Sung to the tune of IT'S OVER by the great Roy Orbison

123...A 1234


Your Gummy doesn't love you anymore

Golden VDW days before they end,
Whisper secrets to the wind
Your Gummy won't be near you anymore.

Tender nights before they fly
And falling VDW posters that seem to cry
Your Gummy doesn't want you anymore
It's over.

It breaks Gummie's heart in two
To know VDW'ers have been untrue
But, oh what will you do?
When you move to somewhere new
We're through, we're through.

It's over
It's over
it's over

All the members in the sky
Start to weep and say goodbye
You won't be seeing Gummy anymore.

Setting VDW'ers before they fall
They don't come to you. That's all, that's all
But you'll see lonely VDW'ers after all.

Gummy

I'm perfectly happy to keep going on this thread.

I just got fed up with day's worth of petty slanging matches, which is whta the thread had turned into.

Rob

I posted the following early in July in the hope of re-stimulating discussion. Sadly it was virtually ignored in amongst the bickering, though JIB did comment on it.



'What little discussion there is seems to have migrated to the '80%' thread.

I was always sceptical of this 80% winners tag for VDW and I can't help thinking that it detracts from the main theme.

There have been many posts from people rubbishing VDW. There seems to be little in the way of 'better' methods of analysis coming from these sources.

Take a look at a few the basic tenets of form as discussed by Van Der Wheil. They're in the approximate order that they were dealt with in correspondence.

1) 'The first 5 in the betting forecast in non-handicaps and the first six in handicaps, produce a high percentage of winners.'

This is true and can be proven by running RSB software. It's backedup by statistics over a long period of time. It's also the area where the bookmakers have the least advantage.

2) 'If we add the last three placings of the respective horses in the betting forecast together, we have a numerical picture. This can be illuminating and show, subject to other considerations, the good betting propositions. A high percentage of winners come from the lowest figures.'

Once again this can be proven by running an historical database. It's not saying that horses don't win with poor form figures, but what it does say is that those with good figures are more likely to win than those with poor figures. I'd be more trusting of a horse with 121, 111, 211 as it's figures than 458, 634 or 625, 'subject to other considerations'.

3) 'Mr Swann may care to give thought not to a race as a whole, but to the respective horses' performances over the last two furlongs of each of their previous three outings. What a horse does, or does not do, at this stage will provide the answers.'

A horse's ability to get competitive and to 'put it in' at the business must be considered a key part of form evaluation.

4) The next point is the Ability rating.
'A simple way to rate the field on ability is to relate the prize money won to the number of races won.....For obvious reasons this is not foolproof, but at least it enables a better judgement to be made and usually it unwise to stray from the top few.'

Fairly simple this idea may be, and there are cases where it does give a false picture, but in general the higher the value of the race the better the race is. VDW acknowledged that it isn't always straightforward and qualified his remarks regarding Ability rating by stating 'I must again stress ratings are a guide and should be used in conjunction with other factors'.

Those are four very solid planks on which the VDW writings are based. The ideas were expanded upon over a number of years, but the basic ideas remained the same. Now to me these seem to be very useful tools to narrow down the field to the most likely winners.

Other publications have been mentioned. Clive Holt of Fineform uses a fairly similar approach, Peter Braddock's books also use similar form factors in his selection process. I'm sure there are others, but the fact that other sources may use a similar approach surely can't be said to invalidate the VDW method.

Too much is made of the smokescreen of '80% winners' which I believe is nigh on impossible to attain. The 80% thread shows just how tough it is, even for people who seem to have a better grasp of the methodology than many. Racing is now more competitive now than 20 years ago. However with careful study and use of data then it's possible to make a good profit from analysing races ina similar way to VDW.

There may or may not have been someone called Che Van Der Wheil. If he existed all well and good, if not then there have been plenty of works written under pen-names, but that doesn't invalidate them

It's simply ridiculous to dismiss VDW's methods out of hand, they are based on sound form principals. If others consider that they have more effective ways of studying form then fine, let's hear them or let them go away and make their money. I wish no one ill-luck in their betting. Rubbishing an idea because you don't agree with it achieves nothing unless you can prove that it is wrong or you can provide a better alternative.'



