Mtoto,

A question if I may.

It would appear Valley Henry was a bet for you ?

His Cheltenham run was a very poor effort and in hindsight one can now blame both the course and the going for that run.

Was Marlborough discounted on the lines Johnd explained, ie - the course.

Henderson has since the weekend made a very bold statement " Marlborough will run in the Gold Cup and win it ".

You have stated on so many occasions how important course, going, etc are.

Marlborough looks a very clear example of this.

With regards Valley Henry. Mr Nicholls should forget Cheltenham and take the Aintree ( valuable 3 mile graded race ) and Kempton ( King George )route. Roll on Boxing Day.

Cheers,

Johnd

Basically I agree with you. Nothing more irritating than having someone crow about a winner after the race, and you may have noticed that I virtually never mention what I have backed. Indeed, I think the previous two references were to two losers (Fontmort and Don Fernando), and I did not say in my original post that I had backed Spirit Leader.

The reason I posted re SL was quite simply the coincidence of Mike's post with a race which worked out "by the book" (they don't all!), for which I could set out quite a bit of the thinking without going beyond what I feel comfortable about discussing.

But don't worry, I won't do it again, and will confine myself to general discussion of methodological issues and (insofar as anyone else is interested) the very informative VDW examples.

quote:

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Originally posted by johnd:
Boozer
One day we will have to meet, and you can show an 'Old Pro' how to get pissed at 9.45.

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No Problem Johnd
How about the first evening meeting at Ponte usually Friday late May
I’ll be Slumped against the paddock rails at 7-45

Fulham,
I suppose we'd better stick to the bets or at least "good things" that VDW mentioned as opposed to simply selections like Gaye Chance as well as top 3 from first 5/6 in the f/c.
Thanks in advance,

BOOZER
Spot the lager-lout at Ponte, on a Friday evening. It sounds like one of those competition questions they have on ATR?

Statajack

Confining myself for the moment to the horses first mentioned in the "Golden Years" compilation, there is an element of subjectivity (would you, as I have, included Saher and Aldaniti?). But I have a list of 38 "good things" or better.

Of these, 31 were in the first 5/6, as appropriate, of the Life's forecast and had one of the three lowest consistency aggregates among those 5/6.

Two further would qualify (Prominent King and Philodantes) if one counted a last placing as 10 (ie with Decent Fellow and Palemon respectively).

Five were not in the first 5/6 of the Life's forecast - Strombolus (3), Love from Verona (10), Inside Quarter (8), Son of Love (8) and Saher (9). Strombolus was in the first six of the Chronicle's forecast, but Son of Love certainly wasn't. All five had low/lowish consistency aggregates, as shown in brackets.

I'll do the "Ultimate Wheil" horses in due course.

BOOZER
1st Friday evening meeting at Ponte is 23rd May, Hopefully I'll see you there.

I will be there
Don’t worry I wont be drunk

STATAJACK/FULHAM
It may be worth pointing out that in his Saher/Aldaniti example VDW used the 5 most consistent, rather than the first 3.

statajack,fulham,mtoto,johnd,all,
in van der wheils letter,, flying dutchman believes in consistency;....van der wheil, stated ;readers who rely on ratings may deducethat by taking the top five or six and coupling with the five, or six, most consistent horses in the field they will trap a lot of winners. try it and you will find it interesting in non handicaps stick to the top 4;
statajack does this equate with your research
i would welcome your advice, many thanks grundy

john duncan

Determined,

My ability ratings had Valley Henry as the BEST horse in the race. On going through his form I decided the course, and going was right for HIM. To be honest if I worked the c/form method I don't think I would have backed Marlborough, for me he would have failed as not being in form. That may sound a little harsh. I really did think the course would have been against Best Mate at Kempton and favoured M. I do agree Liverpool would be a better bet for VH, and I am glad to see the horse has enough sense to tail himself of at Cheltenham. My worry was he would kill himself there.

Johnd.

John I have to disagree with you about Fulham's post Re Spirit Leader. I thought it was very interesting to see how other people analyse races. I thought it was a lot more help than some of the posts. i.e. Spirit Leader will win. The fact it was after the event didn't detract from the logic, and I can't understand why anyone would think it did. That is not to say I thought any less of your post it also was interesting, as are any/all posts that give an insight into how other people work VDW. I only hope it won't stop Fulham giving his views in the future.

Fulham,

I have only had a quick look at your post re consistent horses from the VDW examples. My first reaction is that is one hell of a x check, do you really think that is all it is?

Be Lucky

Hi all,
I think that when Aldaniti and Sahar were mentioned by Fulham he was actually referring to a different system than the one most commonly used.
This was the method whereby you select the 5 most consistent from the top of the handicap and then the top 3 on ability from these.
In this method VDW mentions nothing about them being in the first 5/6 in betting forecasts.
Does anyone use this method as I have been seriously looking at it lately and I am going to run this alongside the normal method in races I assess and compare results.
Watch this space!!!
See you soon, Mike.

