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Carlisle
I use Excel 2000 for results, and download to a workbook which is set up so that the Post data arrives in sheet 1 and what I want is automatically transferred to the right cells in sheet 2, which is set up as my database. Some of the data needs quick re-formatting via macros, and then the whole section is cut and pasted into the database. Its quicker to do than describe!
Onefurlongout
re the RPR ratings, if you choose the postdata option under the main list of runners and betting forecast, and select that as well as the main card for download, you should get the RPR ratings all right.
Onefurlongout
Are you downloading cards or results? I mainly download results, when the sps and ratings download with all the rest. Depending on the form of one’s records the sps may need re-formulating (ie I keep my odds records in the form 2.0, 2.5 and 3.3 rather than 2/1, 5/2 or 100/30, but this is done quickly by macro).
There are differences between versions of Excel (and I have no experience yet of the 2007 version). In my experience 2000 is for results, and 2003 for cards, because of the login arrangements for the Post’s site.
Mtoto
I wouldn’t be put off writing to "Sports Forum" because of any concerns about Graham Wheldon. But I can’t think of anything that I would want to say. Different if VDW was still contributing – there are certainly some questions I’d like to put to him.
Mtoto
I suspect Mr Wheldon’s selection of letters reflects customer interest.
In the main I agree re trends, though I am interested in trainers’ records in relation to particular races. There is one VDW example which, I suggest, illustrates that some trainers follow regular paths – it is worth looking at Baronet’s placings prior to the 1978 Cambridgeshire AND those of the previous few years. We see in current racing that trainers target particular races year after year – not always successfully, of course – and that can help illuminate whether a given horse is "off" for a prior race or merely running to move towards peak fitness for the target race. Sometimes a horse needs a win to rise sufficiently in the ratings to qualify for a target race, sometimes a win is the last thing it needs! Either way, it is worth noting.
But trends on the lines of "no 6yo or above has won this handicap for the last ten years thus we can eliminate all 6yos and above without any further thought" are for the simple-minded.
Drone
I assure you that the comment I attributed to VDW is correct. In a letter published in the Sporting Chronicle Handicap Book in April 1978 he wrote: "Perhaps I am the odd man out, but I view the question of staking not from the point of enhancing profits, but to SHOW a profit". The letter was reprinted as item 7 of Tony Peach’s booklet "The Golden Years of VDW".
re level stakes, anyone who sees him or herself as a race analyst and can’t show a profit to level stakes over a reasonable period ought to take up another interest. What attracted me to the percentage of bank approach was Stuart Holland’s analysis and he is certainly right that if one wins one wins more – because of course the average stake increases gently over time.
My view that there are fewer people interested in race analysis is, of course, no more (but no less) than a personal impression. Raceform Update seldom contains more than a letter or two these days and although there have been some interesting ones recently on VDW (not least a couple by the initiator of this thread), those apart there is seldom anything re race analysis with what I would regard as any intellectual content. And that seems to apply to the majority of posts on the various internet forums I visit, where there always seems more interest in tips and systems.
Reverting to the Raceform Update, apart from two by Mtoto there have within the last few weeks been two other interesting letters re VDW. The first, in the 8 August edition, referred to the real identity of VDW. The second, in the 5 September edition, offered some interesting thoughts on linking time, going and class. I don’t think there has been any response to either, and if there truly were a large number of people interested either in VDW or race analysis they’d surely have led to some interesting exchanges.
Caravan
Your "up to twenty" idea is ingenious but, I’m afraid, not supported by the evidence. For example:
VDW’s very first handicap selection was Rifle Brigade, 15/04/78, which he described as one of "three outstanding bets" on the day. The lowest possible combined figures for three runners in the race was 38.
Much later, VDW discussed at length Roushayd, 02/07/88, which he described as "a dead certainty" in relation to the 1988 Old Newton Cup. The lowest possible combined figures for three runners in the race was 29 not including Roushayd. With him included it was 30.
