Hello Johnd,
I like SUPER NOMAD 3.40 NEWCASTLE
Do you?
Swish

The 2 shortest fc favs method throws up a couple of interesting situations today. At Newcastle in the 1.20 Man Murphy is the class/form horse, but there is a potential fly in the oitment by the way of Sea Drifting. If you compare this race to a similiar though not identical situation that occured with VDWs bet on Yacare in Dec 85, a couple of important factors raise their heads. In that race there was a fc fav in the shape of Janus who had a much higher ability rating and was having it's first run over fences. It had been running in better class handicap hurdle races without winning. Yacare had actually won a chase LTO but was disqualified and had been novice hurdling the previous term.

Today shows Man Murphy as probable but not a certainty so it is one to let run in my view.

The other fav is at Cheltenham in the 3.30 namely Keen Leader who is also the class/form horse and given other factors and a clean round he should be winning today. I would want 8/11 or better to put money down though.

The chase method doesn't through up anything strong enough for me today and whilst Lady Cricket may well win, there are factors that sound the alarm bells.

The race mentioned by Swish has 3 form horses and in class order they are Super Nomad,Kimdaloo and Gatflax. These happen to be the 3 most consistent in the field also but further investigation shows a conflict in the overall form of these 3 horses. Gatflax and Kimdaloo are getting a lot of weight from a horse not proven with the weight in such handicap company. I wouldn't select Super Nomad in this race, in fact I wouldn't bet in the race given all the factors, but I wish Swish luck. He might just need it with this one.

Guest

Your posts now seem to be totalytotallytotaltotals different to your early post, It brings into question if you are the same guest that refused to register for this forum because he didn't want to dgivegivedivedrivegiverdived away his identity or even the same guest that stopped posting because he thought he spelled to much out for people either wasy I don't care as i prefer this guest anyway.

Would i be correct in saying that VDW is simply the use of a system to highlight horses that have a good strike rate and then the use of form reading and a collection of filters to eliminate likely losers.

If this is the case it's all down to temprement and the amount of effort you put in simply saying upped in rating down in class or shortest priced favfive or the chase method will hot produce a profit without .

I therefore think what Mtoto said in a earlier post about not betting in a race you are not prepared to have a max punt is one of the best bits of advice there is.

Lady cricket today interests me a great deal out of interest what are your concerns about this horse I also like keen leader and will probably be backing both but stopping at a winner with an element of retreaval is necessary.

Swish nice to see your name again

Titus

Sorry about the delay, a busy morning, and I have only just seen your posting.
Re Super Nomad; it all depends on how you view his last race. As a horse who can run well fresh, he could have been simply outclassed, which shouldn't be a problem today. Personally, I would have liked him to run a bit better, for a bit further, but I wouldn't back any of these to beat him. Good luck if you do back him.

Thanks for all your answers.
I'm on it anyway, win or lose,
Swish
p.s Cheers Titus

Well called with lady cricket, I had the bastard as a good thing last time out and it let me down.
Funny how you remember these things isnt it?

common hip pocket!!!

Titus - VDWs methods were basically shortcuts he developed based on research of past results and probably his own experiences. They all narrow the field of vision, but there were important points he didn't specifically highlight and without these points or factors, his shortcuts will be very hit and miss not to mention frustrating.

A lot of time and effort has to go into any race evaluation but the funny thing is that given todays technology this time factor can be cut right down.

No bets for me today and the mishap by Keen Leader highlighted just why it is important to set an acceptable price based on the real odds for any likely wagers. To bet everything we think should win is madness. Fallers are just one reason why no fool proof method can be employed for any one isolated race. Those who avoid novice chases like the plague will probably feel pretty pleased with themselves, but I can assure anyone that from experience and research I know that fallers happen with the same sort of frequency in any type of jumps events. It's just part of the game and usually unpredictable.

Regarding the sections from Clive Holts book involving Wayward Lad, I'm not really up for typing out considerable lumps from the book. He is pretty hot on copyright in any event. Suffice to say it highlighted The Edward Hamner chase and the Tommy Whittle which were both 3 runner affairs involving Wayward Lad, Gold Cup winner Forgive N Forget and Richdee in the former and Wayward Lad,Forgive N Forget and Earls Brig in the latter. WL unseated his rider when odds on in the EH with FnF winning at 2/1. WL was nailed close home giving weight in the TW, by a very hard ridden Earls Brig with FnF in 3rd.

I read the passage from Clive Holt's book,a significant comment I feel,made by Holt,was "Wayward Lad wasn't stopping either".

As regard to Keen Leader,how does one judge an acceptable price,I would have backed KL,if it wasn't for your comment,on price,which made me think about it.I am not aware how to do this,is it experience or is there a logical solution to it,

Once again thanks for your continued posts.