Hello everyone,

Today at work ,instead of thinking how I can increase my employers profits (tut, tut),I have mostly been thinking about Beacon Light.

Mtoto deserves a medal for his dogged determination in stating repeatedly that Beacon Light was not out of form .It has also struck me that VDW never said that either.So it occurred me that maybe VDW never got to take Beacon Lights in or out of formness into account because his 2 rating methods showed beacon Light well out of it.That may seem contradictory but does that make sense to anyone? I wonder if this hinges on form having different meanings like class can have different meanings?.

VDW said that his 2 methods of rating were not the answer and only a guide.That now seems logical to me because although he said that Prominent King had the edge, he didn’t automatically discard Mr Kildare.He then says "checking the form" which implies ,to me at least, that there is much more to form than can be summed up in a numerical rating.


I’ve got to say that in a quick search for some info tonight ,on Beacon Light, that it was surprising not only how much info was there but also how much detail had been completely overlooked by myself.I only saw the tip of the iceberg tonight.What an amazing site this is.

Bye for now..

Fulham,
Thanks for your efforts so far, I'm looking forward to the "Ultimate Wheil" horses and the Roushayd and Rivage Bleu types.
Am I right in thinking that at the moment EVERY example (forgiving those 2 mentioned by yourself and Grundy/Johnd) was in the top 3 for consistency in their races?
Its getting rather interesting but I have a feeling that the other examples will confirm this pattern....
regards

quote:

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Originally posted by statajack:
Am I right in thinking that at the moment EVERY example (forgiving those 2 mentioned by yourself and Grundy/Johnd) was in the top 3 for consistency in their races?

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Is this what he meant by starting off his formula with the words 'CONSISTENT FORM' ?

cheers IMP

Bream,
From March 1981,
"to Confirm what the figures say (numerical picture), it is neccessary to study the form of all concerned, taking particular note of the class in which they ran, the courses they ran on, the pace and going of respective races, distances won or beaten by and, most important, how they performed in the later stages of each race."

I think there we have it, in a nutshell of one paragraph. The devil is in the detail but all stems from an initial numerical picture - which goes some way to explaining VDW's wording re Beacon Light/Prominent King in the "Narrow the Field to gain winning strip" letter (letter 8).
regards,

Statajack

I hope to get round to the "Ultimate Wheil" examples tomorrow, but tonight I can add two points:

1) no, the exceptions in the "Golden Years" bets were not all in the three lowest consistency ratings. Son of Love's rating was 8, and there were three lower (Stetchworth 5, Billbroker 6, and Scorpio and Serge Lifar 7).

2) as regards the "Best bet/next best" six (Rivage Bleu etc), all were in the first five/six as appropriate in the Life's betting forecast. Two of them - Travado and Arthur's Minstrel - were not among those with the three lowest consistency ratings in the first five/six in the betting forecasts of those races.


Mtoto

In my view, the consistency rating (or at least being a horse with one of the three lowest consistency ratings in the race) is no more than a cross check. Mechanical use of either position in the betting forecast or "three lowest consistency ratings" means taking an unnecessarily restricted view of VDW and would, for example, have meant not selecting Son of Love. There are also examples of decent VDW bets (from a class/form perspective which, as you know, I believe to be central) from contemporary races which would not qualify on one or other (or both) accounts.

Leaving to one side the two sets of examples I currently do not understand (the Handicap Hurdle examples and the "Best bet/next best" six) the only invariable characteristic I have found with the better part of 100 VDW examples is that they are all form horses in my understanding of his sense of that term.

As regards cross checks it is the case that, in the examples VDW gave us, there were few that had a consistency aggregate in double figures. Jock Bingham suggested being cautious about backing horses with a consistency aggregate of more than 12. While I think this is generally good advice, there are worthwhile exceptions.


All

There is a letter re VDW in the current Raceform Update, by Mimas (and of course we have a Mimas as a member of this board). It will be interesting to see if it encourages discussion there on VDW.

When mentioning "consistency ratings" Mtoto seems to be talking about the horses overall winning strike rate, everyone else, with the possible exception of Fulham, seems to be taking about the sum of the figures for the last three runs. If two such different ratings are being discussed I suggest two different terms be employed.

Epiglotis

Mtoto will no doubt respond for himself. But, for the avoidance of doubt, when I refer to a horse's consistency rating I mean the aggregate of its placings on its last three runs, which was VDW's meaning.

As has been pointed out, VDW did show different ways of using consistency ratings: three lowest in the first five/six in the forecast, five best in the field, etc. But he was (I believe) always referring to figures generated by adding together horses' last three placements.

Fulham
Thanks for making that clear.