In case anyone else misunderstood I will re-state my remark where I said that those who have obtained a degree will realise the kind of work that I personnaly put in to solving the methods.

What was meant by that statement was that those who wish to find the answers will need to be totally dedicated to the long task in hand. An education is certainly not required, but dedication is. Most successful people, in whatever sphere they operate, have the same basic things in common, which is why the VDW methods will not be solved by most people. I realise this sounds harsh but it's another statement of fact. Whatever the mind of a man can conceive or believe it can achieve, so long as you want it bad enough and are prepared to work for it.

Hello everyone,

As I stated in my other post, I do have one of the publications, ( The Ultimate Wheil Of Fortune)
I have been all up and down the country for these form books and can't get a sniff of one, can anyone out there advice me on any further reading, I know that there are several other books availible from Browzers, also in the book I have there is a referance on page 34 that says there is a lot of satisfaction knowing a horse is really out to win (that is really out to win) is there any contibutors to this tread that can help me learn more, In a nut shell I can't aford to buy all the books but knowing what to read next would help.

Thanks in advance.

Reference Point,

I am sure you will understand anyones incomprehensibility to your original statement as you seem to be likening the work needed to obtain a degree to that of solving the Rubick's cube. Anyone who really has obtained a degree is bound to be a little bit mystified. I don't mind admitting that you have mystified me also with regard to the last sentence of your last message.

If I could be contructive in helping Barney and others out, in my opinion, it is impossible to single out any paragraph as being more informative than any other. My advice would be to go through each letter rigourously and keep referring to them if necessary, it's funny how often you can pick something new up. I wouldn't personally become a slave to it as I firmly believe it has the potential to send one dotty.

Regards

Dear all,
Firstly, Hi Mtoto, yes I am surprised people do not want to correspond with you privately, but then perhaps they do not realise you know what you do. Regarding my 50% handicap winners past and present, I am afraid the average s.p. is nothing like 6-1, more like 5-2. Later, when i have done a lot more work I shall see how selections 0ver, say, 7-2 performed on their own. It MAY BE that shorter price selections do NOT need ALL the credentials to still be a bet. Also that may be rubbish, I do not know yet.

You already know that I thought Kates Charm was a cracking bet, although I may never have got it if you had not pointed me in the right direction.

I did not like SYS because it was raised in money, that's what I have in my notes, anyhow.
BUT to me it had nothing to beat so I backed it anyhow. O.k it got stuffed and I/you were wrong t as it turned out.

Dear
Reference Point Bensam, etc,
This brings me to this TEMPERAMENT thing. Firstly its allright having the temperament to only back when the horse has all the credentials, I can do that, no problem. The problem is KNOWING that right time. That's the hard part. Every race ever ran is different to every other. The same identical circumstances NEVER reappear again, although there will be similar ones. Learning which horses are not really a bet even though they appear to have nothing, or not much to beat is damned difficult. If you make a list of 2 columns: COLUMN 1 IS HEADED "These horse are certainties, COLUMN 2 "These horses look certainties but I am not sure", well after say you had 50 horses in each column and you found COLUMN 1 did marvelouslly and COLUMN 2 did badly then that would give you the confidence to do the right thing. I am doing this each day to see what happens in the long run.
In the meantime when I pick horses like PETRUS W8-1, LAST JACK W8-1, OLD ROUVEL W6-1, TREMALLT W20-1 but don't back them because I am not sure, well personally it does my head in.
Yours
Swish

if i remember correctly swish you were invited to correspond 'because of all the work you have put in'.

i read all mtoto's posts but no one else has received a similar invite.

its quite intimidating to ask someone how do you do it.

perhaps thats why?

Dear Barney,
Fair comment.
Yours
Swish

Further to my last letter on this subject, those of you who can genuinely pick and then watch horses win at big prices and just brush it aside with "so what there's plenty more of them to come", must have nerves of steel/no emotion or some such factor.
Alex Bird (I admire the man greatly, by the way)
said emotion must never play apart, I think VDW did as well. Well it's allright if you've already made your fortune betting, but I bet there were times in their early days when a winner went in and they said words similar to "THANK **** FOR THAT!!!!!!!!!. If any betting man can honestly swear he has not thought the above words (or similar), THEN I DO NOT BELIEVE THEM!
Yours
Swish

And further to the above, what REALLY HURTS is when you've just watched your 8-1 romp in and you've not backed it and just one other punter in the bookies did, and he cheers it like there is no tomorrow! You know exactly what I mean:
GO ON! GO ON! GO ON! GO ON!.................GO ON MY SON, THATS IT LAD YOU'VE GOT EM BEAT NOW! GO ON,
GET IN, GET IN MY SON.....YESSSSS
and all the time you're churning and cursing inside.
Then the bloke goes and gets his winnings, walks up to you and says "DID YOU HAVE THAT ONE SON?"

