I get the impression that Guest, Fulham and the like consider the 'c' of 'c/form' to be defined by the controversial ability rating. I dont believe that rating is very important and I think you have expressed a similar view, so I'm wondering if you really think in terms of two major components, class and form, or if the value of your idea of the best horse in the race is being overlooked by using the traditional term? If that isn't the case would you say that relative class can be easily distinguished? Otherwise it seems to me that we should be thinking about the b/s horse, best horse in terms of raw physical ability and suitability to the prevailing conditions.

Chris

The race with Buckbe nicely illustrates the point I made yesterday - take what VDW said as his view of the facts (except for the odd palpable error) - and the corollary is ignore views posted here which are contrary to what VDW wrote.

There are a few palpable errors - eg the consistency ratings for Beacon Light and Prominent King were given wrongly in the "Erin" article; there are mistakes in the figures for Chumson and Gandy VI in the "Diamond Edge" example; and most significantly of all Bonny Gold's ability rating was given incorrectly due to an error by the Sporting Life and he was NOT the c/f (though a form horse). But these apart (and of course we don't know whether VDW or the Sporting Chronicle were responsible for the first two), assume the facts are correct and certainly VDW's statements on which horses were form horses, or not form horses.

Buckbe was most certainly the class/form horse, and the two main issues of interest in this example were (1) why wasn't he a bet (and VDW gives numerous examples of c/fs NOT to back, ie Kenlis, Gaye Chance etc) and (2) the question Mtoto has raised.

LOL.
Nice reply and very funny.
All good fun.

Chris

Epiglotis,

While I'm not happy with the ability rating as used by Guest, and others. I do believe an ability rating is a must, how else can a judgement be made on how good a horse is or isn't? I use my ability rating as a starting point, as VDW says what good is having the class if the horse isn't in form? So the answer to your question is yes I do use class, and form, as the main criteria for my selections.

My main concern with the c/form method as used by Guest and others, is the assumption that a horse is not a form horse, because it is out of form. I have spent a few hours going over the 85 King George. VDW doesn't say BHL is out of form, he says he is not a form horse, is that surprising in the light of one of his previous articles it says

[Therefore, when looking at the relative merits of one horse against another, these two elements class and form must be equated along with the other aspects such as
distance, going, track, etc. Whatever the form and class, a long-striding galloping horse is almost bound to come unstuck on a sharp track].

I take on board Fulham's point that BHL had won the KG the year before, but were the other competitors in form the year before? Did anything happen in the race that stopped them running to their form?

Fulham says he made Lady Cricket out of form for Saturdays race. I think Guest said he thought the race was to close to call. I do honestly think if VDW had used that race as an example both would have been happy, and could see why LC was a selection. I can't see why LC was anymore out of form than Celtic Pleasure, and the race any tougher than many VDW used as examples.

Be Lucky

Thanks for the reply.

Mtoto

You wrote that some of us (we think following VDW) base our analysis on:

"the assumption that a horse is not a form horse, because it is out of form."

That is exactly right, but as stressed many times, VDW used the term "form" in an idiosyncratic way.

As was also emphasised by VDW, sorting out the class/form horse is not always straightforward, and none of us can be certain what he would have made of Lady Cricket last Saturday. All one can do is deduce the principles and practices he applied from the examples he gave, and it is far from unlikely that one's efforts in that regard are imperfect.

We are necessarily in a situation of some uncertainty. If VDW really had, quite explicitly, "spelt it all out", the value of the knowledge would have been much lower. As it is, those of us who try to work his [c/f] way know that we may well be operating with less than 100% of his approach. I am not without hope that this situation may change, but it hasn't in twenty odd years so the odds must be against.

