Aye up JIB you sound as though you are saying its all bollocks!
Cant be? Can it?
Cheers
Swish

Barney

I very much agree with your core point about the time it takes to do the groundwork for a race, let alone complete an analysis to the point of deciding whether to bet.

Good luck with the fine tuning of your method,I sincerely hope this is not the last we'll hear of you,I for one would be very interested in the outcome of the honing process.

if you could post up a few hcaps so i can take my pick,it was one hell of a night.in my opinion walter official ratings are very important because what ever rating a horse is,thats what weight it carries.
another idea which may benefit you more,would be if you have a spare 30 mins on boxing morning,would be for me to make my notes on the race on paper then we could go in the chatroom and go through the runners,and any queries you may have i could answer them straight away,anyway up to you.i think if you can understand official ratings you will be one hell of a lot closer to regular profit.

have you decided to get the form books? or are you going to leave it.

JohnD - As you know from our exchanges on both the thread and via email, I also agree with the idea that the whole concept has to be understood. I would add that the whole concept has to be used in an ongoing manner.

The confusion you are refering to on the thread is read as a little unfair by me because I stand only by my views on the VDW methods and nobody elses. Yes, now and then points are made I agree with, but to put all opinions on this thread into a melting pot and declare them as one is wrong. This is a trap both Epiglotis and John In Brazil continually fall into and is the one thing that above all else causes me irritation.

There are basic avenues of thought that we agree on as regards form evaluation, but we differ in the routes we take. The whole concept of the method is used continually in a methodical manner with certain elements proving more important than others. In a recent race at Bangor I highlighted a shortlist of two horses I thought were almost certain to provide the winner from and you had already chosen one of them as a good thing. Despite us both approaching the form evaluation from the same basic premise, my use of VDWs tools showed Paco Venture as the more likely winner but with Old Feathers a valid danger. Your approach seemingly dismissed Paco Venture and whilst I agreed in the main with your highlighting of Old Feathers as a form horse, I failed to see how Paco Venture was overlooked. The way in which you are measuring form is logical, but alas is not really that different to the more thorough members of the racing press. The edge that VDW provided us with was in his thinking on what constitutes class and thus what makes strong form.

Due to our agreement on confidentiality it is difficult to be more specific,however I will try and explain a point. Some of the areas you pointed out and put emphasis on in your Old Feathers evaluation are present in Prominent Kings race, but so were in addition the factors I pointed out to you in my evaluation. These factors were present in Paco Ventures form but crucially were missing in Old Feathers form. They are present though in all the examples VDW put forward using his consistency or Roushayd type approach along with the lists to follow methods. I have continually mentioned relativity when talking about form evaluation. For example, taking two horses in a race, horse A is beaten last time by a horse considered below the class of A but higher than horse B who was 2nd giving weight to another horse of similiar class to B(itself). Traditionalists automatically assume that because A was beaten by a horse rated better than B or Bs conqueror, then A must be the winner of the race between itself and B. This approach just leads to favourites 9 times out of 10 and well over 60% of these get beaten. VDWs approach provides a way of making use of horse B, given further considerations, to beat these false favourites.

Pipedreamer/Walter Pigeon - The above should help explain further why I found the Pegwell Bay example to be one of the more detailed and revealing selections that VDW gave. He actually mentions the key point in his breakdown of the field, but leaves us to discover the facts for ourselves. I could point this out in a second and immediately clear up some of the points I think JohnD hasn't yet taken on board, but I don't think that would be wise. It is there though in the article.

Barney, the declarations are online now.

I have some interesting study for the next 2 days.

Kempton 1.10 between Jair Du Cochet, Lucky Bay and Swansea Bay

Wetherby 1.35 between Extra Jack and Goguenard

Kempton 1.45 between Hors La Loi III and Ilnamar

Wetherby 2.10 completely undecided at present

Kempton 2.20 between Best Mate and Native Upmanship

Wetherby 2.45 between Edredon Bleu (looks a good thing) and Geos

Kempton 2.55 bwtween Mount Prague, Wise King and Needwood Lion

Ayr 2.00, Wincanton 2.05, 2.40 and 3.15 Market Rasen 2.00 and 2.30 to do.

Ayr 2.00 Star Jack looks a good thing

Market Rasen 2.00 Nosam looks another

Wincanton 2.05 - Fadalko or Edredon Bleu. (I hope Edredon Bleu goes to Wetherby)

Market Rasen 2.30 - Scotton Green

Wincanton 2.40 between Carlovent, Comex Flyer (should have been on that lto), and Young American

Wincanton 3.15 Prancing Blade has everything except the going in it's favour



I would like to thank all who contribute to this forum for an entertaining year and wish you all a happy Christmas and good luck for Boxing Day.

One favour. If I give myself a late Christmas present it will be all the research materials required to go in depth into the selections indicated in the VDW literature. What would I need and where could I get it?

Arowson

Ideally you'll need:

a) the Form Books, from 1976-1988 Flat, 1975/6-1988/9 NH. (One or two earlier ones are desirable but not essential, and there is no need to get copies after 1988 as the material is available on the Racing Post website.);

b) copies of the cards and form from the Sporting Life.

The best sources I have found for (a) are Janet Carter (01638 717619), Greg Ways (01638 507217), John Pickering (01439 770931) and Browzers (0161 773 2327), the last-named also has a website, www.browzers.co.uk.

As to (b), the only source I know is the National Library Newspaper Library at Colindale, North London (two minutes from Colindale Station on the Northern Line of the tube). The telephone number is 020 7412 7353, and there is a recorded message which gives opening hours, etc.

