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Hal
I think the general assumption is that Che Van der Wheil was a pseudonym (otherwise someone would surely have identified him by now). So, who knows, he might be your next door neighbour!
class tells
VDW addresses exactly the issue you raise in the early part of chapter 5 of his booklet "Systematic Betting". There, he said that "most satisfactory [method] is to use the value of the prize to the winner (penalty value)."
Mtoto
I assume that the third last para. of the letter about the Erin is a discussion comparing Prominent King and Mr Kildare partly for textual reasons and partly for analytic ones.
Textually, that para. seems me me to flow naturally from the end of the previous para., and fit with the following one. In other words, VDW having eliminated his third probable (Beacon Light) in the fourth last para. and being "left with Prominent King and Mr Kildare", I assume that what follows in the next two paras. is his (partial) explanation of why he selected Prominent King over Mr Kildare.
Analytically, I am assuming that the "two methods of rating" through which Beacon Light was shown to be "well out of it" were probably methods he showed us in the fulness of time, and on how he rated form I think Beacon Light was "well out of it" and Prominent King and Mr Kildare were level. My problem is that I can’t at present find a second method he showed us which showed Beacon Light "well out of it" and Prominent King having "the edge" over Mr Kildare. Hence my question to L33 asking if he was confident he had found the solution (and, if he has, the hope that he might offer a hint as to where it might be found).
In the above I am also assuming that "two methods of rating" was not just a way of saying "two sets of ratings", ie the equivalent of the final two columns he gave in the four illustrations in the March 1981 article.
Garston
I’ve now found my notes and was wrong to suggest the Chronicle had not included the Erin. It had, and the forecast was:
11/8 Beacon Light
7/2 Decent Fellow
11/2 Prominent King
13/2 Meladon
8/1 Monksfield, Mr Ki SaveI have typed the last horse as printed in the Chronicle, but given the other runners it must clearly have meant to be Mr Kildare. (Probably put together by the same people as did the Grauniad.)
You are right that anyone who just had access to the Chronicle would have no idea how many, if any, races any of the runners had won, only if there had been any wins in the number of races whose places were recorded for each (not very many).
Garston
You wrote: "You said the Life had Meladon instead of Monksfield, is that not proof that VDW did not use the Life that day."
No, all it proves is that he didn’t use the Life forecast. The five he showed are consistent with the Mail’s, as there is reference to the Mail elsewhere in VDW’s writings (and no reference to any other national paper, I think).
Garston
From memory (not from 1978 but from when I was researching the examples from the Life, Chronicle, Mail, Racing Calendar etc, much more recently) the Erin was not in the Chronicle, but I’ll check that as and when an opportunity presents.
The forecast VDW used was the Daily Mail’s – at least, the first five in the betting forecast he names were as in the Mail’s. The Life had Meladon instead of Monkfield, the other four being the same.
Garston
Most (not all) of the betting forecasts VDW quotes are from the Life including, for example, the four from the famous March 1981 article. Crock has given the other main reference I’d have posted, plus of course VDW quotes Life ratings in some examples.
Finally, there is the question of whether the Erin was in the Chronicle. From memory, not, but I’d need to check that before stating it as a fact.
Garston
As I said, there are various possibilities and that VDW failed to realise that PK was not a maiden is one. Improbable in the extreme, in my view, though, for several reasons, not least that there is good evidence that VDW used the Life as his main racing paper (as of course did anyone with at least half a brain in those days).
Hensman
I’m not sure what VDW meant but various possibilities occur, of which two strike me as the most likely:
1) neither horse had a win in its last three runs (the runs which, by now, VDW will have assumed his readers were using to establish form);
2) neither horse had a win at the level of the races in which they were his selections.
I certainly doubt that that late letter should be assumed to un-write, as it were, all the previous "Golden Years" etc material.
Mtoto
VDW showed that he used class and ability as synonyms (3rd last and penultimate paras. of his contribution of 28/2/81 – item 36 in "The Golden Years").
L33
I don’t know if, given your irritation with Cormack’s deletions, you still look in, but in the hope that you do I should like to raise with you a point with which, despite quite a lot of thought, I still find difficulty.
It emerges in VDW’s discussion of the 1978 Erin, where he says: "Using two methods of rating all five horses, I found that the starred horses came out best [Beacon Light, Prominent King, Mr Kildare]. Both methods showed Beacon Light well out of it and his last race had been a hard one against Sea Pigeon so I was left with Prominent King and Mr Kildare.
