Hello All,

hope you and yours are well and happy.

Fulham - Thanks for the reply as usual it was very helpful.

All the best
hedgehog

Barney,
Thanks for your comments. You make a valid point that gives added complexity to the evaluation process.

Investor,
Yes I entirely agree. I do use the numerical picture to help me decide whether a race is worth spending the time on in the first place. It points to a potential winner in the race which then becomes worth further investigation.The method I am following is the consistancy method.
Thanks for your reply.

Yours in sport.

Graham

Unfortunately,for one reason or another this thread has now become a joke.It used to be the first thread I looked at on this forum,but is now the last.

For anybody genuinely interested in vdw then you should ignore the latest posts.The posts of Guest,and Mtoto are pretty good.A recent case of a vdw good thing using one of his methods would be One Knight last week odds on,but a certainty all the same.

I take my hat off to Jimmy,he is providing a good service to those who may be misled,by others and I really mean that,his posts are well worth reading.

Hi all,
Max, you asked the question about the posting I wrote on class/form. I notice that following that an answer was provided by Mtoto which really said it all probably much better than I could.
In the most recent example of this (Saturday) you couldn't have failed to pick Mini Sensation out as the outstanding bet of the day, providing that you looked at this race that is, and to me a further example of a horse that had everything going for it, class, form, conditions and ability. If you read the papers I think most tipsters seemed to go for Historg who to my way of thinking was never in the hunt and so it proved. Bets like this jump out at you if you put the work in.
I've not been able to come online for a few days so I am only just catching up with recent postings. I appreciate that the standard on these pages are high and the postings are usually top class so keep up the good work everyone it really is a pleasure to be able to take part.
See you soon, Mike.

Barney

Thats an interestinng concept . Does that mean that you exclude yourself from the private group then . All the best

thank-you for the reply.

Pipedreamer, All.

Would you like to explain your reasoning, expressed in your last post? I have to agree at times there is are lot of stupid irrelevant posts, that have nothing to do with VDW. I don't understand why they can't be deleted.

I also think a lot of interesting questions go unanswered, but then the question must be why? I think some of them are very close to the mark, and an answer would explain too much. Then again, some answer without putting their brain in gear, rendering the answers useless, and in some cases almost laughable.

I would like to ask a few questions, that have not received answers in the past.

1) If the method of finding an ability rating using s/f works for young unexposed horses is a good one. Why not use it for all races?
2) VDW says what the horse does in the last 2f is important. Why use form that doesn't explain that?
3) If there is only the one way to operate the VDW methods correctly, why did VDW say Mr Bingham was well on his way to understanding them?
4) Why are so many horses that are deemed to be out of form, just excepted? Is this just to make the c/form method work? Son Of Love is an example of this, for him to be the c/form horse there are 2/3 horses with solid form in their last runs (with higher ability ratings)
5) Did VDW use collateral form? I don't think he did, but to make some examples work (Soaf) others seem to except that he did.

I ask these questions in the exception they can be answered without giving any secrets away.

I think this thread has gone a long way to explain many aspects of VDW's thinking. Although I do remain concerned, in some cases too much importance is placed on certain items. When this happens other articles, that are just as important seem to be ignored.

Be Lucky

See Groucho Marx remarks, re - any a Club that would accept him as a Member !

Be Lucky !



Tc

Mtoto

re your five questions, in my view the answers are as follows:

1) in the second para. under the sub-heading "Form can Mislead" in the "Spells it all out" article, VDW said that the various elements he used to assess form and class were "selected after a great deal of research". The assumption must therefore surely be that, generally speaking, he found the win-prize-money-based ability rating the best, but for younger horses his sf-based one a useful alternative;

2) in that same article, just under the data for the race won by Little Owl, VDW indicates a number of matters which should be explored after the initial numerical picture has been created. The base one is "study the form of all concerned", and he then lists several matters, including how the horses performed in the later stages of races, which need attention in this phase. In other words, in assessing form, regard is had to how horses finished;

3) VDW made his comment in JB's booklet "Be A Winner", where he (VDW) also wrote "Truth to say, he hasn't gone all the way, but perhaps this will come in time". If one considers JB's analyses of the several races detailed in "Be A Winner" it is clear that he had indeed gone a fair way down the road, but there is no evidence whatsoever that he had discovered "the missing link". Hence VDW could properly praise what JB had done, but note that he still had a way to go;

4) we don't know for sure that Son of Love was the class/form horse, though it was clearly his selection. To explain why VDW passed over other horses with seemingly good form and higher ability ratings (such as Niniski, Reprocolour and Soleil Noir) would disclose more than I am prepared to do.

