I shall now tell you the details about DEEPENDABLES race when it won at 25-1. However if I get no response, good, bad, or indifferent, I shall not be going through the other horses. Firstly on that day its previous life time best speed fig was 110 (130 adjusted).
The lifetime top speed in that race was GIVE US A BUCK 151 (154) (although that fig was 3 yrs old)In the last 2 years its best had been, 115 (118)
The nearest ( and joint with Deependable) was CORLY SPECIAL 108 (130)'
All the rest were lower when adjusted, but a few were close to DEEPENDABLE before the weight adjustment. It didn't win because of class drop this time but weight drop, when the price was right.It scored its 130 when winning on 9/2/94 with 10-9. Then it was second with 11-4,second with 11-8 and third with 11-11. End of season. Next season it pulled up when 7-2 with 10-13, pulled up again with 11-3, then, when it only had 10-8 it won at 25-1
Yours Swish

p.s to above GIVE US A BUCK was second at 8-1
Yours Swish

swish this all seems very plausible and i tend to look for plots myself (jj in last race) but do you track these or spot them in the race.

it could have been injured at the fall
changed stables and not responded for new trainer
yard had a bug

any number of reasons

that is the handicappers job to give each animal a chance in the race.

saying that are there any trends like the trainer,
age of horse(there arnt many 50yr olds who can bench press the same as when they were 25).

i would love to see more races but i have a feeling that there is a hard luck story in every race.

Dear Barney,
What does (jj mean?
Yours Swish

jj o'niell if he has a runner in the last race back it.if he only has one runner and its the last race its a max.

this is derived from observation not information.

Marchwood, and others

This thread seems to be drying up. I was wondering if you are going to reply to my suggestion of there being other ways to judge consistency, class, and ability.

The current fad now appears to be Fineform, to me this is a poor mans vdw. Even Clive Holt didn't take his ratings at face value, he looked behind the ratings before he had a bet.

People asked for conformation of horses backed, which I posted on another thread. It was only a small selection, spread over 3 years to try and get some sort of dialogue going. To date only Swish has responded, which does surprise me. I would have thought a lot more of you would have been interested in finding winners at good prices. I don't profess to know it all, and was hoping to learn something in return.

Even if you think vdw was some sort of nut, or as I have seem on other boards a con man. Surely you all want winners at good prices, or are you happy to try and make a 5/10% profit as suggested by Raceman. It only works on paper, unless you have thousands to start with, or are planing to live until you are a 150.

Regards

My methods only work on paper?! I'd love to hear you reasoning on that one!

Raceman.

I'm surprised an intelligent man like you asks me to explain my statement as the answer is obvious.

If one is trying to make a modest living of say £250 a week how big would the bank have to be? In the real world if you are watching the live betting there aren't many jobs that would allow you to do this. So it would have to be your source of income.Taking a wage would stop the bank increasing as quickly as you suggest. That is to say nothing of the time spent trying to get these bets on. I assume that is why you have a network of agents to do it for you. If you don't pay these agents it must be a long hard job persuading them to do it for free, if your staking system is even more off the wall than the favourite rule. It must be, as you are willing to talk about the rule, but not the staking plan.

As I said, unless you have thousands, it would have to be a paper plan, or wait until you retire, and start from there.

Does this answer your question?

Regards

threads come and go

people try one method if it doesnt work flit to another

this is temperament

it is human nature to continually change

beer
women
web sites
bookies
horse selection methods

thats why the book has an advantage

95% people chop and change

i bet that every one on this site has changed their methods to take advantage of some fine information provided by gummy.

temperament!

raceman has the temperament to stick to his methods.

mtoto has the temperament to stick to his.

Mtoto I always said that you must treat it as a business - which you don't / can't. You fall into the trap of looking for the magic lamp with inadequate funding. Despite all of my email answers to your questions I am most suprised at your comments. Discussion closed as I need to get back to the day job. Not.

ps £1000 is more than enough.

Hello Swish,
I'm new to this message board and read your articles with interest. You got me thinking about the use of class drop and peak form, so I tried out the idea on a small sample I use for that purpose. I found that handicaps gave a little above 24% strike rate and 40% ROI while non handicaps made a loss.

You are obviously using more filters to get your excellent strike rate. Would you tell me what they are?

I'm curious why you discount handicaps, surely the average winning odds are better for handicaps?

I look forward to your reply.

hedgehog

Hi Hedgehog.

If you are the same chap that wrote the articles for Smart Sig, I am sure you will be an interesting addition to this board.

