A bit below the belt That one,I know where i went wrong with Lord moose,Which i Already stated a good few posts back,Until i'm told otherwise by other posters,I must disagree that Jim thorpe was the C/F in that race,The evidence and way it is written suggest to me anyway,That he wasn't.If i'm wrong It's back to the basics,And i will apologise to you unreservedly,Until then i'll carry on regardless,By the way have you not made any mistakes along the way.

Would somebody confirm that this horse was not c/f from a vdw perspective,At the end of the example vdw says CLASS and CONSISTENT FORM are vital factors and this often confounds those who rely upon handicap or ratings alone.

Smart Tar was the class/form horse.

Is everybody agreed that Tarxien was a good thing today?if so I may be getting somewhere.

Investor

Sorry, I can see that the comment re Lord Moose may have been experienced as unkind. It wasn't meant that way. I think you think the mistake you made re Lord Moose was in respect of weight carried, and indeed that was a factor. But it wasn't a form horse in the context of the race, and therefore shouldn't really have been considered further. Once you understand how VDW identified form horses you won't have any truck with the likes of Lord Moose.

VDW did not explicitly define what a class/form horse was - he left it to us to discover. Guest has said that it is the highest rated on ability form horse in the race, and that is certainly my understanding from the examples VDW gave us.

Jim Thorpe was not the highest ability rated in the Mackeson, but in my judgement those with higher ratings, such as Townley Stone and Smart Tar, were not form horses. Pegwell Bay had a lower ability rating than Jim Thorpe and could therefore only be the c/f if Jim Thorpe was not a form horse. But Jim Thorpe had won his last three races and, given the class of those races, the class of the other form horses, and the class of the Mackeson, must I think be regarded as a form horse.

The only way I can think of by which VDW might not have regarded Jim Thorpe as a form horse would be if he included a distance consideration at that point. But there is evidence from other examples that he didn't.

But as has been pointed out very often, being the c/f does not make a horse a bet. (Other examples of c/fs which VDW made clear were not bets included Canny Danny and Buckbe.)

As I understand it, VDW thought the 2nd c/f, Pegwell Bay, a good thing because conditions (distance and going) were perfect for him, but unfavourable to Jim Thorpe. The ONLY point on which I question VDW's analysis of the race is his dismissal of Jim Thorpe on the ground of distance, where in my view the evidence you've summarised is equivocal on the point. Yes, 2m seemed to be Jim Thorpe's best distance but he'd won over 2m 4 at only slightly lower class than Pegwell Bay.

Issues of apologies don't arise. It is simply a question of interpretations of how VDW worked as regards assessing "in-formness", and the only thing I claim for mine is that it fits his 20 explicitly stated c/fs; the twelve other horses he specifically named as either form, or not form horses; the 24 unnamed but identifiable horses that ran on Boxing Day 1986 referred to in the "Introduction to VDW Update" article; and the many more horses he clearly regarded as out of form in the races where he named the c/fs (ie all those with higher ability ratings than the c/fs). And the reason that the approach fits is that it was deduced by researching all those horses. As Crock has said recently in a post to Johnd, if the objective is to discover how VDW worked (as distinct from developing an alternative and possibly better approach), the test of any hypothesis is its ability to resolve all the examples.

It may sound tedious - indeed it IS tedious - but unless someone actually shows one the way there is no alternative to putting in the hours of research necessary. Which is not, of course, to decry other approaches to selecting winners which draw on elements of VDW's work, such as have been developed by Mtoto, Johnd and yourself.

tarxien was the likely winner,

it was not a bet, even though there was little opposition.

neither was linning wine by the way. he was only the likely winner from the first five in the forcast.

Mtoto,

its not on the list but it is for the same reasons as beacon light.

Also, when looking at vdw examples, to me, as i said a long long time ago, it is more important to find reasons to dismiss a winning horse.

I know i got slaughtered a few weeks ago, but all the answers, as i see them, are there and form really is a waste of time when trying to select winning bets the vdw way.

I havnt seen an outstanding bet for nearly two weeks, but I might be getting very fussy.

A clue, linning wine showed in the first five, the winner if I took in all the runners was the most likely winner. As i said to fulham previously,magnitude.These are what we are trying to work out, why did vdw ignore this that and the other.

when I find one i will post it and you could put your house on it.

[This message was edited by Barney on December 22, 2002 at 12:57 AM.]

I don't have a house, only a flat.
Would it be ok to put my flat on it?
Or should I just back my own picks?
Yours (unsure)
Swish

thanks for going into the detail you have,I still can't understand why it could be interpreted that jim thorpe was c/f when he was described as having no chance.Pipedreamer seems to think the c/f was Smart tar,Like you say it's how informness is interpreted,I'll have to be a bit more dilligent though i'm still not wholly convinced about Jim Thorpe,But thanks for giving me an insight into the way you see things If you don't ask you'll never find out.

Limestone lad was an outstanding bet last weekend

Investor

It's only my interpretation, but in the absence of an unambiguous manual of procedure from VDW interpretations are all any of us have.

Two further points:

1) VDW was quite clear that isolating the c/f was just part of the work needed for a particular race. In commenting on c/fs that were not, in his view, bets VDW used a variety of terms to convey shades of "likeliness" (just as he did with his terms indicating the strength of bets - "racing certainty", "outstanding bet", "good thing", etc). The comment "at this level, has no chance" applied to Jim Thorpe (assuming it was indeed the c/f) is, I think, the strongest "negative" comment he made.

