Bream,
Regarding Florida Pearl at Aintree I couldn't be certain either so I left the race alone. Its a personal thing regarding confidence levels and Guest was obviously confident enough in his selection process for this race and was duly proved correct. The only thing me, you or anyone else needs to do is to be happy with the situation when we make our bet. If we are not, why bet? Another race will come along soon enough.

Iamamugpunter,
I couldn't agree more with your post concerning Beacon Light. Its amazing how so much time has been spent over whether BL was in form or not when the original letter will tell people all they need to know. Some people just refuse to believe that its that simple.
Regards,

Floria Pearl & Upgrade might be worth looking at .

FP as a selection at Aintree is all down to how each of us reads form.

If ignoring the 2 runs after the King George where there were excuses one could easily have selected him for the Aintree race.

That said such a decision I suspect would have only been made by a very experienced `race reader` which I guess is where Guest comes in.

Most would have read his last 2 runs as a downturn in form but then again why bring back across the water to disappoint for a 3rd time.

Back to hindsight again.

Narrowing the field is one thing; identifying the class/form horse(s) as another; and then there is the final decision to play or not to play.

Isn`t it easy ? I don`t think so.

Cheers,

Earlier today in my message to Imamugpunter I named 3 horses from last flat season which I considered VDW selections.

Any comments would be very much appreciated.

Cheers,

Beacon Light.

IMP
I am a little surprised at your statement RE the above horse. I am even more surprised at Stajack's response. One of the respected contributors has given his interpretation of the Erin, and how vdw makes the selection. For this to work BL has to be out of form otherwise, he would be the selection, using the methods as explained. Guest and many others seem to ignore the remarks about the other to methods (ratings), and are quite happy to try and use their method to arrive at the selection. As this is the first example, it makes sense to me to try and understand how vdw worked.

If Guest is right, and the method he is using to suggest BL is out of form is right. I am having trouble with Celtic Pleasure on the 21/4/78 as he seems to have the same profile as BL.

EC

I agree with a lot of your coments, but I am not sure that vdw would not have adapted as more information became readily available. At the time, race grades were not invented, and OR's not readily availble. Also a lot of handicaps were graded from the bottom, knocking a lot of the better class horses out. (Possibly why vdw said most winners come from the middle to bottom of the handicap) So penalty value as a guide to class, was the only way for the average punter to get a handle on class. In saying this he had always said check the form, for all relevant facts, including course and pace.
While I agree about your horse rated 60, if that same horse was rated 90+. When he was being consistent (even when things were not in his favour). Would that not warn you that when he was trying something he had already achieved, he was in good heart and ready to succeed?

Any way welcome to this board (this is English, forget the latin)

Mtoto/Fulham - VDW said at one point quite early on, "rating and ratings - two different matters". As usual so many have bypassed one of his statements without understanding what he was trying to convey. I said that Harnour was not a form horse for "much the same reason" as Beacon Light. In hindsight I should have added "though not exactly the same reasons." This is because every race is different and the exact circumstances rarely come up again. And so it follows that Celtic Pleasure had little in common with Beacon Light. Running in lower class than both his 2nd in November and his win first time out in March, but higher penalty value than his subsequent 2nd at Doncaster over 2f more with 13lb more and giving 12lb to Amber Valley going down by a length. The Sandown race was back over 1m 2f with less weight and back on easier going this time against largely out of form horses. This was all early season stuff, not after a hard campaign and not at the top level. Very different surely then than Beacon Light. They even ran their races in a totally different way when beaten.

Now compare with Harnour. Dropped to lower class last time, first time out for the campaign and given his ability if he was in form he should have won, given also how he ran. Mactheknife has the right idea regards full evaluation.

Bream - It's a combination of many factors. Florida Pearl had by far the best form from his last 3 runs in the race. Beaten fav next time, again note how he ran. Then beaten again upped in class in the Gold Cup. Again note how he ran and also in comparison with 40/1 shot See More Business who had only won a mickey mouse race this season. Ask some questions such as "who had the hardest race?" , "who looked more likely to succeed at Cheltenham?". Remember, everything is relative and thus has to be balanced likewise.