I'm laughing a bit as I write this because a lot of times it's funny, trouble is there's a lot of times it isn't!
Yours
Swish

Swish,

I liked your last post but it brought back some unhappy times and reminded me what I went through, and is well worthy of response. The question I wanted to ask back then was, how could one exercise temperament without the knowledge of what was right or what was wrong? For me it took several years and much money, and many a phrase like in your last post before I put things right. Please don’t think I’m about to solve or answer all your questions but I will certainly tell you exactly how to correct this particular predicament that you are in. VDW clearly told us what to do but very few picked up on something that was literally spelt out, which was very simply STOP betting. It’s as simple as that. YOU are the biggest hurdle in all of this. How many times have you felt like throwing it all away when a stonewall certainty, in your view, gets beat? I know the answer; I’ve been there. It is likely that you’ll never reach the ultimate goal unless you cease betting until you know the answers. Your emotions will most certainly hold you back from both angles. When you back a 20/1 winner you’ll believe you have things sussed, and when your 2/1 on favourite gets stuffed, well, there’s no worse feeling.

What this does prove is again that much was missed of what VDW wrote. A very simple message conveyed in plain words was passed over by most. If this was missed, just imagine what else is there to be found.

Swish, I hope this post wasn’t too much of an anti-climax, but it is the best piece of advice I could ever give.

If you are still reading this thread, please email me re:your VDW library.

cheers

did anyone consider the 240 today a good bet

[This message was edited by Barney on January 04, 2002 at 03:51 PM.]

It seems to me, mostly from the comments made by the haves and the have-nots, that the Classified/See You Sometime race may be a useful modern example to try and get our (the have nots) heads around. I, like many of you, have not been able to get hold of the form books required and this sort of race may be the best chance of extending knowledge.

Reference Point – the form books are simply not out there – how about you have yours copied (?I will pay) so that we can benefit from wisdom past??

Anyway – it appears at first sight that SYS has many fine credentials, and indeed it does. Classified also has strengths, but at first glance these seem to be at a lower class, whatever has been said. This assumes the adage that “form is the achievement (eg 1st, 2nd, last etc) and class is the level at which it was achieved.

Q1 – Was Classified a better thing because of the weaknesses of SYS or because it stood out by itself?

Q2 – Is the class/form of the competitors more important than the class (or value) of the race?

I don’t want to be spoon fed, but the main frustration (Guest) is being unable to get hold of the relevant reference material (Reference Point). A “nudge” would therefore be appreciated.

Over to you lot

PS I still haven’t started the John Grisham I got for Christmas!!

Barney
I didn`t look at the 2.40 race today.
I only look at races worth £5000 +.

VDW said 3000+ but that was 20 years
ago and prize money has increased abit
since then.


Maggsy

aj in my opinion(im only a novice)

1= both
2= yes

maggsy

i thought it was the best prize on the card and consider the 2nd

Barney
He did say best race on the card and consider
the 2nd.But he also said £3000+ at another
point.

Maggsy

back to basics, i think i can participate in this part.

start with the most valuable race from the principle meeting and concider the other meetings,

if i remember right.

tubs

Hello All,

This is a second attempt at posting this. Lets hope I remember what I wrote the first time!

Swish - I've been thinking about you exercise of dividing your selections into 2 columns. How will you know if your doing better than random chance for the second column selections?

I've had a think and I think I have a solution. Recently in SMARTsig, Brian Oldham did some work based on 19273 races and 209222 horses in which he plotted winning probability against SP as a probability. The resulting line explained 99.25% of the variation. Thats a very powerful correlation.

The line equation is

Winning probabilty = 0.9485 x (SP as a probability) - 0.0122

So a horse with SP 2-1 has an SP as a probability of 1/(2+1) = 0.3333. In general this is 1/(SP + 1). And a Winning probability of 0.3039.

What I thought you could do is at the end of each week you could take your second column selections and using the SP, calculate the winning probability for each.

Then add all these probabilities together and plot the number of winners against the sum of probabilities. If after a few weeks most of the points lie above the 45 degree line then your doing better than random chance.

I know this seems a bit convoluted but it does mean you don't have to guess how well your doing.