Prominent King had the edge by one method and was level using the other …"
This example was presented before VDW showed us a number of his rating techniques and it seems to me very likely that the second of the "two methods" was form, for on that, of course, "Beacon Light [was] well out of it", and "Prominent King … was level [with Mr Kildare]"
In respect of the other method of rating, by which, again, "Beacon Light [was] well out of it" but on which "Prominent King had the edge [over Mr Kildare]", I think I’ve tried all the other methods VDW showed us, but in no case do both of VDW’s comments seem satisfied. For example, PK ,18, could fairly be said to have "the edge" over MK ,11, on the ability rating, but BL’s 46 seems to preclude that from being the explanation.
My question is, are you satisfied that you know which two methods of rating VDW was referring to in this instance? If so, if you felt able to offer any hint as to how it might be discovered it would be much appreciated.
Crock
Forgive me, but I can’t follow your logic. If I understand Garston’s posts correctly, 27.6% of the winners in the races he has surveyed were won by horses in the top quartile of the AR ranking. I’m not clear how that bears on weight, one way or the other.
Arkle
VDW said that the essence of winner finding was balancing class and form and thus form is an absolutely key element in his approach. We all have our own ideas of what form means, but as I have stressed to Mtoto it is VDW’s approach we are trying to understand and therefore it is his meaning of form we need to discover. We can’t check our conclusions with an authority – all we can do is see if our understanding is consistent with the evidence (VDW’s examples).
VDW explicitly named several form horses (eg three in both Righthand Man’s Welsh National and Wayward Lad’s King George) and it is surely certain that he saw all his selections as form horses. Further, he said various other horses were not form horses, either explictly (as with Lucky Vane and Burrough Hill Lad in the two races mentioned above), or by elimination (ie the other two horses in the race where Beau Ranger and Lean Ar Aghaidh were named as form horses.)
So we have really quite a lot of horses we know were either form horses or not form horses. My advice to you and anyone else interested in getting to grips with VDW’s approach is to study those and hope to identify what, in VDW’s eyes, made a horse a form horse or not. In this regard, VDW seems to have been principally concerned with a horse’s last three runs, and in my view (which I see L33 shares) it is those races that should be of concern from the form perspective.
And of course once one can confidently distinguish horses as form horses or not, many of the apparent problems in the VDW examples fall away, as usually a horse which is both consistent and higher ability rated than a VDW selection turns out not to be a form horse.
Garston
I believe that VDW had a very particular notion in mind when referring to form. IF I am correct (and although I try to keep an open mind I find it difficult to work on the assumption that I’m not), then the phrase in brackets quoted in my last post has particular meaning – indeed I would say it was a clue to those who think they have worked out what VDW meant by form but find this one example elusive.
If I am wrong about VDW’s notion of form, as obviously I may well be, then of course the construction I place on the phrase falls and any of the possibilities you raise could be true.
But running with my view for a moment (which includes the assumption that sfs play little part in NH races and certainly not the central one you suggest), anyone following the "VDW approach" could be forgiven for selecting Burrough Hill Lad. Like Little Owl, he was a consistent horse and had the highest ability rating in the field by a reasonable margin. He had excellent ratings support from the two sets most commonly available, and given the way one at least of VDW’s seems to build on the Mail’s it is not unreasonable to think he probably showed up well in VDW’s ratings, too. The horse had won the race the year before, beating two of his four rivals in the 1985 race, which could reasonably be viewed as a target for the year (being arguably the second most important longer chase in the season). His failure to win lto under 12.07 could be viewed as an example of a horse being run under a heavy weight to set him up for his next challenge rather than to win that lto race. I can imagine plenty of "VDWers" thinking him "a good thing" and viewing backing him around evens as an easy way of paying for Christmas.
Garston
"It was the combination of the significant reduction in speed figure, from 78 first time out to 35 last time out and the proof of a slow run race as shown above together with the horse doing nothing from the last 2 fences that showed VDW that Burrough Hill Lad was out of form."
Undeniably plausible, and a better explanation than others I’ve seen on other forums over the years. But although we’ll never know for sure, I think it is well wide of the mark. I suggest that VDW gave us a clue with his comment in brackets: "… I am aware that some large wagers were made (some by associates who ought to have known better) on Burrough Hill Lad". Maybe I am reading too much into that, but I suspect he was referring to associates who knew how he worked but failed to look closely enough at the detail with this one. When one does …
Garston
That is a plausible answer, but in my view probably not VDW’s – given his comments about sfs in his letter of 10/10/81 and the point Maggsy has made (and that would not be limited to Wayward Lad in relation to the KG but would also apply to many of the runners in other VDW example races).
