III
I dont know about Stato but Im a fully qualified Tiler/Slater/Felt Roofing installer, not to mention Roof spec. designer & to boot I am also qualified to install slabs,interlocking blocks,concrete pavings,electrical mains & services,gas services,hot,cold Tarmacadam,,services/cable locator,telecomms installlations operative,cobble/setts reinstater,HSE qualified for Civil Engineering & signing,HSE qualified for Roofing and general site and to round it all off a fully qualified PISHE' ARTISTE'------------------ by the way I can also paint fences and lay chips in gardens LOL

As you and your 80% thread have kept this thread going,and others have done so much to undermine it, there would be a certain poetic justice in this thread discussing the way 'they' operate the VDW method. I understand a good bit about their thinking, and I am sure there are others members, still with us, who have their own views.
This would have the double benefit of breathing fresh life into the thread, and hoisting Fulham by his own petard.
Anyone else game?

Hello JohnD,
I shall have a go for a while.
GEMINI FUTURE 4.20 CARLISLE
PUTRA SANDHURST 6.25NEWMARKET
Cheers
Swish

III

"Annoying, sometimes arrogant, perhaps wrong, but not thick". In all honesty, I can't quarrel with any of that.

JonhD or anybody.

If we post up our own so called vdw selections shoould we simply discuss them and how we found them?

I still use my tables which came from the initial vdw idea and i'm more than happy to talk about them.

What really pisses me off is that we have a huge mine of info on gummys. but on vdw if you ask a question that hits a bit to close to home they either dont anser you or change the rules before ansering. and if any one says thats not so they are fecking liar. I have asked about 12 questions and i havent had a straight anser yet.
if you ask any of theother guys about how they find the sels or staking up pops great feeadback and discusson. what the point of a thread like vdw if all we get is fecking misery.

i think we should start our own vdw thread. but dont get me wrong. i can see why vdw gets such a hamering its ebcause of the vdwers not the method. class and form is bang on the money so why not discuss that our selves?

fecking missing link has caused to many rows and that the truth.

no fullham you cant join in. its not just about talking a good fight mate - put up some fecking horses.

I agree. I think there are basic problems with VDW ratings as illustrated recently by Dazzling Bay and in the two Courageous Duke races. I would like to know why Dazzling Bay was a selection.

Nessie

John Jacobs was both a great golfer and later a great teacher of golf. But the two don't necessarily go hand in hand: Bob Torrance and David Leadbetter, while undoubtedly excellent teachers, were far from top ranking players. And who remembers Alex Ferguson for his playing skills?

Not a comment on myself, or any other VDWer, but if it is "teaching" you are after, as it seems, then it is someone who understands the subject that you need, not necessarily someone who makes the right calls most of the time in his or her own betting.

The "missing link" has caused no rows of which I am aware, though the (to my mind understandable) refusal of those who have found it after hundreds of hours of research to impart it freely to those not willing in some cases even to read the basic texts certainly seems to annoy.

Are you seriously saying that a good teacher of VDW might be crap at picking horses??

Sorry I didn't answer your post earlier, I was thinking about Stravinsky being hurt and surprised that his music was so badly received when it didn't really matter in Diaghelev's scheme.

Welcome back. This thread needs you.

NESSIE

Hang on a couple of days, short of time at the moment. The 'missing link' should be a good starting point. Let's see if they like their chips pissed on.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nessie:
JonhD or anybody.



i think we should start our own vdw thread. but dont get me wrong. i can see why vdw gets such a hamering its ebcause of the vdwers not the method. class and form is bang on the money so why not discuss that our selves?

fecking missing link has caused to many rows and that the truth.

---

EPI has already done that with ' VDW (alternative) '

Fulham. What kind of an answer is that.
Are you a lawyer or a mp fulham cos you are not alex furguson but you could talk for England yet say nowt.

Nessie

If you can't understand the meaning and relevance of my previous answer, I think you are going to struggle to find the "missing link".

Hundreds of hours of research??
It is so simple once you find it (the missing link)you will wonder how you could have missed it

Bah
Is that what you would like us all to believe?

I am very grateful for that
I would never again believe a word you say

[This message was edited by boozer on July 18, 2003 at 08:12 PM.]

Boozer

I agree that it is (relatively) simple, and when one finds it much becomes clear that was previously not. And if you can find it in less than hundreds of hours research, I'll take my (metaphorical) hat off to you.

At last the truth starts to come out. Why didn’t you just say so at the beginning Fulham?

“it is someone who understands the subject that you need, not necessarily someone who makes the right calls most of the time in his or her own betting.”

No one has ever argued that you or one or two others understand the subject, what has always been in dispute is whether understanding it and being able to make any use of it is two different things.

And some of us up here in the frozen north do remember Fergie for his playing skills, and he doesn’t teach people how to play football, they already no how to do that.