All - I too think that the SYS/Classified race would benefit those of us without the form books. I thought SYS the selection, though Classified was 2nd best on form and speed.

Guest, Fulham - you make mention of the odds in prior races as being an important factor. The work I mentioned in SMARTsig was originally done in the US in the 70-80's. Do you think VDW was aware of this powerful correlation?

Also can I ask was the odds SYS had in its previous races one of the negative points you mentioned? SYS has a 9-1 in the last race and a 12-1 in the previous one, both won with a comment of made all. Obviously not strongly fancied and seeming to have won by an appropriate race style.

Classified had a 8-11 in its last race and won easily. From this I would consider it to have run against poor opposition.

Can you enlighten me on this aspect of VDW as I want to learn. I'm only asking for a hint as I fully understand your reasoning for not disclosing all.

All - Today in the 1.45 at Cork there seems to be a similar situation to SYS/C in Lisaan/Pollster. What are your views?

All the best
hedgehog

Hello everybody and thanks for supporting this thread which I started on the 21st October. Here is a little more fuel for the fire!

It is a long time since I started this thread and now with almost four hundred postings I felt it was about time ‘ I threw some more silver into the hat’. At the moment the thread has a good blend of those still willing to learn, those who consider themselves well versed and those presumably who read all of the input but do not feel able to ‘throw in their silver’ for fear of being pulled to pieces by the experts.

When I was sorting through some old copies of RfU Sports Forum, I came across one or two interesting letters on the VDW subject. One aspect which seemed to be repeated by the letter writers of the time (1996/1997) including the late Jock Bingham, was that, what VDW was offering was a collection of methods, any one of which offered ‘many ways to find good bets’. It is not necessary to go through all the methods when looking for a winner. One has to remember that some of VDW’s selections were not necessarily top rated or in the top four ability ratings. Some of them like Rivage Bleu were Maidens. What was important was that all of his selections were proven at or had shown they could win at the distance. What matters most is that any of the methods you use is based on sound logic and indicates profitability in the long run.

It is also apparent to me that the late Jock Bingham was held in much higher esteem at that time and often referred to in the same sentence as VDW and many VDW exponents stated that it was JB that put them on the right road. As I have said before, his fall from grace was probably his tipping service and if VDW was faced with the same dilemma, I wonder whether he could have done any better. It would seem from some of the correspondence, particularly that of M.G.Kent that a run of races during the period 24th August to 14th September 1996 gave many of the answers to the questions many were posing.

One RfU issue of the 30th November 1996 had a letter in Sports Forum which was headed ‘Jock Bingham to the rescue of those still struggling’. In the letter he evaluates three races from the same period mentioned above which he says explains the evaluation method put forward by VDW in 1988. Then he goes on to say ‘ Although I am using my own method it may not be the same as MG Kent when comparing similar races. Then says that VDW always said there is more than one way to come to the same conclusion’. To my mind what JB states next is a good starting point for all those trying to unravel the puzzle:- The horses to evaluate are, the four that run in the highest penalty value race last time out that you consider capable of winning over the distance of the race concerned. The method NEVER changes.

He then goes on to evaluate a race at Ascot, one at Doncaster and one at Haydock – the winning prices were 9/1, 8/1 and 11/2. He finishes his letter by repeating what VDW has been saying for years “Given an understanding of class, form and the basics behind the training of horses, anyone who has bothered to acquire temperament can consistently find winners”

At that time the letters to Sports Forum were opened by my friend Brian Cottam who summed up Jock Binghams letter as follows: ‘I can honestly say that, after reading both of Jock Bingham’s books, he seems to have found a definitive, logical and decisive way of presenting the sometimes controversial VDW evaluations. Perhaps anyone who is still struggling after reading one or both of these volumes should simply accept that this method is not for them and try and find another way of finding winners.

But the worst thing you can do is what ‘Macintosh’ so cleverly describes as a ”butterfly”, a punter who flits from one method to another without giving one a decent chance to prove its worth.


Marchwood

hello everybody.This is my first post on this thread,And i don,t think it will be very constructive,It may also start some squawking and squealing,From some people on this thread,But here goes anyway has anybody acquired the colin davey method,Now before you start going barmy and throwing your teddy,s everywhere,I know the man,s a dodgy geezer,I,ve been to one of his seminars, got the t.shirt etc etc.(learnt a lot since then.)It wasn,t until i read this thread that something looked very familiar so i dug the method out and low and behold,If you can get hold of this method,Which i,m sure you can through castle or surewin, it,s well worth a tenner hope i haven,t ruffled to many feathers, just trying to be helpful.regards.....