exclude that horse from further consideration. Lastly, this study quantifies the exact odds movement patterns that you see from winners of 2YOs in our beloved MSW races at Saratoga.
I hope this information is helpful to you as we work together to solve the proverbial puzzle of identifying patterns of babies set to visit the winner’s circle at Saratoga and beyond. Please let me know if you have any questions that I can help answer on the subject of 2YO maidens – it’s what we do! Enjoy the summer and I wish you many winning tickets, loads of fun and all of the best!
Don’t miss 2YO EdgeMan’s first Saratoga Teachings: 2YO Maiden Special Weight Races – FTS vs Non-FTS