EC - For me personally, had I chucked VDWs letters in the bin it would have been like chucking hard cash down the drain. Class and Form show the way, not the official handicappers opinion. Facts not opinions. There are certain facts that were not deliberately pointed out by VDW, but they were mentioned in one form or another. Until any given person can see & understand these facts, that given person will never know just exactly how I am finding the class/form horse. It's true some stick out like a sore thumb, but many don't. Only the hidden factors will unveil them.

Haven`t been ignoring you.

Ingoldmells - just there for the day visiting my sister and family who have a caravan on site.

The bookies I found was a Ladbrokes.

Turning to this weeks Free Hcap and the question of the class/form horse(s).
I note you have gone for Redback. Personally, although I haven`t finished my evaluation I anticipate my C/F horse will be BRAGADINO.

Good luck with the VDW selections you are going to post

GUEST

Seems as though my reasoning for discounting Harnour was certainly not for the same reasons as you which makes me realise how much I still have to learn. Mind you I know it will take me many months to even 1/2 understand.
One point which I have noticed is that you no longer address my posts. Is there a problem or am I been too sensitive ?

Cheers,

weight for age rears its lovely head again at windsor today.

Guest

Thanks for your reply. Its common ground that Beacon Light and Harnour were dropped in class on their last runs before the material races and had previously demonstrated that they could win races of higher class. Your principal assumption then seems to be that because they didn't win these more modest events (modest in VDW class rating terms) they were out of form.

I wonder, therefore, how you assessed Stray Shot, one of the six Boxing Day 1984 selections (and clearly, for VDW, one of the two strongest).

Prior to the Boxing Day race, Stray Shot had the highest ability rating among the first few in the forecast, and had won at class 23 over hurdles. He turned to chasing and in 1983/4 his first run was a reasonable second in a class 13. He was then dropped very slightly in class and finished second, beaten 12l, in a race he should surely have won, where he was backed to 7/4 favourite. Yet, for VDW, he was clearly the class/form horse for the Boxing Day race.

On your line of reasoning with BL and Harnour, was there not reason for by-passing Stray Shot for the Boxing Day race and seeing the perhaps unlucky loser (and short priced favourite) Duesenberg as the class/form horse in the race? (Perhaps I'm being unduly sceptical but, had not Duesenberg unseated his rider when blundering at the 4th, and gone on to win, I suspect VDW would have included him among the Boxing Day six as further evidence of the success of his approach!)

Fulham - Stray Shot was not entitled to win his race just prior to winning at Huntingdon. Think about it carefully. Every situation is different but the reasoning remains the same.

Determined - Not ignoring you, just so many questions seem to appear from others.

Fulham/Guest,

Excuse me for butting into your conversation. I now have most of the old form books but to be honeat I have not yet started going through all the old examples.

I was intrigued with Guest`s latest reply to Fulham. Very briefly, looking at SS first 2 races over fences I note they were both novice events and his winning race was his first hcap chase ?

Anything to do with his hcap mark, ie - winning a novice early on doesn`t always help matters.

I sincerly hope I am not confusing matters. If so, my sincere apologies.

Cheers,

Mtoto you posted~IMP I am a little surprised at your statement RE the above horse. I am even more surprised at Stajack's response.

It came about because I had just found an old booklet called 'Winning Ways To Bet' by Methodmaker which contained a supplement called VDW Update. The article THE VDW APPROACH...The Beginning discusses the Erin. When I read the paragraph quoted in my previous post I thought that here was something useful I could post which might stop others undergoing something akin to 'teenage angst' over BL. I don't know if it has been mentioned before, if so, sorry for going over old ground. When well over 1000 messages have been posted it's difficult trying to retain everthing that's been said.

cheers IMP

hope you dont mind me here but i thought i would have a go, i dont know your methods but perhaps you will bare with me