Those of us who have read VDW’s letters with interest have, I am sure, all been there – searching for the "killer" factor that delivers all the winners, a search fuelled by VDW’s reference to the "missing link". One can’t of course be sure, as probably only VDW himself knows, but I doubt it is there: certainly any suggestions I’ve come up with myself, or seen, all fall in the same way as yours – on the evidence. My own suspicion is that by "the missing link" VDW meant not some simple "killer" factor but rather his meaning of the notion of "form", something he never elaborated explicitly and only covered in a line and a half in his otherwise long and detailed "Spells It All Out" article.
Pompete
I don’t think dutching as a term has anything to do with VDW. The story that Tony Peach tells about VDW is that he was a Dutchman who settled in England (Market Harborough) after the War. Frankly I doubt it. He (VDW) writes like someone educated in England, not on the Continent, though in my limited experience the Dutch write English as well as most foreigners.
VDW’s staking plan is interesting, because he introduced it by saying he used it to show a profit, not to enhance his profit. Anyone who can achieve the kind of strike rate he claimed – 80% or more at all prices – doesn’t need a progressive staking plan to show a profit, so there is a potential inconsistency there.
The best work I’ve read about staking is Stuart Holland’s "Successful Staking Strategies". In it he compares a number, including VDW’s, and his verdict is:
"Very poor! Your bank will be lucky to survive this system unless your strike rate is very high. VDW allegedly had a strike rate of 80%-90% and pretty good prices too. He also suggested betting 10% of the losing bank as well as the above system. He would have been much better staking a straightforward 10% of his betting bank."
Holland supports his verdict on the VDW plan, and the others he assesses, by some excellent tables.
Personally, I am convinced by the case Holland makes for betting a fixed percentage of one’s bank rather than level stakes (he argues, supported by figures, that with the percentage approach "there is less chance of losing your bank; generally if you lose then you lose less, [and] if you win, then you win more"). I wouldn’t touch the VDW plan with a bargepole.
Grimes
I entirely understand your comment about patience and the Form Book, and for me two key tasks (always ongoing) are to find ever better ways of recognising, relatively quickly, those runners which it is safe to leave to one side, and means of assembling relevant data quickly (eg as per downloading to Excel sheets as discussed on the "systems" forum). And in this latter respect we are, of course, very much more fortunate than previous generations of race analysts – the pc has been a huge benefit, whether one subscribes to Raceform’s electronic Form Book or similar, or like me maintains one’s own databases.
Drone
It is a matter of where someone wants to get.
VDW at its most simplified (as seemingly set out in an article published in 1981 under the subtitle "Van Der Wheil Spells It All Out") won’t get anyone very far, though like any systematised approach it finds some winners. But those who see logic in his basic view – that "it is the balance between class, form and the other factors [capability and probability] which shows the good things" – can learn a lot from the various letters and articles, and even more by studying the many examples he gave.
I doubt VDW said much – if anything – that was original. The ideas had mostly been around for years and discussed in publications both in the UK (eg by an accountant named Selby who published several booklets in the 1940s and 1950s under the pseudonym Marvex) and the US (eg Lawrence Voegele). But VDW was probably the first in the UK to put forward in a popular racing forum the idea of finding winners as an explicitly intellectual exercise.
These days there is more choice than in the late 1970s/early 1980s – one can trade, like Adam Todd, developer of the BetTrader software, without knowing the first thing about the horses running because one is focusing on prices; one can take the kind of approach Cormack favours, etc etc. And we should never forget the seemingly enduring appeal of the tipster. With this variety of possibilities, I suspect the number interested in putting time and effort into learning the skill of race analysis on VDW lines is very small. But there is satisfaction to be gained in trying to master any skill – and race analysis, although some might think it an unworthy object for serious attention, is certainly one.
Grimes
I’ve amended my earlier post as I had to finish the original in a hurry to make an eBay bid and when reading it through afterwards it wasn’t as clear as I would have wished.
I agree a lot of punters talk about value and bet in accordance with what they believe it is. But it is important not to lose sight of the underlying reality. By "value" they mean one of two things. First, what they, subjectively, believe the individual horse’s chance of winning is compared with the available odds. Or, second, what they take as the objective probability generated by some formula or other which, when explored, always turns out to be someone’s (or the market’s) systematisation of subjective judgements.
