Mtoto
Roushayd had CONSISTENT form the way vdw saw it,No different to Dancing mystery had in the southwell race.He was being prepared and had shown form against good consistent horses.

Mtoto
I'm confused as to why you had Jusyafancy top rated.This was a sprint so we have to use speed.

Justafancy 64,61,89 ab rating 51
Dancing mystery 59,79,98 ab rating 67

D.M was clear on both speed and the ability rating and was coming out of higher class 135 finishing 4th and showing good form.I just can't understand why you would have J in front.

Mtoto
Are you basing justafancy on the lingfield run?

Investor,

5f or a 3.5 mile chase I always use speed. As I have said many times it is not based on bare s/f. I most certainly don't use Top Speed, I think it must have been his figures you put up.

I have Justalord 5 points faster than DM. Yes, the figure comes from Lingfield.

For this I don't use this new a/rating so I had no idea what they were. I will say this followed the logic behind the Erin and 78 Cambridgeshire and every other selection I have put up. The only difference between the old races and now, is I use a better method to grade the races. Have to say I think VDW would use it now or something very similar.

No in or out of form horses, all in rate the lot.

Be Lucky

Justafancy no wonder your ignoring me,Iv'e been looking at that one today.****ing sending me crazy.Of course i meant Justalord.

Mtoto
Now i think you are being presumptious.Why would vdw change his ratings He used them for 30 years prior to writing his stuff.To add to that D.M was a higher ability rated form horse that had just finished within 3lgs of a horse that went on to win a class 135 Giving him 4lbs.There was an 8lb swing with quiet times and 11lb with Moayed.The mind boggles.

Invester,

Interesting figures, from which I presume you use all Flat results to calculate your AB. I've tended to use AW for AW and Turf for Turf, as you can get some very useful horses on Turf that can't run a lick on the AW. The figures today were: J (41)- 3rd best, DM (39); top 2 were M (56), QT (53).

I've an idea where Mtoto is coming from on his SFs, but for me to calculate per race that way would take at least 1 hour - download time, as I don't have the convenience of the RP paper edition.

Congratulations to Mtoto for picking the winner, and you yourself if you did, but I'm afraid I couldn't see any reason for it to reverse earlier Southwell form with QT.

I guess it's all wrapped up with learning how VDW read form, which must come from studying the old form books, as I can find NO clues at all in any of his writings.

Seeing as how they are beyond my availablity (even if I bought them I'd have to have them couriered, as mail on such subjects usually goes AWOL), I guess I'll just have to plod on in the the darkness. Still I live in hope that one day I may get as high as a 15-20% strike rate.

Oldtimer

Old timer
Nice to hear from you again.No i didn't back Dancing mystery because he wasn't the class form horse,That honour fell too Moayed (imo) but he had weight against him today.There was conflict with Quiet times and Moayed but given the weights turn around Desert Mystery was a danger most certainly a danger.I don't think Mtoto played either but unfortunately i think we arrived at that particular horse from differing view points.The journey of a thousand miles has taken us in different directions somewhere along the way,Which is a shame.

Hi TC

Good idea... the 'Mtoto says' thread had several posts on consistency. Can the title be changed for ease of reference?

Mtoto,

I have a couple of questions if you don’t mind?

Your opinion is that in today’s day VDW would have used a different means of establishing class. Why? Given his method was so successful.

Surely this suggests that either A. you are achieving better results than VDW having formulated a more successful method than the one that he stated, or B. you don’t believe what was written when he suggested the type of results his method provided?

class measured by purse value is meaningless

Ectoo
When gauged against other horses it is not. Like i have said before,There has to be a way of differentiating particular performances And i have given my view on how vdw COULD have used this rating and it seems to stand up.So i'm happy with that.

but it makes no difference whether against other horses or not..the base rating method of pursue value to decide the "class" of a horse is flawed from the moment you start assigning it.

if I rate a National winner it would be £348,000/10..a gold cup winner £203,000/10.

so any horse running near a grand national winner would rate more highly than a horse running near a gold cup winner.

similar flaws with many handicapas that have greater purses than many graded races.

you will be starting with a flawed rating so any subsequent decisions are flawed based on it.

Investor,

I know it is only one example, but does today raise an interesting question? Can there be two ways to solve the VDW puzzle?

You say you made Moayed the c/form horse. There was plenty of time to notice the weight turn around for Dancing Mystery but it appears not to have been noticed untill after the race. Not just by you but also others that had looked at it. All the collateral form (using regular form or a/ratings) was there but not explained and bought into use until after the result was known.

I still have trouble with this c/form horse but having conflict, if there is conflict how can it have the form?

When VDW presented us with the Erin at no time did he mention an a/rating certainly not the one you use. I solved todays race using the same method as I think he used. Once the result is know all sorts of clever thinking can be used to solve it none of which can be argued about about as it all fits. I have to say none of that thinking was used by me to come to the same answer. However, you can now make it sound so plausible but it wasn't how I did it. So why are you so sure it was how worked? I have to ask why are you right and I'm wrong?