Hi all,
Class and Form seem to be the most used words in the recent mailing to the board.
VDW said 'What is form if is not that one performance is better than another.'
To use a plain English example if a Football team such as Manchester United played a team from the Conference League only the eternal optimist would bet on Manchester United losing.
If a Derby winner were to run in a seller at Musselburgh again you would think there could only be one winner.
Anyone looking at the examples above could not fail to pick out the Class selection.
If Man. Utd. won and the Derby winner won however would you call that good form?
It's true it doesn't always work out that way for one reason or another and thats why you get 33/1 winners.
If Man. Utd. were to play Arsenal, Liverpool and Newcastle and win all three then that is good form. They would have shown that when competing against teams in their own class they had the ability to win.
I personally think the same is true in racing and when you have horses of similar ability racing against each other this is when class and form come into there own.
As VDW said you should look at the class of race they ran in, where they ran, distance won or beaten by, the pace of the race and how they performed in the later stages.
The Ability(class) rating is only a guide and should be used as that.
Your looking for the horse with everything going for it, ground, distance,track,and in form.
If you look at VDW selections I dare say that they all had everything going for them and if there was a slight doubt then he didn't back them.
They don't come round anywhere near as often as I would like but that only brings in his other weapon which is temperament.
He did give other examples for the daily backer using a different method, but for the method I believe we all try to use you can't ignore the hard work factor.
See you soon, Mike.

in your above post you mention "i personally think the same is true in racing and when you have horses of similar ability racing against each other this is when class and form come into there own."
if the above is true and horses of similar ability are competing against each other then how do you find the stand out bets?because they would all hold as good a chance as each other and the level of form each horse has shown would be negligable in comparison to each other and the only thing you could use to determine eaches chances would be going and distance suitability.
if you have managed to find one of these good things then surely if it goes on and wins easily it contradicts the earlier point because it is of superior ability as its win has shown in relation to the rest of the runners.

Max,

I expect Mike will reply in his own words when he sees your post. I would just like to say a horse can have the ability but it needs the other things Mike has mentioned. Most of all it needs to be IN FORM, all the ability in the world can't help a horse that is out of form. So when a race is assessed you need to find the class horse (ability) then you have to find the one that is IN form with the track distance, etc. in its favour. It is possible to have 4/5 horses with the required class, 2 of them are in form, but only one has the rest going for it. You may have an easy winner, and nothing has been contradicted.

Be Lucky

Mike

Your sense that VDW's examples all had everything going for them is, in respect of the kind of factors you listed, incorrect. By way of example, an early VDW selection was Rifle Brigade, seen as an "outstanding" bet first time out as a 3yo over a mile and a half, having never run publicly over more than a mile.

There really is much more to be learnt about VDW's approach by the detailed study of his examples than by the most careful reading of the letters and articles, not that study of those is unimportant, of course.

This struck me a couple of weeks back.Wothington cup semi final,Liverpool v Sheffield Utd,over two legs.
1st Leg at Bramhall Lane
Sheff Utd in form
Liverpool Class team but out of form.
With conditions in their favour the form team beat the out of form, class team,but not by much.

2nd Leg at Anfield.
Liverpool Class team,out of form
Sheff Utd in form
with conditions now in their favour the Class team beat the form team,but not by much.

Does this make sense,or is it just rubbish.

Mike,Mtoto,Fulham,

Some very interesting points made there recently Guys.Thanks for that.One of Mikes points about temperament is very apt.For me,overcoming my desire to gamble is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

Only betting when you think you can accurately assess (should that be appraise?) the odds is the only way forward for the gambler in my opinion.

Over a period of 15 years I used to smoke 30 cigs a day.Packing in the fags was a doddle compared to relinquishing the thrill of gambling.I can't imagine a situation where I would want to smoke again but I honestly couldn't say that I would never take a gamble again.Perhaps that illustrates the dagger hanging over all our heads and VDW's insistence that without temperament all else fails?