But the more general point can be answered. Some of VDW's examples may seem contradictory, and to an extent they might be: as you know, I am somewhat uncomfortable with the Beau Ranger example, where Carved Opal's fall lto was not "forgiven". But in my view, two considerations need to be held in mind:

first, VDW's approach to assessing in-formness was not objective, in the sense that to apply it meant following a rigid set of rules. Rather, it was subjective, in that it relies on the experienced interpretation of some principles. Inevitably, therefore, a small degree of inconsistency would be unsurprising;

second, as one gets what I hope is a fuller and fuller sense of how VDW assessed in-formness, the apparent inconsistencies largely fall way. In other words, one's first broadly right hypothesis about how VDW assessed in-formness takes one so far, but leaves examples which don't seem quite to "work". But as one studies those, one can - if I'm right - move on to subsequent hypotheses with greater explanatory power. I can honestly say that Carved Opal remains the one horse in all the examples I've studied so far which (slightly) jars, and as previous exchanges proved others (Guest and Chaz) think I'm harbouring needless concerns here;

5) there is no doubt that VDW used the performances of other horses to cross-check, and where necessary modify, the "surface" impression of form - Drumgora vis-a-vis Prominent King is one often referred to on the board. There are also examples where he seems to take successive runs against the same horse as a yardstick for improvement/lack of improvement. I am not, however, aware of any example where VDW used collateral form analysis in what I take to be the normal sense of the term, ie horse A beat horse B by 2l at levels; horse B beat horse C by 0.5l at levels, QED horse A should beat horse C by 2.5l.

quote:

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I believe no useful purpose is served by readers subjecting other contributors to abuse , in fact it ultimatly results in depriving interested parties from recieving ideas . Racing is unique in that there are so many ways of approaching the the complexities involved and Forum is, and will be , only as good as you, the readers , make it.
C.Van der Weil, Market Harboroough.

---

Open Your Mind !

and "Listen to Other Opinions" !!!

You have not yet "Scratched the Surface "

this " Forum" has much to teach you ,- if only you would care to "Listen"

I like VDW , and I would love to read your posting.

Please would you rewrite it in "Plaain English" !

Mtoto

On reflection, I think I have been a touch unfair to Jock Bingham in my answer to your third question. There is evidence in, for example, his illustration of the race won by En Attendant, of his moving in the right direction, and this is confirmed in some subsequent publications. There is, however, no evidence in his published works, or in those of his privately marketed "methods" that I have seen, that he ever did go "all the way".

Mtoto,

Some very interesting questions there.Questions asked are often better than answers given because the people they are directed to have to do some work themselves.Subsequently if they find the answers they are much more likely to stick in the mind if only through increased self esteem at having solved some problems.

Fulham gave a typically excellent reply to the points you raised.There are only a couple of minor points that I differ with (although I did learn something from his answer to question 2).In answer to question 4 Fulham said "we don't know for sure that Son of Love was cl/frm".In my opinion every horse that VDW backed was the class/form horse.He said something like "I've said repeatedly that the class/form horse is the one most likely to win".He wasn't surely backing the horse that wasn't the most likely to win ,was he? Therefore every horse selected was the class form horse,in my opinion.I think its the way we arrive at the horse most likely to win that causes us the problems.Hope that makes some sense.

I agree with Fulham about collateral form in a conventional sense being not relative but the logic of not considering subsequent form I'm not so sure about.

Cheers everyone.

fulham, could i ask you about a horses, in formness, jock bingham gave an example of en attendant , which improved its ratings by over 10lbs, over its last three outing, highest class winner present season, does this eqate to your informness in a horses capability, many thanks grundy,

john duncan

Bream

I think you may well be right on the class/form issue, but at present I'm not certain. For me, VDW's mainstream examples fall into four categories:

1) those 21 where he explicitly named the c/f (in one case, mistakenly);

2) those there, though not explicitly named as such, I am certain the selection was the c/f: examples include Prominent King, Rifle Brigade, and Roushayd;

3) those where there I think the selection was the c/f, though some sort of case could be made for others: examples would include Love from Verona and Son of Love;

4) those where, in my present state of understanding of how VDW assessed "in-formness", I can see quite a strong case for regarding alternatives to VDW's selections as the c/fs: examples include Battlement (Move Off) and Swiss Maid (Cistus). These could be situations where VDW favoured a 2nd c/f over a weaker c/f, as Guest favoured Flagship Uberalles over c/f Edredon Bleu in last year's Champion Chase.


Grundy

In my view, no. The way JB addressed the En Attendant race suggests he'd got a sense of VDW's drift, but had a long way to go. I do not believe that ratings of the sort JB quoted had any part to play in VDW's assessment of "in-formness", but rather were used as broad cross checks.