Pipedreamer - Weighing up the odds entails both logic and experience, though you should be only looking to back genuine odds on chances. These of course can go off at any price but even if you rate a horses chance as 80%+ likely to win it is a good idea to set your price a bit more conservatively.

Chicuelo tomorrow is the class/form horse and pre Mr Pipe form can take a backseat to his last run. However Market Rasen is very different to Cheltenham and though carrying less weight, he is going up in race class and very likely to go off shorter than last time. He'll probably win, but I wouldn't put money on it.

By contrast I will be backing Tarxien at better than 8/11 in the first. A winner at the meeting last year when he was a very good bet, only the jumping needs allowing for pricewise.

More lunchtime maybe.

Guest

You shouldn't have any difficulty in getting an acceptable price on Tarxien. He's readily available on Betfair at well over 6/4, significantly higher than his Racing Post forecast.

I did not see this race and do not know if KEEN LEADER would have won if he had stayed up, but nevertheless I had a small wager on SUPER FELLOW because I thought the price (and it's old speed figure) were without a doubt value for money @10-1. I backed it last time at 7-1 when it beat the "red hot fav" TENSILE.
I never thought it was a certainty, just that it had proved it had some amount of ability already and 10-1 was VALUE WITH A CAPITAL V,
yours
Swish

Swish - It was too early to say if Keen leader would have won, but he jumped fine up until getting too much into the fence he fell at. As I say I didn't find the price near acceptable and didn't have a bet today. To be fair to Lucky Bay, had he not slithered on landing at the top of the hill, losing all momentum and many lengths, he would surely have won giving the way he rallied bravely. Well done with your 10/1 winner though. Hope you didn't play on Super Nomad.

Thanks for the comments.
Unfortunately I did play on SUPER NOMAD,
Swish

In one article VDW demonstrated an exercise involving the isolation of class/form horses that had a 3 point advantage on the class rating. This was used on the minor meetings on Boxing Day 1984 and the result gave six horses all of which won but only Zamandra and Stray Shot were seen as bets to make by VDW.

Today I thought it may be of interest to do a similiar exercise on all 5 meetings again ignoring sellers, novice hurdles and maiden events leaving 17 races. Only the class/form horse is highlighted and today I will use a 5 point advantage to qualify. The resultant list is as follows.

Cheltenham
1.05 Tarxien +8
2.15 Shooting Light +94
2.50 Chicuelo +129

Ayr
12.50 Luzcadou +30
3.05 Telemoss +20
3.45 Mr Woodentop +5

Uttoxeter
12.20 Ifrane Balima +27
1.25 Advance East +10

Wetherby
1.35 Sunshine leader +9

Wolves
7.00 Adobe +6

From these 10 class/form combinations, the only one to back in my view is Tarxien. Had Chicuelo more in common with Shooting Light last year, then I would wager him also, but I'll leave him alone today.

Guest

I thought the Betfair price last night was generous, but the sp has almost taken the pleasure of a successful bet away!

Do these + figures refer to 100s of pounds in mean prize money?

I will again ask what is meant by the term form? If we are talking about a horse being "in form" then how can anyone decide that about a horse not seen on the track for 224 days? If we are talking about a horse "having form" I really cant see any use for ability ratings.

Epiglotis

I sympathise: it does seem a strange word to use. But it is one of those aspects where VDW took a different view to the majority, and used the term in his own way. Basically, he used the ideas of being a form horse or not to denote the evaluation he made of past performances relative to one another, in the context of the class of the race he was evaluating.

Precisely how he made these evaluations is a matter he did not explicitly disclose, and I think it was what he meant when he referred to the "missing link".

Personally, although research leads to a reasonable sense of how VDW went about the task, I have yet to find an objective set of criteria that satisfactorily explains all the explicit examples of the in form and not in form horses he gave. I am therefore necessarily unsure whether that is because he didn't have such objective criteria (ie he exercised judgement against some indicators, necessarily resulting in a modest degree of inconsistency), or whether it is because of the incompleteness/inadequacy of my researches.

Such work as I have done leads me to the observation that, when Guest says a horse is the class/form horse, or that this or that horse is in form or out of form, it can be taken as authoritative from the VDW perspective. (Though, as has been emphasised many times, by no means all c/fs win, and indeed VDW's own examples showed that horses that are not in form from his VDW perspective win a significant minority of races.)

[This message was edited by Fulham on November 16, 2002 at 02:49 PM.]

Thanks for the reply. It seems to me that you believe VDW was using the term form in the sense that I had in mind with "having form", that's fine and clear enough. However if that is the usage of "form" I feel the ability rating is superfluous, this meaning also seems at odds with the intention of Guest's recent reply to Greg re Murghem. All well and good if we can distinguish two distinct meanings behind the term form, I think it would be a useful move to create distinct terms for these two very different concepts.