Fulham
Understanding VDW and picking winners are both the same under the edicts of VDW methodology.
How you can compare the examples outlined in your post with people like yourself and other methodology theorists, is something I cannot understand.To be able to pick winners using VDW and by using temperament are one and the same.I will give you an example which is as ridiculous as the same as the one you gave us.
Little Johnny knows his 12x table off by heart and if you ask him what are 33x12 he will use his knowledge of the afore mentioned 12x table to tell you 396.He uses what he knows to get an answer.
If you are implying by THAT post what I take it you mean is that you know very well how it works as the man himself did but you cant get the winners the same as a man who knows everything about the workings of Albert Einstein, but who fails on Mastermind in his specialized subject eg A.Einstein-pull the other one. I have mentioned it before and I will say it again it is good for 24/30 bets a SEASON

Jimmy

I'm glad that you understand the point I am making, which is more than the others who have posted.

IF (and I fully accept that, in the absence of unambiguous proof, it is an "if") VDW did indeed sustain 80%+ winners at all prices, that provides the benchmark for excellent performance.

No one I know, including myself, currently sustains that level of performance, betting at the kind of frequency VDW seems to have done. But as you recognise, that in itself does not mean some don't have a good level of understanding of how VDW worked. And that was the ONLY point I was trying to convey to Nessie.

Why don't those who might be thought to have a good level of understanding match VDW's level of success? Let's take Guest as an example, and simply draw on reasons he himself has posted on this thread:

1) one makes mistakes. Although the essence of what VDW referred to as "the missing link" is simple, its application is not, and mistakes are made. Guest has acknowledged some, and I've certainly made some;

2) temperament. Recently, it was put to Guest that he was having many more bets than VDW would have had. Now, we can't be sure exactly how many VDW would have had, but I think Guest's post on that is realistic, and so is his acknowledgement that he has more. It is only in the last few days that he has done so, but since limiting his selections to those he believes he is reasonably sure VDW would have made, it is notable that his strike rate has improved.

To these two points Guest has made on the thread, I would add one other: at the end of the day some, however much they understand something theoretically, just haven't got that extraordinary spark, call it what one likes, that separates the all-time greats from the merely proficient. To return to golf, there has only been one Jack Nicklaus in terms of levels of success at the very highest level, though Tiger Woods has time to show he can attain the same, all-time great status. But that doesn't mean that lesser players, the Colin Montgomeries of this world, even those like Roger Chapman and Peter Fowler who play the tour week in and week out though rarely if ever win, aren't every bit as accomplished "theoretically", excellent practitioners in their own right, but (and they would be the first to recognise it) not of the stature of Nicklaus.

Before others regard the analogy as inappropriate, it may be worth their reflecting PRECISELY what is is that distinguishes a Nicklaus and even a Woods from a Chapman and a Fowler. Not, I would suggest, technique, which by and large can be learnt. Rather, that something, which can't be learned, which means that when the chips are really down (no golf pun intended) one man judges the weight to put on a pitch, or the line and pace of a putt, consistently more finely than another. Nicklaus can't explain exactly how he did it, and he certainly couldn't teach that facet of his game. It was simply something he had which, at that level of proficiency, was that bit more than anyone else had.

Carrying that into horse selection, once one understands VDW's approach, sorting out the class/form horse is often straightforward, But VDW himself did not back every class/form horse, or even every class/form horse in the better class races on which he advised people to concentrate. Indeed he wrote that he backed only about 20% of the horses he thought were probable winners.

So how did he separate the bets from the non-bets among the class/form horses? He gave us some fairly generalised advice (in particular, the paragraph in the famous "Spells it all out" article two below the Little Owl tabulation). He gave some "screens" such as low on the consistency aggregate - all of which prove in practice to be guidelines rather than rigid rules VDW followed. And he gave us some examples: Stray Shot and Zamandra were backed, whereas the other four of the "Boxing Day six" were not. But in my view, he did not tell us PRECISELY how to sort out the bets from the non bets among class/form horses for the very good reason that he couldn't: when it came down to that final bet/no bet judgement, intuitively he simply got it right most of the time. As yet, as far as I know, no-one else has shown that same level of successful last-stage judgement.

So what does one do if one can't (at least yet) sustain an 80%+ strike rate? There are obviously many possible answers, but plainly Guest and others, including myself, soldier on, hoping that, with experience, our judgement improves. And taking considerable consolation from the fact that the Fowlers and Chapmans of the golfing world make a decent living, and that others with greater proficiency, the Montgomeries and Darren Clarks, though not of the stature of Nicklaus, make really quite large sums of money by most peoples' standards.

From day one on this board I have made it clear that I will not post up selections - for reasons set out most recently in a response to a post from Gummy on one of the shorter-lived VDW threads. To the extent that that means, in some people's eyes, I lack "balls" or credibility, I'll gladly live with that.

Leaving the "balls" issue to one side, I'm inclined to wonder what credibility such critics think flows from a record of one winner from 24 selections, or confidently telling the world you've found a cert. and are piling on, and then seeing it beaten out of sight?

[This message was edited by Fulham on July 19, 2003 at 06:47 AM.]