And this repercusses in the following way. If one thinks that one really can assign "true" probability figures to horses’ chances of winning (in the way that one can assign a true probability figure to "heads" with a properly balanced and fairly tossed coin) one can believe that it doesn’t matter if this 20% shot loses because if one backs 100 like that twenty will win, and provided one is on at better than 4/1 one will make a profit.
With truly objective probability – as with the coin tossing example – that is indeed the case. Over an extended run the number of "heads" results will approach 50%, and obviously if one could find someone prepared to give one better than evens over an extended run of tosses one would be assured of a profit. But racing isn’t like that. Only if one’s judgement is so good as to be able to discriminate what, say, a 20% chance horse looks like (good here meaning validated by results, long term) and back only those where the odds are better than 4/1 is a profit guaranteed. Few, I suspect, have that kind of discriminating judgement.
Cormack/Grimes
In my view, the fallacy in the value argument lies in the assumption that it is possible to derive the "true" odds on a horse.
Clearly every horse in a race has some chance of winning – the Ayala situation illustrated why. But there is no way of putting a true probability figure on it – only our own subjective (or sometimes pseudo-objective) judgement of the probability.
The beauty of decent class handicaps (and VDW emphasised the importance of betting in decent class races, whether handicaps or non handicaps) is that very few horses go off at very short odds. If one’s selection procedure leads one to the conclusion that one’s horse (or horses as a book) is/contains the probable winner (ie in one’s proven subjective judgement more than 50% likely to win), whether the price of the horse or overall return on the book is 6/4, 6/1 or 16/1 is of no real consequence. Obviously, the higher the return the better, but any win increases one’s bank and, IF one’s judgement about the selection(s) being the probable winner is regularly validated by the reality of results, everything else does, truly, take care of itself.
Grimes
Apologies if I have misunderstood your post, but by the "he" in "he didn’t back in handicaps himself" do you mean VDW? If so, you are quite wrong. Most of the examples VDW gave were from handicaps, including arguably his most famous (the 1988 Old Newton Cup winner, Roushayd), which he described as "happy hunting grounds".
Robert
Your argument is very much as VDW saw things. He once wrote: "People can talk about value bets and all the rest of it but it still boils down to backing more winners than losers. I see no point or satisfaction in backing a 6/1 shot because it is value if it finishes down the field". If one gets the selections right, the rest largely takes care of itself.
Artemis
I partly agree with you.
It is not always realised that VDW offered an approach to winner finding and some metrics for putting that approach into operational form. As racing has changed – eg through sponsorship distorting the relationship between prize money and class that made sense in his day, and the ready availability of exact ORs – some are in my view outdated. But the approach – balancing class and form in the context of capability and probability – is as valid today as it was when VDW wrote his articles .
The challenge for those who want to be successful using VDW’s approach is twofold: working out ways of operationalising the various elements – how, for example, is class best measured?, and being able to judge when the right balance is there for a bet.
Mtoto
In my view Graham Wheldon has undoubtedly made useful contributions, for example in respect of the draw which can sometimes be an important aspect of what VDW referred to as capability. But he has plainly never looked seriously at VDW’s work and thus his comments on it are of no significance.
Onefurlongout
Downloading from the Post website to an Excel sheet is straightforward, at least it is with Excel 2000 and 2003. I haven’t yet tried Excel 2007.
First, you will need to disable your personal firewall.
Second, open an Excel sheet and click on "Data", then "Get External Data" and then "New Web Query". That will open a box.
Third, in the box click on "Advanced" at the bottom. That will open another one and check "Disable Date Recognition" and then click on "OK". That will return you to the previous box.
Fourth, click on "browse" and from your "favourites" list select the Post site. When you get to the site select what you want to download (I only download individual race results). When the relevant Post page appears go back to the Excel sheet.
Fifth, on returning to the Excel sheet you will see the box where you clicked on "browse". You now need to click on "ok". That will open a further box which asks whether you want to data downloaded into the existing Excel sheet. Assuming you do, click "ok" and in a few seconds the data appears.
Sixth. Don’t forget to enable your personal firewall.
It may look complicated when you read the above "cold", but once you’ve gone through the process a few times and remember the sequence it only takes half a minute or so to download the material (assuming you’ve a decent broadband connection), which can then be cut and pasted into whatever form you want it stored.