Reading the latest posts from Mickeddy's onwards I would say that there is nothing new here. If the bet is going to be safe the horse has to have shown it has the form (ability), it has to be known to be in form and it has to have demonstrated that it can handle the specific conditions that it is about to face in the race, I think you'll find that any serious analyst will consider these things, there's nothing here that's special to VDW. Three possibilities come to mind, first there is something further (idiosyncratic, revolutionary) in VDW's interpretation of form that is quite different from these routine considerations, second the feature of VDW is that after studying the form of all the horses and making a clear choice the horse must fit all the requirements of the 'numerical picture' to qualify as a bet, third VDW's approach is distinguished by consideration of something else apart from 'class' and 'form'. (Again here I can see the problems that arise from using the word form as it has two very different meanings however for the phrase class/form to have meaning my position is that the form refered to must be the form of 'in form'.) About the second possibility; this reminds me of the filters put up by Max, once the selection is decided there are various checks for anything suspect that can be made. This is an important point as it shows that there are many ways of working that follow the spirit of VDW without being slave to the letter, after all in his writings VDW uses lots of expressions along the lines of, one of the ways, I prefer, it can be done by, etc, in short there is no hard and fast set of rules but the application of principles from which the bettors own style emerges. On the first possibility; Mtoto, I would like to ask you if in your understanding of VDW's examples you have employed anything revolutionary, idiosyncratic or in any other way mysterious in your interpretation of form or have you been thorough and dilligent in your application of all the routine elements of form study? The third possibility? I haven't seen anything to suggest one either in the writings or in this forum.

Since your bleating about the lack of information, which has been generously provided,
your position has not changed has it?

Because you cant see it, it does not mean its not there.

Ultimately, I assume, that is why you set up the alternative thread because there is "nothing special" about VDW's methods.

Well lets see you start to apply them if its so easy.

I take it that you're going for the third possibility?

Epiglotis

If you could bring yourself to give serious consideration to what VDW wrote, and particularly to his examples, it might become clear to you that the "answer" is your first possibility.

To mention just three examples: VDW found as bets Love from Verona, Son of Love and Desert Hero. If you studied these races, I would be amazed if you concluded that conventional form study would have thrown up any of them as a likely winner, still less a clear bet. But VDW's class/form approach did.

Similarly, you write, in the same vein as Mike, that from a form point of view, to be a bet a horse "has to have demonstrated that it can handle the specific conditions that it is about to face in the race." How come, then, that for VDW Rifle Brigade was an "outstanding" bet, when it was contesting, fto as a 3yo, a mile and a half race having never run, publicly, over more than a mile?

The whole point about VDW is that he thought in an innovatory way about "class" and "form, and about how to operationalise their assessment, from which, thankfully, those prepared to put in the necessary hard work can benefit.


Bream

re temperament, VDW says somewhere (I can't immediately put my hand on the passage) forget about having numerous small bets, and put what you would have staked on these over a month on one, well-selected horse. I think what he meant here was forget about betting as a daily ritual, where what one loses is neither here nor there, but instead see it as something of consequence, where losing MATTERS.

Thus if one habitually lays out £10 a day, this would mean staking £200 or £250, and the average £10 a day man would surely think long and hard before putting down such a stake.

Thanks for personally addressing a mail to me but you've got to be ****ing joking if you think I would bother reading such a long post considering your insistence on vacuity.

Epiglotis

Oh, you've read it all right. You just haven't got what it takes to address a serious argument. No problem. Continue to live in a world of unreasoned prejudice, no doubt being among the large majority of losers who play at the game rather than the small minority who make it pay handsomely. (2 out of 13 - really!)

Fulham,

You've made yet another post that I can certainly identify with. Particularly about the variety of problems that VDW had to solve in the selection of the horses you mentioned.

Re temperament, I view it on 2 levels.I think you are certainly right that to achieve the s/r VDW was stating every bet has to matter and you can’t afford to mess about. You would need to be able to assess the probability of an event occurring. Having achieved that level (VDW's) however, whether the selection wins or loses in that particular instance wouldn't matter because the probability of the next bet being a winner is much greater than that of it being a loser.

[This message was edited by Bream on January 31, 2003 at 09:43 PM.]