I work along the same lines as Swish, except I tend to concentrate on hcps. I must admit to applying your selections (in the articles) to my methods, and as you say they came out very well. (If I managed to work out the same races as you worked on.) I'm sure Swish will be more than happy to explain the details of how he works. As you have noticed they are logical, and work well.

I wait to see your contributions with great interest.

Regards

Hello MR HEDGEHOG,
I like it that Mtoto speaks well of you, (assuming you are the same person from Smart Sig!!!!!!!???????). Anyway I have written a lot of letters to this board, so which one, in particular, do you mean? I presume its the one with my list of flat maidens and stakes? If so kindly tell me the details of your "figures" and how you arrived at the fact that non-hcps do not make money, but hcps do,
Yours Swish

Hello Mtoto and Swish,
Thank you for the welcome. I am the chap in SMARTsig and your comments really pleased me. Im glad someone found the articles of benefit. I'm hoping to have one or two more published but thats up to Stef.

Swish as to the sample I use, its quite small and old (from 2000) but when I get home I'll do the exercise again and note dates, races and horses so you can check my work. I only looked for horses making a class drop and showing peak form in races of £10K+ for flat and £7.5k+ for NH.

The thing I found was that the sample sizes and number of winners for handicap and non handicap were similar. The average winning odds though were very different, for handicap better than 11-2, for non handicap barely better than 2-1.

I'll get back to you with the data.

Thanks again for the welcome.

hedgehog

Hello all,
This isn't directly about horse racing but I'm looking for a copy of the Sporting Life, particularly the one from which the Little Owl evaluations were made.

Can you help?

I've already been to the British Library newspaper section but would like my own copy.

Any ideas?


Thanks in advance
hedgehog

Hedgehog.

Sorry I can't help on the Sporting Life. When I went through the vdw examples I used photo copies. One thing that did surprise me was the lack of information in the papers of the day. Back in the good old days I used the Sporting Chronicle, and from several remarks vdw made, I would not be surprised if he used that paper as well.

How did you get on with the vdw examples? are you happy you would have reached the same conclusions as him?

Looking at the race values of your examples. I think Swish will feel vindicated in his findings and I think you have confirmed them for him. I will leave it for Swish to explain.

I agree about the prices in handicaps and that is why I concentrate on them. One thing I did notice was you only applied your ability rating to the horses in the betting forecast, if you apply it to all the runners does it make any difference to the final selection? Vdw did suggest it should be applied to all the runners.

I used to have the Smart Sig but I stopped when they started having so many articles on football and spread betting

Regards

Dear Hedgehog,
I shall look at my work again as well, but, just for now, all those non-hcps were c, or lower so there won't have been many, if any, that were for prize money of £10000 or more,
Yours Swish

Hello Swish and Mtoto,
Mtoto - I can't say I did very well with the VDW Examples, which is why I want to take another crack at them. I'm sure there is more to them than I found.
By the way, where did you get your photocopy from? The British newspaper Library?

Swish - It will have to be the weekend before I can get that data to you. I have to transfer it from the pencil and paper records I have onto computer. Sorry that it's late.

Swish + Mtoto - have you read any of the Jock Bingham booklets? I did a little checking on his book "The Key" and given some of the form comments I'd have been loathe to bet. However I think it's well grounded. I seems to use the essence of the VDW Roushayd example, which just happens to be my favourite of all his examples. One of my few bets this year was Riberac which, I think, was a perfect example of this.

Swish - when I read one of your early posts (page 1) this is what I thought you were doing.

By the way, please don't mistake me for someone who is successful at betting. I don't get much time for current form analysis and when I do I don't bet much because I don't like losing.

Mtoto - don't give up on SMARTSig, its just the time of year. Now that NH has started in earnest I'm sure they'll be some interesting articles.

All the best
hedgehog

Hello again,
Mtoto - you are right that I apply the Ability rating to the first 5 named in the betting forecast. VDW did write that it should be applied to all. It was my mistake when I started keeping records. I have tried to make that clear in my articles. My apologies if it is not. However the data seems sound and as you will see in a later article - I hope, it's up to Stef - the VDW methodology survives the mistake well.

I envy you and Swish, as you seem to be able to analyse form everyday. I have 2 months worth of weekend Racing Posts to do when I have the time.

All the best
hedgehog

Hello Swish and Mtoto,
Have either of you heard of the VDW_Methodology on Yahoo!?

I've been trying to get in for a while now.

If your interested its at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VDW_Methodology

The curious thing is that the group seems to be about 80 strong and there doesn't seem to be much email activity.

If you have knowledge of this group let me know how you got on.

All the best
hedgehog