You can get by for most examples with (a) alone, but there are three advantages to having (b) as well:

1) one gets the Life betting forecasts;
2) calculating ability ratings is much speeded up (for the NH examples one sometimes needs to go back through four, five or even more Form Books to calculate a single ability rating. With the Life material one can calculate the ARs for the whole race in the same time);
3) the Life gives more details on some French and Irish runners than the Form Books, which is (in my view) crucial with some of the examples, eg the St Leger won by VDW "good thing" Son of Love.

It took me nearly six months to assemble the whole lot, though some have been luckier with the Form Books and found one of the dealers with a full set. On the other hand, I live near the Newspaper Library, which saved much time. The total cost was about £350 but, alongside the cost of the VDW booklets, the best investment in racing I've made.

Good luck.

[This message was edited by Fulham on December 23, 2002 at 05:45 PM.]

JIB,
Surely the amount of time you are spending with your dictionary must be having a negative impact on your personal and business relationships? If youre not careful people will be starting to talk!

still undecieded with the form books,if i were to put a lot of time and effort into it(old form books)i want to get something out of it,and nobody has proved on here that it is worth while me doing it,but never say never,but im doing fine as i am,as i said i want to go full time at 30(4yrs time)i think the only thing holding me back is temprement and staking.
thanks for asking,how are you doing with it?

Thank you for your informative post,as ever.
I have spent some time,looking at The Mackeson,in light of your last posts,and have come up with the following:
Bandari at York was,Bandari at Doncaster wasn't.

If that is correct,then I think I'm on to it.Any comments as ever appreciated.

I would like to wish all members of the Gummy Forum,a Happy Christmas and peaceful New Year.

I have the utmost respect for you and what you have put forward over many months on this thread,One of the reasons i mentioned Pegwell bay to Fulham was to try and make a point,Although i agree with most of what you say, There is more ways than one to skin a rabbit.I remember last year you had a losing day of 4 bets,This year you had a big run of losers in summer,And just recently you had a run of 4 losers.Therefore it is quite understandable why certain posters on this thread are exploring other avenues,Vdw quite categorically stated that if your not achieving an 80% s/r you should look at how you interpret form.I know just from reading your posts that you obviously know this subject inside out,And that you have sattisfied yourself that the findings that were discovered matched those of vdw,You put your pont across so confidently but unfortunately you don't have the strike rate to match.

Further to what guest said recently,I believe this horse also holds good clues into the areas that need looking at

Hello Everyone,
Firstly many thanks to everyone posting on this thread with the aim of helping folk such as myself to get to grips with VDW. Your efforts are sincerely appreciated. There are a many things to unravel and without help it would be impossible.
Wishing you all a happy and peaceful Christmas
and of course a profitable New Year.

All the best

Graham

Having looked through the races already mentioned, plus the Wincanton 1.30 I have one bet.

Wetherby 1.35 Goguenard

There may be another depending on where Edredon Bleu runs.

I am sure I read that hen was going to wetherby and terry to kempton.

She doesnt like big crowds, apparently.

There may be more that one way to skin a rabbit but there is only one right way. You start with the loose skin at the back of the neck and peel it off like and old sock. Being able to differentiate between the right way and the wrong way makes all the difference.

No Foundations

Swish,

Your short review of my last post sums it up nicely.

The methods exposed on these pages can only be undertaken AFTER the race has taken place, where the result is used to justify the analysis.

The arguments that ensue about the miniscule traces of form used to justify the result come from the those followers of this thread who are unable to reconcile how such arbitrary importance of form details becomes relevant in one race but not in the next.

When it is necessary the form of a past race is simply ignored, not because it is irrelevant, but because it contradicts the result of the race that has just run. To serve that purpose some excuse (going, fto, regular jock missing, etc etc) is created. However when the next race under examination is being studied the criteria that qualifies or disqualifies one bit of form in the previous example is not necessarily applied in this new event.

It is lamentable that anyone who is unwise enough to take this thread at face value and complains about these procedures is diverted from his intellectual quest with the admonition to acquire a lot of old form books and then spend months studying them. In other words he is told to shut up.

The first and perhaps greatest non-sequitur about the VDW methodology is the contrast between the ridiculously simplistic (and form wise worthless) consistancy rating and the complexity of the musings given to weight carried in class.

Common sense demands that the first be discarded as meaningless and the second regarded as potentially misleading in that physiology of the horse at that time was unknown. Yet they simultaneously co-exist as unquestionable and fundamental to the process.

We both know that the "Systematic Betting" aspect of VDW can be made to work though in a considerably modified version to that found in the booklet, which is highly rudimentary. However imagine my surprise when looking into horse race breeding when I discovered that this winning finding method had in fact been going on for many years beforehand in the USA. Over there where the tracks are all similar in shape, level and going its obvious really that these ideas wouldnt have taken long to develope. To work over here the only prerequisite was to develope Standard Times.

However in whatever shape or form speed is largely ignored on this thread and Systematic Betting confined to unexposed 3yos. Also ignored, indeed treated as if they were some seedy relatives, are the human aspect of racing, and the horses genetic inheritance. Both of which at a single stroke can wipe out any and all conclusions to be derived from form analysis.

Whilst I dont believe that most of VDWs acolytes on this thread are malintentioned, misguided would be the best description, I cannot avoid comparing their methods to those employed by the pro tipsters and their ilk that feature on other parts of this forum.

JIB