Thanks for the reply,I know what you mean,hopefully the post Christmas fare will throw up 1 or 2 good bets,last year one that springs to mind is Wonder Weasel,on the 26th/27th Dec,can't recall where.Also Landing Light.

i perhaps should not post this on here,but this is a reply to guest,who said,people are putting too much faith in official ratings,i can tell you definately official ratings are 100 times more important than ability ratings(avg prize money won).when i say or`s are important that does not mean top rating,which a lot of people think

When vdw said to use ratings as a guide did he mean as a guide to finding possible bets or a guide to use in finalising the overall process? & can anyone say whether he gave bets that were not top rated on both counts as in the spells it out article?.

If you only bet when EVERYTHING lines up, you will eliminate almost all of your losing bets at a stroke, this will obviously mean fewer bets, but I can assure you they will not all be at short prices.

Guest
Don't know if you were into horses in VDW's day, I certainly was. The dates maybe a little fuzzy, but I am fairly sure that at that time there were no official ratings, and that there were 5 or 6 regional handicappers, so that a horse could,say, run at Newbury off one mark, or at Donny off a different mark, on the same day.
That doesn't mean that because they weren't around then, we should ignore them now!
Personally I find them often a better guide to the class of a race than prize money, which has also changed considerably since VDW's day. There are certainly more high value races, with mediocre horses today, than was the case then.

im not really that much into vdw,i have the books and all,but its nice to see somebody taking a good view on the matter,rather than sticking to vdw by the letter,by having an open mind i think you are a lot further down the road than most will ever get.

In your reply to pipedreamer,Do you mean when everything lines up as put forward the vdw way,Or the way you see it,no sarcasm intended.

Johnd

By the time VDW was writing to the SCHB the system of local handicaps had been replaced by the national system we now have. The difficulty was that the ORs were not freely publicly available. All that was issued for general use was the Free Handicap and International Classification at the end of each Flat season, and (Flat and NH) a monthly list of ORs rounded to the nearest 5 (with amendments to the current month's list published weekly in the Racing Calendar).

Until the SCHB started publishing rounded ORs - sometime in the late 1980s, I think - to get exact ORs one was effectively forced to subscribe to the Racing Calendar, and then to put in quite a lot of time and effort unpicking entries for handicaps by using the rounded ORs. (If one could find two horses in the same handicap scheduled to carry 1lb difference in weight, which had different rounded ORs, one knew that the rounded OR of the higher weighted was his exact OR, and that the lower weighted had the highest exact OR in the band covered by his rounded OR. With the exact ORs of two horses identified in this way, the exact ORs of all the other horses entered in the same race could, of course, quickly be calculated, and applied to any other race in which any of the horses was entered.)

All much easier nowadays.

1.30 Bangor

Just had a good long look at this one and for me this is a no bet race - not actually a very "classy" event considering the fairly good prize money on offer.

One to watch and note from this race is Hawkes Run who has some class and keeps being pushed up in trip and is now over 3 miles with top weight.

Interesting to see how it is placed next time

I mean the way VDW said they should, some of my views may not coincide with others on this thread, but I can't ever remember saying VDW was wrong!

Fulham
Grateful for the info, thanks.

Now i am confused,Excuse me if i'm coming across as being a bit thick,But you say if everything lines up then that is the time to bet,So how can your selections differ,A lot of the factors are used to line everything up Today you basically agreed with guest,But you said there were things against so no bet.What intrigues me is,the other saturday you backed Devon view,Although you didn't post it up,And i must say if i'd have spotted it i would have backed it aswell,but to get to yhe point,If you saw them today,And was more or less in agreement,I can't understand how you missed Impek/Flagship uberalles/See more business,The factors were also evident in these horses.

no wonder VDW didnt claim that one in BOLD PRINT,

my god, no one would have believed him.

If I could be so rude, after all I dont ask for much, what were the ability ratings for the first four home?

Barney the way things have been put across on here of late you could be excused for thinking the ability rating was just another x check lol.

Have spent a lot of time on the 1.30 Bangor, and I may have a live one, but Hawkes Run does worry me a little. He was ridden 'rather strangely' lto before being carried out, and he is also entered for two much higher class races this weekend.Don't know what to make of him at the moment.

Investor
VDW advocated a consistent and methodical approach, and I can assure you that all my recent selections were made in this way. I cannot recall why I discarded Impek or See More Business, but there must have been a question somewhere. I do, however, distinctly remember thinking that Flagship U.A. had little or nothing in hand of Cenkos, and purely my opinion, of course, but I don't think he would have beaten Cenkos if he had stayed in the race.

I'm interested that you appear to have thought LL (sorry about the initials but I cant remember it's name) had 'everything lined up' on Saturday whereas the horse that struck me in that race was Agilis.

Wish someone would tell us what everthing lined up means, thats whats wrong with this thread too many implying they know lots but in truth ?, as titus said a while back some are making it seem more difficult than it actually is, then it has to be said others have turned the methods into an intellectual crusade god knows what the man himself would have made of it all, & where would we all be if vdw had decided to keep his secrets amongst the elite few, you should see yourselves what with the e-mail me to hell with the rest attitude,it really is pathetic.

You make a good point, one that has been made by plenty of others many times. In the wake of Guest's recent demonstration of the effectiveness of the 'method' as he understands it I think he might as well say directly what the hidden factors are, maybe once they are in the open somebody will be able to turn them into something usefull. I would like to know how everything can line up in a race such as that on Saturday as I cant see how the term has a literal interpretation for a case like this.

One of the truest posts on this thread was by someone who is no longer here. I think it is about time everyone was reminded of it.

posted November 25, 2001 06:40 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The impossible dream ?

Ask yourself these questions...

1) Just how much time have you wasted trying to figure out VDW's methods.

2) How many of you are anywhere near making a profit from your betting.

Now, think on this...

1) Stop wasting your time chasing rainbows looking for a magic formula.

2) VDW's so called selections were always detailed in hindsight, he never took up a challenge of providing selections in advance. This served to perpetuate the "mystique" of the (alleged) person.

3) The whole thing was invented to sell more newpapers. (Same as Stewart Simpson- Always Back Winners).

4) Stop being so gullible and wishing that someone's going to drop a magic formula into your lap- life's not like that.

5) If you spend your time learning your trade of studying form properly, you'll find the profitable results that you seek.

6) Remember, strike rate is directly linked to odds, the magical VDW system of 80% winners at the sort of prices quoted DOES NOT EXIST.

7) I know that this will be hard to swallow, but I doubt if you spent as much time reading the articles and attempting to interpret them as I did. FORGET IT AND GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE - IF YOU DON'T, YOU'LL STILL BE LOOKING IN TEN YEARS TIME AND NO FURTHER FORWARD !!!

8) No person by the name of Che van der Wheil has ever been on the electoral register in Market Harborough.

But I still like the Guy,

and

Will continue to Quote him -

"It`s just these "Anoracks" who Cock it Up !!!"



as to the rest




[This message was edited by Tuppenycat on December 18, 2002 at 02:18 AM.]

[This message was edited by Tuppenycat on December 18, 2002 at 02:25 AM.]