3.00 windsor thinn @ 7/2 this means no bet less than price, he is carrying 10lb more than last race but 4 others are also carrying more weight

4.20 plumpton drum battle @ 3/1
ecuyer du roi @ 9/2
my choice is in the above order if i can get the prices then a dutch if not i bet on the horse with the price i put up

hope this makes sense
be lucky cabbie

Guest

Thanks for your comment re Stray Shot which opens up a line of thinking which, if it proves correct when applied to the "Ultimate Wheil of Fortune" examples, most certainly explains Harnour and offers an alternative (and no less convincing) way of arriving at the same conclusion re BL and Decent Fellow as my existing one (which I suspect may also be Lee's) produces.


Determined

Unless I'm barking up very much the wrong tree, the point you raise re Stray Shot is not directly relevant to identifying him as the class/form horse.

Incidentally, although not in this case material, I think, researching Stray Shot (where I have a copy of the relevant pages from the Sporting Life)provides yet another example of how even having the old Form Books does not enable one to bring together the whole story for horses who have raced outside Britain. Thus to check out my thoughts on Guest's latest posting its another trip to the Newspaper Library. (If only the Racing Post database was available for those early VDW examples, what time we could save!)

Its sounds as though my comments have no relevance to the question you have raised with Guest so again sincere apologies to you, guest and anybody out there who I may have confused.

In short, the contents of my earlier post should be totally ignored.

The lengths you seem to be going to in studying the old examples is very impressive and judging by what I read from your posts I have no doubt you will reach your goal and lead a very fruitful life from the hard work you are putting in.

I have used the name Determined. Perhaps it is you who should have this title.

Good luck in your quest.

Fulham,

The last post from Guest probably contains the biggest nudge, directly, that has been given so far on this thread. Answer the question contained and you’ll be well on your way.

To uncover the hidden factor/s that are imperative to making this method work you don’t require past sporting newspapers. Of course they are very handy to have in order to check some points that aren’t available in the formbooks, such as race conditions etc, but on the whole the relevant formbooks are most important.

Determined,

Duesenberg was actually awarded a 7lb penalty for his previous success in a relatively low class affair where as Stray Shot was still to win over the large fences. But a look at Stray Shot’s form last time out gives us the answers, it’s much better than what Duesenberg had shown, even without taking in to account the penalty.

could be wasting my time trying to get my head round this stuff!

conversation this am.

" look 2 n's nifty norman, i fancy that and look another one 2 p's patavium princess and its trained by tim easterby i like that even better" she never spotted brilliant basil

Determined

No need for apologies, and I may be quite wrong and have gone off on yet another false trail as a result of Guest's comment.

The situation I find myself in is this. VDW focused principally on the balance between class and form, and to my mind there is no doubt whatsoever that getting this balance right is the key to finding winners and avoiding losers. And in practice I have no difficulty in doing both. My problem is that my way of analysing races to get to that balance takes a lot of time, as I focus on Group 1 and 2 races and the better class handicaps and often there are a dozen or more runners to check out. I find I can't manage more than a couple of races a morning, and as usually the conclusion is "no bet", I don't bet very often - only seven serious VDW-based bets since Christmas!

Identifying what VDW referred to as the "class/form" horse does not in itself provide a selection, as Guest's posts have made perfectly clear. More often than not he does not back the "class/form" horse, and sometimes (as with Flagship Uberalles in the QM Champion Chase) he seems to back against it. However, he clearly finds it useful to identify the "class/form" horse, (and by the number of races he covers in some posts is able to do this quite quickly), and I suspect that part of the benefit is to speed up his form analysis by focusing attention on those "form" horses and other possibles rather than the field as a whole. (I'm not suggesting that VDW - or Guest - ignores any runner: rather that some need more attention than others, and identifying the "class/form" horse, and other, more clearly-explained, short-cuts VDW gave us, are serviceable in this regard.)

As I would like to be able to cover more races than I can at present, finding the means of identifying the "class/form" horse relatively quickly is naturally of interest.

