could i also express my good wishes and thanks to guest, hope you return soon.

Thank you Guest

Can I add my thanks for you generosity and help. You have helped me move forward though I still have a long way to go. What progress I have made is down to you.

Thank you

All the best
hedgehog

Guest

May I echo Fulhams comments and wish you all the best. Like him I have learnt a great deal and your posts have pointed me in the right direction and quite literally have saved me years of research.

Take Care and good luck in your future endeavours.

M.o.M

GUEST,

Good luck and thank you.

All,

We must keep this excellent thread going.

very poor. must do better than that. sneaky boo made silly mistakes bouganvile did not get home cenkos went backwrds and county derry won but at 1/2 because of nonrunners in heavy rain.

Do you want me to carry on with this?

Guest,

I have to echo Fulhams sentiment.There is no way this thread would be this long without the enormous effort you have put in. Like Barney and MoM my betting has moved on thanks to yourself and the other generous people on the board.

You and others on here have restored my faith in humanity (well some parts of humanity anyway!).

God bless you.

Nessie,

I haven’t had a chance to look at your tables for today yet. I’ll probably look at them tomorrow. If you are prepared to keep typing them out ,I assure you that I, at least, will keep trying to get round to looking at them. I’ve already found something interesting in them. In the light of Barneys discussion with Max though I’m not sure I would be using them to best effect.

All the best.

NESSIE

Dont worry about today.I did not have a chance to have a look at the races you put up but you did have a couple of winners.
One thing with Cenkos though,when you did its % I presume you used its last three chase races and as I am sure you know todays race saw it hurdling.Swish for one will tell you how these 'good things'switching like this often get turned over.

Max,

That’s interesting.

I only noticed today that PM seemed to ignore a LTO run on the AW when assessing a horse that was today running on turf.

Thanks.

nessie,

Do you think its worthwhile carrying on with them?

The top rated of any method of rating will produce a certain amount of winners, be they top OR, highest top speed, highest ability, most recent run, highest last time post mark, best trainer statistics, best jocky at course etc. etc.

At the end of the day its not VDW's methods of analysis and I presume that is what you are after?

If you are just after any profitable method, then only take a 100% horse when non of the others have a past run that is above the level of todays class and it itself higher in all three past races.

Mtoto,JohnD,
Thanks for your replies.At the end of the day,there doesn't seem to be too much variation in the eventual selections we arrive at,although our methods of getting there may be slightly different.

Guest,I would like to thank you for your contributions to the forum,and wish you the best of luck in the future.I would also like to commend you on the dignified behaviour displayed, throughout your correspondence,in some,occassional, difficult circumstances.

Nessie,

Of course you should, they are logical. If you keep posting them I'm sure you will be given sensible advice on how to improve them. The one major flaw (for me) is when a horse runs in a top class race Postmark seems to inflate is figures just because it is a good race. The other day you had a horse that ran in 3 good class races, it finished last in all of them but still had a good rating??

I think Barney is like a newly reformed smoker, and can only see one way. I'm not sure that way is VDW's, or even Guest's, I think it is Barney's way. The basics are simple, you want a horse that is in form, and has the ability to win the race. No matter what anyone says VDW had his formula for rating races. It was that powerful he wouldn't explain it, or give it away. I suppose it may be coincidence that when he showed those rating his selection for the race was top rated, but I don't think so!

I think your only decision should be were to post them. they are good. If you (or anyone) uses them, and applies the VDW thinking to the top few rating I don't think they will go far wrong.

Be Lucky

Barney it is VDW way of looking at things. It not about ratings is it. Little owl tables are the same just balance class and form. Put up some of your VDW winners and I will try and put hte tables to it ok. You have your VDW way which may not fit with mine. If it was clear then the thred would not be 520 pages long would it. Could you spell it out?

MAx. You are right about hurdles and chase form.

Mtoto. Yes yo are correct and Pricnely Venture won today when last Lto but in high class race.

I'm rather suspicious of this idea of balancing 'class' and 'form', the only way that makes sense to me is to find the 'class' (best) horse and back it if it is in form. If it's not in form there must be a definite reason to conclude that it will not return to form before considering other runners. If it is inexplicably not in form then it is impossible to back it or go against it, in this sense if class is being definied by a system of rating the resulting ratings are of the first importance.

For someone who purports not to understand VDW, or even believe in his existence, the first 2 sentences of you last post are probably the most incisive summary of his approach seen so far on this thread. Those who follow the Guest approach would do well to ponder your words very carefully!
It is a FACT that there are winners every day, that would be deemed out of form by the c/f approach, that are actually nothing of the sort.

BARNEY
Dont go saying its not VDW just because it doesnt fit in with your idea of the method.You cannot argue with the winners Nessies tables have been throwing up.I know he didnt post the 2.10 G/W yesterday but for the record Banjo Bay was the 100% horse.Granted it could hardly have been considered in form but another example of the tables taken at face value giving a very good priced winner.
Theres only so many times the usual old flannel can be repeated on this thread so any new way of looking at it should be encouraged.
You keep posting them up Nessie because win or lose they are a damn sight more interesting than whether or not the winner of some twenty five year old race was inform or not.

Max/Nessie


all very well have lots of 100% rated horses but which ones do you support?

Secondly I pointed out on the first day of them that taking the highest ability rated of all the runners in the races produced in Nessies analysis gave more winners and more profit

Epiglotis

I would suggest the addition of the words "and will be suited by today's conditions" to your first sentence, which would then be a fair summary of the essence of VDW. But it does not, of course, touch on the central issue of how to operationalise the elements, a matter on which Guest, Mtoto and Johnd would have rather different answers.