But this was near the end of his "writing" life, as indeed was his analysis of the 1990 Derby, where he was equally dismissive of the chances of two classy French horses: "they are only "milers" and can't stay for this one. No chance.", and Blue Stag. This opens up possible lines of speculation, such as (particularly in respect of the Derby) was he giving more attention than was evident earlier to issues of breeding? Or was he, by this stage in his career and on the back of more and more experience, simply more confident in his judgements? Or with advancing age had he ceased to make such nuanced judgements as he had previously, a phenomenon one sometimes finds with old people? We'll probably never know.

2) as regards Smart Tar in the 1988 Mackeson, this was in much the same vein as Beacon Light from VDW's first ever example. More specifically, a horse that won at class 146 on its penultimate run (the Mildmay at Cheltenham) could only, in very particular circumstances, be regarded as a form horse when its next run was 3rd, beaten 4l, in a class 58 (where it was beaten by an out-of-form Pegwell Bay). In my view, none of those circumstances obtained in relation to the 1988 Mackeson.

JIB,
I see from your latest post I have now had an "unhappy involvement" with Puntal. If you refuse to read posts in the context or spirit they are written, why bother to read them at all?

To anyone struggling with pegwell bay/ jim thorpe

it could be worth applying the relevant factors to their previous handicap races.

Then its plain to see he has no chance.

I fully agree that isolating the c/f horse is only part of the journey,That was the point i was trying to make in the first place r.e Pegwell bay,In other words ther was a way to differenciate the probables and i believe this lies in his (vdw's) own percentages,Having spent most of the night looking back on various c/f horses on this thread,I think i'm going to have to eat humble pie on this one,And therefore agree with you that P.B wasn't c/f but i still believe he was a very good bet for the race in question,Given the opposition.During my night activities i looked at Ever Smile,And i can't understand vdw's view on this horse,How was he sure it would act on the ground.

It's not the example itself that causes the problem,I know which horse i would have backed in that race,It's the c/f element that was brought into question.

In that race pegwell bay was c/f

I didn't want to see that Iv'e spent a fair amount of time,Looking at that example after what fulham said,and eventually i see his point then you put that,You swine you.LoL

Investor

In the matter of distinguishing c/fs from good bets Swiss Maid, an example put forward by Mr Hall and confirmed as a good thing by VDW, is worth considering. If you use the "search" function to find the three posts by Guest on Swiss Maid/Cistus, you will I think find a similar example to Pegwell Bay/Jim Thorpe, though of course the particulars differ.

As to Ever Smile, I would draw your attention to the context in which this example arose - in connection with what Tony Peach called the "Travado and Rivage Bleu strategy". And VDW brought those two to attention with the implication that they were arrived at "quite differently from anything I have shown to date". Personally, I am focusing on the more than a hundred prior examples at the moment, and am leaving Ever Smile and the other five until I am sure I fully understand those.

Of course Pegwell Bay is the C/f horse, more or less the whole of Jim Thorpe's races had been in Novice Chases and it is only his previous race that saw him graduate to the Hcp Chase scene, showing class/form far inferior to that of PB.

With regard to the distance factor he had won twice at 2 1/2 miles, both in Novice company, the first time when left in the lead, and the second in a very poor affair when odds on to do so.

Pegwell Bays Mackeson evaluation as given by VDW once again holds many clues and conveniently holds the "missing link" within the form for the race as did Prominent Kings race.

As stated before though, because the race was a handicap then the form establishment is slightly different. This slight difference in the factors to weigh up should be obvious really.

Jim Thorpe had won 12 races up to the Mackeson including 2 wins at 2m 4f. Pegwell Bay had won 6 races with 4 coming at 2m 4f the latter 2 of which were in handicaps class 78 at Newbury with 11-10 and class 57 Newbury with 11-2.

Jim Thorpe had won 3 handicaps all at 2m coming in class 76 at Cheltenham with 10-0 over hurdles, class 77 at Wetherby with 11-7 again over hurdles and on his last start at wetherby with 12-1 in a chase class 29. He had run at 2m on all 3 latest runs and had run at 2m 4f 7 times winning twice class 66 and 16 both chases.

On the day Jim Thorpe carried 11-10 and Pegwell Bay 11-2. The race was class 221.

VDW said Pegwell Bay had the best form and the reason as to why this was so is held in the Mackeson itself. It's staring us in the face and when you spot it you will come to realise what a ingenius road VDW had taken compared to the majority of form students.

Pipedreamer - I have double checked Tarxien and I'm sure it was a good thing beforehand as posted. Everything lined up with Palarshan not really in form in context of Ascots race.

Guest

I'm presuming, perhaps wrongly, that your comment that "... is held in the Mackeson itself" is a reference to the conditions of the race and the principals' placings in relation to them.

If so, it is surely fair to interpret the situation as suggestive of trainer confidence in Pegwell Bay, and a sense of caution on the part of Richards, whose hopes would, of course, have been dampened when the weights were raised 7lb. Another trainer might have ensured no such rise, but perhaps he didn't have the ammunition in the yard at the time.