Lee,

I think he would have changed methods because racing has changed. As far as I can see back then the races with the best prize money had the better class horses. To make the racing 'competitive' big prize money seems to be added to some rather poor races. These races are then capped by limiting the class of the horse that can run. Especially in NH handicaps the better horse seem to often to give the races a miss. A couple of years ago the Zetland handicap a £25,000 B 115 race was won by a 84 rated horse I'm not sure but I think it was the top weight (or very close), does that reflect class? It isn't very hard to find examples where the prize money doesn't reflect the class they can be found most weeks.

As OR's are readily available do you really think VDW wouldn't have used them?

I do think his original method can achieve the results he indicated. I do think the method was change after the first few examples and the new a/rating introduced. Investor ask why would he change his method I think the answer is simple he was never going to explain his other ratings. Without them he needed an a/rating for the public to use, one they could understand and formulate themselves. I think he gave them one of his x checks that did mirror a lot of the final ratings.

Be Lucky

Ectoo,

Shallow reasoning.

Do you think that the handicapper has miscalculated Seebald by 15lbs given his short head performance against Best Mate?

It is not possible to gauge class definitely, and therefore impossible to rate numerically, why can’t people understand this and realise that there is other requirements?

Well picked, Mtoto. I left that winner out!

Still, a 2nd and a fourth in a good race.
Magic wasn't disgraced ( Maayed, " AW horse of the year" was) . MG paid well for the place.

DM has certainly been the " class" horse in his time. This 10yo had won plenty of prize money.

He was also well up on latest Topspeed (I know you don't use these figs).

I'm afraid I don't bother looking at Weight. Perhaps I should.
There was a major turnabout in weights between the winner, DM, and the flop, Moayed.
QT was also up in weight, but finished well.

An important filter, I believe, is course and distance.
If we filter by good C and D, this was the shortlist:

DM won
Time and Time Again, not fancied by any
QT 3rd
MG 2nd

A few tweaks and we're there!

Who said only VDWers can backfit and after time?

Btw, not to be outdone, those who rate trainers will know that Wheeler is great at 5f hcps at Sthl.

Oops! I'm giving away far too much now!!

Mtoto,

You haven’t really answered my question.

Surely if, as you’ve implied, you’re not achieving what VDW stated that he did, then you must feel that his method, as he explained it, isn’t worth pursuing.

My reasoning comes for the fact that you’ve said on occasions that your method was based on what you’ve read in Systematic Betting, before having read his earlier letters, and admit that when put to the test the method that you’ve devised doesn’t work on some of those early examples?

If you’ve devised a way of beating the book then more power to your elbow, however, I think if you were truthful to yourself then you couldn’t conclude anything other than your way isn’t the VDW way, even if parts of it are the same.

When you state that races ‘back then’ had the better horses competing for the better races, what method of rating class are you using to base this observation on?

JIB,

My point was that NO rating be it the OH’s or the AR can be used to gauge how good a horse is, at a particular time, or, in isolation, how good a horse is overall.

What makes you think that Seebald put in a sterling effort, any better than normal that is? Why wasn’t it a below par effort by Best Mate?

Mtoto
You say the weight turn around was only noticed after the race,Of course it wasn't.I have given my views to you over the past couple of days and you simply won't accept it.Wether you do accept it or not vdw did use the ability rating to gauge form he also used what a horse had done at the business end of a race and also the class that a particular horse had been running in or against,This is more than evident in many many past examples.With all due respect with the amount of time and effort you have spent on this subject, I am very surprised that you cannot see it.Your hell bent on speed and you keep mentioning this NEW ability rating,It isn't new it's just one way of gauging one performance against another.

Lee,

Yes, I read Systematic Betting first and that is where I started by reading what it said and following it.

When I joined this forum and folk started telling me the way to go was have BL as a none form horse to make the basic method work, I couldn't see it. I set out to find away that BL was well out of it as VDW stated. The only way I could do this was by going back to the thinking in SB. Where VDW judged form by the s/f and the class of the race by the prize money. With a little bit of thought it worked. It worked for the first 7/8 examples in doesn't work for 2. You know the 2, the same 2 that this c/form idea also doesn't work for, without a lot of juggling.

If I'm truthful the more I study these methods the more certain I have become that VDW worked the way I think he did. At present I have found only the 2 examples that made me doubt, and they may have been yet a different method, or work on default ie nothing in the race has the class based on s/f so a different approach is needed. I take it you have no problems with them?

Do you really believe there are not more races with inflated prize money restricted to poor horses?

I except my strike rate is and never will be the 80% suggested was/is possible. That is because I'm betting in a different range from VDW I would never have backed the likes of Little Owl I have only had one bet of under 5/2 in 6 years and then only because it should have been 1/2. Even then it was a bet not included in any of my normal betting procedures.

Be Lucky