I would welcome any comments, preferably constructive!
Rob

Well said, Rob North. Without being at all familiar with the VDW principals, I have gained the impression, reading this thread, that the big problem for many of the adherents has been their slavish adherence to "the rules".
Regarding the task of establishing a horse's class ..... perhaps a better guide than prize money won would be the grades in which the animal has won or been placed. I have not tested this and would not expect the idea to work with 2yos, but it seems logical and might have been preferred by VDW had graded races existed in his day.

Arkle

The idea of using official race gradings has an attraction, but unfortunately they don't correlate well with win prize money. Today, for example, the highest class handicap grade-wise was the 4.00 Chester, a grade B worth £15,399 to the winner. At Goodwood, there were several grade C handicaps with much greater win prize money - the 3.50 on 30/7, for example, was worth three times as much as today's B. And even single meetings are not consistent - there were grade Ds at Goodwood with win prize money significantly higher than some grade Cs.

The win prize money divided by number of races won figure is not a perfect measure of class, as Rob says, but it allows for a more graduated ranking than using best win by offical grade, and a more speedily established one than making some calculation based on numbers of races won at each grade. Above all, when used in combination with "in-formness" and capability checks, it continues to work as well now as it did in VDW's day. Check, for example, the three grade B handicaps over this weekend, two of which were won by the class/form horse (the horse with the highest ability rating which was also in form from a VDW perspective), the other by a form horse that any self-respecting VDWer would either have made a bet in preference to higher ability-rated form horses or, at worst, included as part of a book. (Admittedly one of the three was a nursery, where you anticipated that the official grade alternative might not work.)

How about prize money multiplied by number of horses beaten divided by number of races regardless of win or loss?

Epi

Has that ever worked?

Thanks for pointing that out.

Grey hair and a moustache but if you strip them off you have the face of a young girl. Heredidarily handicapped in this way Einstein, feeling the fud inadequate, deceived the temporal establishment. L.....

Dr Fulham,

Why do you live in the graveyard only to pop out ocassionally from behind a headstone to post re-actively rather than to smell the coffee and post pro-actively ?

Further posts on this thread make me think of what the quartet must have sounded like ten minutes after the Titanic sank.

Which "ham" finds it's 'ful'filllment on this thead.

I've noticed recently the popularity of the stable info thread, in which as far as I can tell (correct me if I'm wrong), info is emerging from someone close to the Gay kelleway stable.

Anyone who has been involved in racing during the last 15 years should be aware that Gay is a good saleswoman basically and like a lot of small trainers, she has the gift of the gab. Her stable somehow has a reputation, like many in racing, for pulling off betting coups and I've no doubt they do land the odd touch. But surely anyone who has observed her many tv appearances must know she is a terrible tipster in the main. She has also been involved in various tipping services, again like many others in racing. None of these tipsters actually make a decent profit from betting though, that is why they clamber for paid tv appearances and launch tipping services. It's one of the ways they cling on in the racing industry. And yet there is a neverending line of punters who believe that trainers,jockeys, owners, tv pundits, etc all somehow know the winners beforehand.

Yes, there are a minority of people who make it pay, but they do it their own way. And they don't thow it away by owning racehorses or training them. Everyone should have seen that old name Colin Davey crop up today in the winners enclosure. How did he get there one might ask? It's not a difficult answer.

So, whilst there have been some nice winners amongst the Stable Info, I found it interesting that it seems because it is "stable" or "inside" info, it carries more weight with forumites. This says to me that once again nothing has changed in racing. Everyone thinks it's all about inside info.

I'm sure I'll get a slating for this by the usual suspects, but one thing I know I'm right about in racing is that blind "inside tips" are useless in the long run and those we see on tv have nothing useful to impart. They just all like getting paid to remain in an industry they are addicted to.

III

You ask why I don't post pro-actively these days. The answer is straightforward. I have already explained as fully as I intend to do how I put into operation VDW's main method, which is the only one of the three that I currently understand.

As to posting re-actively, I now do so in two main circumstances:

a) when someone like Arkle comes along with a sensible comment or question, I'm glad to offer a view if I think it may contribute to an emerging discussion;

b) when someone wholly ignorant of the subject matter like JIB comes along with the usual nonsense, I'm glad to offer a counter point of view, in the hope that the likes of GWHunt are not put off by the rubbish peddled by those too idle or stupid to put in the work necessary to find out for themselves how well the VDW methodology continues to work.