(In a sense JB used ratings in the En Attendant example in a similar way to that in which VDW used sfs in the Roushayd example, and both may sometimes serve as a proxy. (Just as Mtoto's use of sfs sometimes gives the same result as the use of the win-prize-money ability rating. But Roushayd wasn't a form horse because he'd shown improvement in terms of sfs.)

[This message was edited by Fulham on February 03, 2003 at 10:32 PM.]

In your answer to Mtoto's question 2, "What the horse does in the last 2f is important, why use form that doesn't explain that"?, your reply said "The base one is to study the form of all concerned".
The base one is surely the one that VDW indicated,"AND MOST IMPORTANT, how they perfomed in the later stages of each race".
There are also other aspects of that paragraph that are mostly ignored, or not given the appropriate attention, by yourself and like-minded others on this thread, i.e."The course they ran on", "The pace and going of the respective races".
VDW himself drew attention to this passage in 'The myth of the missing link' as being fundamental to his method, yet, in the thousands of postings on this thread, these important points are largely ignored, or seen as inconsequential, by the number of members who can only see ability ratings and c/f horses as the answer.

Bream,

I think there is a world of difference between having the class and form, and being a c/form horse the way Guest, and others work it. VDW showed out of the 6 c/form horses selected on Boxing Day only 2 were considered bets. If I have contributed to the confusion by calling my selections c/form horses instead of the best horse in the race I apologise. I do agree that the early examples all had the class and form to be VDW selection. I don't agree they were all found using the c/form method as later explained.

Fulham,

Thanks for the reply, I must admit I was hoping others would try to reply. The answer to my first question was the one I expected, but not the answer to the question asked. If the method works for 3 year olds, why not older horses? I know VDW gave another way to gauge ability, but he didn't say it was the only one.

[There are numerous time-based ratings available, but I am going to use those provided by Split Second and hope to show that their value may be more than is evident on first sight. Each year in the Handicap Book and other publications by the Sporting Chronicle, a list is give of the best figures produced by the previous season's two-year-olds, (Other ages as well, but for the moment confine attention to this group).]

The words in brackets are his, but doesn't this show he had considered using the method for older horses.

Your reply to Grundy leaves me a little perplexed. Once again VDW never mentioned c/form, or ability in the Roushayd example. There can be little doubt he was a/the class horse in the race. If form is one performance better than another, why then doesn't an improved s/f make him in form? I would rather use that fact, than the beaten 9 lengths soon weakened to judge whether he was in form. I think I would struggle with the latter to make him a form horse.

As I said I was hoping to hear from the likes of Lee, Guest and the mighty Mr e d. Again thanks to you, and anyone that tries to answer my questions.

Be Lucky

Is the win-prize money ability rating part of the VDW method of picking winners,
I'm not sure,But i think Colin davey does the same,Is anybody able to confirm this,
Thanks,Rab

Rab

It is certainly important in VDW's approach. I don't know about CD's.


Johnd

Textual interpretation is just that, interpretation. But if you read the paragraph to which I drew attention carefully, you may on reflection agree with me. The relevant sentence starts: "To confirm what the figures say it is necessary to study the form of all concerned", by which I think VDW meant apply what he later referred to as the "missing link". It then refers to a number of considerations - including performance at the business end of the race - to be held in mind when undertaking the "form" assessment.

I suggest that it would be appropriate to assume that, when referring to "form", unless the context makes it crystal clear that he is using the word in the traditional sense (ie to contrast conventional approaches and his own), VDW was using the term in his, idiosyncratic way. It is that, after all, which mainly distinguishes VDW's approach from others, provides the key for understanding his examples, and causes all those who try to understand VDW's work the most difficulty.


Mtoto

Your first question was "If the method of finding an ability rating using s/f works for young unexposed horses is a good one. Why not use it for all races?" I think I have answered it but, to avoid all doubt, the answer is that, after "a great deal of research", VDW plainly regarded the win-prize-money based ability rating as generally giving the better reflection of class as he conceived it.

As regards sfs in the Roushayd example, R was the class/form horse because he had by far the highest win-prize-money based ability rating and was a form horse. He was a form horse because he comes out as such by applying VDW's "missing link" approach to the evaluation of form. As it happens, in this case we also find improved sfs, which is certainly suggestive of improving form, but they are not needed to show that a horse is a form horse. By way of illustration, consider two of VDW's early examples: Derrylin (lower sf in last race than penultimate one); Orchestra (no sfs for last two runs).

I've had enough of this.
From now on any message posted on the V.D.W thread that has nothing to do with V.D.W will be deleted.
Any member posting a message against this ruling will be banned from the forum and also any member posting any messages elsewhere that are in my opinion offensive to other members will also be banned.
You have been warned!!!

Gummy