In his articles in "Ultimate Wheil of Fortune", VDW explicitly names 21 horses as "class/form" horses, of which one (Desert Hero) was found by a slightly different approach, involving the number of tipsters opting for it as report in the "Selections" box of the Sporting Chronicle.

Leaving to one side Desert Hero, whom I've not yet researched, there are thus 20 explicitly named "class/form" horses to be explored, for starters. (We can't be sure that all the other examples VDW gave us were what he regarded as the "class/form" horses in their respective races - indeed I'm all but certain that they weren't.)

A fellow contributor with whom I collaborate has had the imagination to suggest a plausible short-cut to identifying "form" horses which my researches show, when used in conjunction with VDW's ability rating, identifies 19 of the 20 as the "class/form" horse. (And it identifies Prominent King as the "class/form" horse in the 1978 Erin, though - and I stand to be corrected - VDW never explicitly stated that PK was the "class/form" horse.) However, it does not select the 20th - Stray Shot - hence my question to Guest earlier today.

Guest's helpful reply suggests to me another possible short-cut to identifying "form" horses (on broadly similar lines, but importantly different), which would lead to Stray Shot being identified as the "class/form" horse in the Boxing Day 1984 race, and would also identify Prominent King as the "class/form" horse in the Erin. Further, using this other possibility, Harnour is no longer the "class/form" horse in the 3.25 at Pontefract last Saturday, as he was on my collaborator's suggestion.

What I now need to check is whether using the alternative suggested by Guest's post confirms as "class/form" horses the 19 from the "Ultimate Wheil of Fortune" identified as such by the method my collaborator has found. If it does, prima facie its more likely to be the one VDW himself used than the one my collaborator has suggested. If it doesn't, then its a question of finding an approach that gives all 20. Its really as simple as that.

I can well understand that others think the time some of us spend on these old races is time wasted. From my point of view, nothing could be further from the truth. VDW's articles take us a long way - but working through the examples in the light of the articles takes us further. One can simply rest on such statements as (regarding Beacon Light) "using two methods of rating all five horses, I found that the three starred horses came out best. Both methods showed Beacon Light well out of it". Or one might want to try to find out EXACTLY why Beacon Light was not a "form" horse. My hunch - which I'm backing with my time - is that the more one understands, the more winners and less losers one will back.

Best of luck.


Lee

As will be apparent from the above, I certainly hope you are right re Guest's latest post, but your comments re Stray Shot and Duesenberg suggest to me that I may be off-target - again! But are you sure?

I take it we agree with Guest that the "class/form" horse is the "form" horse with the highest ability rating? Given the absence of some relevant runs/wins from the Form Books, how can you get to the ability ratings of various horses without access to the Sporting Lifes (or possibly Chronicles) of the period?

Given your response to my query re Wild Gamble and Balmer Coombe, I would have anticipated that you'd have regarded Stray Shot as "out of form", but I'm clearly wrong in that regard. What about the class/form horse in the 3.25 at Pontefract on Saturday - Harnour or Kayseri?

just to throw in my tuppence worth

why was duesenbergs previous run low class and PK previous run high class??when the duesenberg race was a higher value..

duesenberg had shown he was consistent of sorts but its hardly inspiring form.

i must be missing something because pk,cp,ss all look the same to me,the similarity with florida pearl is i hope a different pattern.

we have to measure how one performance is better than another dont we??

not all horses are prepared the same way,if only it was that simple!

why do horses fall?? they dont all do it and then they can win just as easily next time i think its when they are pushed up too far too fast.

[This message was edited by Barney on April 15, 2002 at 08:43 PM.]

thanks for the replies lads

I spent a fair bit of time on this years ago, not as dedicated as you guys because I didn't believe in looking at races after they had been run. A lot of the discussion is like system backfitting to me.

If a race was picked at Newmarket this week and you all gave your ideas on it before the race is run it might be interesting.

If someone would pick a race I would give my views the way I read a race. Some of the horses mentioned on here have been clear bismarks for me using criteria I think important.

Shall we assess a race from Newmarket?

cheers
ec