Guest - the 'Stable Info' thread is but one face of the multi-faceted diamond that is the Gummy Forum!

I was watching attheraces when they had the lunchtime trifecta race during the winter,
Gay Kelleway was the guest,Her last words to the lady who had won the £100 free bet,and lost it as her choice got beat,Was to back Geronimo tomorrow,
It won by a snotter and i think the price was 6/1,
At the time i thought that was a good call and also told me she must know when her horses are right,
So for the members of this forum who have signed up to get the stable info will at least get to know if the horse is ready to win or get placed and to know when not to bet and therefore make up there own minds what they do with it,
So Guest i would rather know about the horse before i backed it and there would be no better place than the stable to get the info,Maybe you could sign up and you might get a winner or 2,You never know your luck,
Good luck,Rab

Rab - That was just one race. If you have watched Gay over the years she is notorious for calling something a certainty only for it to get beat.

Her stable has had a purple patch recently, but what happens when she goes back into the wilderness, as she so often does?

Besides, I have never seen so much praise for a losing bet? If Newey gets so worked up when he has a large bet, then he is going to give himself an ulcer.

Don't fall into the trap of selective memory, that is the weapon of the tipsters adverts.

I personally have known many owners including those with horses at Gays stable. They all have great affection for her, but they have all lost small fortunes in addition to their training fees. A trainer has to be a salesman to keep things ticking over. And we all know about salesman?

A few weeks ago, I bumped into a mutual friend of a well known owner/bettor. He asked what I thought about the owners runner at Epsom that night as it was having it's first run for him. The forecast fav looked a class above and my friend said the owner had reliable info that certain others in the race were not up to it. He knew this because he also had horses with trainers with other runners in the said race. So all in all, the owner thought the fc fav would win easily.

The result? Well, the good thing was unplaced, the owners horse won easily and the other runner who was "not up to it" chased him home.

Gummy,

I disagree with the idea of hiding this thread, even though it has passed its sell by date. I think you should consign it to the scrap heap where it belongs. You can again see what happens when it is allowed to continue.
Robnorth seems to be under the impression that the problem was caused by non-believers disrupting things. Well I must admit I have on occasion disrupted this thread and yes I am a non-believer but I have never rubbished the basic ideas behind VDW, or anyone else for that matter. The problem with VDW as I see it is caused, not by the method, but by the people who apply it. People like Fulham who consistently points out it is not a system and the final selection is down to personal choice, then equally consistently comes back and shouts about yesterdays racing and how the top class/form horse won. Now there are two possibilities here, either Fulham is an idiot and doesn’t see the contradiction here or, and in my opinion the most likely, he is a shit stirrer and thrives on starting trouble like we have on here. Now it could be that like statajack he needs professional help or it could be a lack of self esteem which would explain his posts about some mickey mouse history paper, (an obvious attempt to justify his miserable existence.), and he thinks that by stirring things on here he has a modicum of control and he is in charge. Then we have people like investor who must find it difficult to walk without tripping over his nose by now. And the great Guru himself Guest. The “Main Man”. The one who could teach anyone who was prepared to put in the work how to select horses as good as he could. Well, if his record on here is anything to go by, and we don’t have anything else to go by, my wifes cat would make a better teacher on how to pick winners. As for the sour grapes in his last post I think Rab summed it up rather well. What kind of blinkered fool would be so entrenched in what is obviously a flawed method that he won’t take on board any kind of information to help make decisions that can only improve things for him, even if you don’t use the information it is like another piece of the puzzle.
The best thing you could do with this thread is bin it. And if Robnorth wants to start another then fair enough. Maybe second time lucky, it may turn out as the type of exploratory thread that I’m sure Swish intended at the start. The only problem is that it is likely to be high jacked again by the fundamentalists and the fun would start all over again, maybe not such a bad idea, it has been a laugh.

Guest

Your right that was just 1 race and maybe it is selective memory but now i have the chance of getting some more thanks to Newey,
If she does get a few winners at least i will know what has the biggest chance
Good luck,Rab