"Stopped, who had also taken on much better chasers recently and had a higher ability rating, was sidestepped by VDW. For what reason it’s difficult to tell."
I am sure that Lee's advice (and I refer to him as the poster with the greatest understanding of VDW's work I have come across) would be assume that VDW had a reason, one consistent with all his other mainstream examples, and work to find it. He (Lee) also made what I see as the very pertinent point that it is a matter of levels of understanding. One starts, quite probably with the Prominent King or Little Owl etc examples, and by seeing how well, or not, the apparent procedures work with other examples, one hopefully understands more. And as one keeps at it, things hopefully come together. Lee emphasised the time and effort involved (which in my view he in no way over-stated), but that the more one works at it and understands, the easier it is to go back to the less obvious examples and see how VDW got to them.
Think "consistent "form"", not just "form", and ask yourself why VDW (a) did not view Stopped as a consistent "form" horse and (b) presumably saw Drumlerry as one. Actually (b) is the more difficult, though a partial explanation to which you have eluded presents itself. But that partial explanation only becomes what I hope is the full one when it can be seen alongside similar situations.
The business is about seeing each of the mainstream examples in its own terms but also in the context of the totality of such examples. We can often not be sure of VDW's reasoning, because he didn't spell it out, and must be alive to elevating coincidence to "rules". But the more examples one finds of particular situations, the more warranted one is for viewing what one finds as intentionality rather than coincidence.
I'm relating the class/form definition to a horse VDW said was the class/form horse in the race in the shape of Buckbe. But later said he was not consistent. Which seemed odd to say given the consistency total of 7. But of course as you discovered consistent form clearly had a different definition to VDW, even though he had referred to horses being consistent or not consistent in seemingly direct reference to their consistency totals such as with Fair View ("not at present consistent") and from the same letter (below) the background on why he used the consistency totals device.
"FORM CAN MISLEAD
Form, even though consistent, can mislead if taken alone when the horse is running against others with greater ability. Class, which in my view is a major factor, can throw you off course if the horse is out of form, so to establish a reliable measure a combination of elements must be used to achieve consistent results.
To find elements which can be combined and used methodically requires considerable thought and each must be logical. There are numerous ways to approach the problem of winner-finding methodically and the one which I will demonstrate has proved highly successful and consistent for a considerable number of years. Each element was selected after a great deal of research and when used as intended, will place the odds strongly in the backers' favour.
Form is considered a major factor to winner-finding and what is form if it is not that one performance is better than another?
Horses who consistently perform better than others should then command interest. My own extensive surveys show that a horse winning three races in a row is likely to extend the sequence by a further victory at a ratio of one in three.
Expressed as a percentage it is 33%, considerably better than 2% which is the representative odds o f a horse that failed to reach the hunt on its last three outings.
Consistent horses win races and to illustrate I will give some examples which show percentage wins next time out from various form combinations . . 111 33%, 121 32%, 131 29%, 141 26%, 122 30%, 313 24%, 214 24%, 404 5%, 000 2%.
The figures show beyond reasonable doubt that consistent form does have an important part to play. If there are three horses in a race each having won their three last races, the figures indicate that it is almost certain one of them should win, 33% +33%
+ 33%= 99%.
Only about one chance in a hundred that the winner will come from elsewhere, so it would be going against the odds to select any other horse in the field."
The above seems to back up the assumption by most that consistent form is related to form figure combos that total to low numbers. But form isn't always related to low placings and therefore consistent form can be two different factors.
If Buckbe's presence as the class/form horse but not a consistent class/form horse precludes siding with the next on class/form, then why would Stopped being the class/form but not a consistent class/form not have the same effect on Drumlerry's elevation to good things status?
Stopped had run over fences more than Drumlerry having been out since before Christmas. Stopped was just 4/1 for the much higher class Arkle Chase just a month earlier and ran 3rd albeit beaten 25 lengths. He had previously finished runner up to Dramatist, a horse who also beat Drumlerry in D's last race.
It's difficult to see the logic in Stopped being considered an inconsistent form horse, as it is to a certain degree with Buckbe. How does a 3rd in the Arkle rate worse than a 3rd at Bangor?
As you suggest
JennyK in the face of consistent form, it does seem difficult to see why outside of the consistency totals, VDW would see Drumlerry as consistent but not Stopped.
And it may well be that in line with his formula, class was not actually "kingpin" and consistent form was the principle factor.
But if the definitions of consistent form change from race to race then what use would that be?
Why was Buckbe inconsistent? A failure to complete can only really be seen as a siginficant negative if it was a repeated failure to complete or the horse was noted as well beaten at the time anyway. And a failure in class higher than the horse was capable of cannot be seen as a downturn either, and VDW clearly said as much with the Gaye Chance example.
Stopped had a UR in his last 3 runs (interestingly as fav in the race he said Gaffer was a horse one could have backed) just as Buckbe had a Fall. In his other 2 runs Stopped was 2nd to Dramatist (way better class horse) and 3rd to Chinrullah (again much better class) in the class 110 Arkle.
Buckbe was out of it's depth class 99 3rd last race when 5th then fell dropped to class 30 and then won back up to class 54.
Out of it's depth cannot make a horse inconsistent. A fall is bypassed when adding the totals, why if it represents something negative?
And why did VDW say Catch Phrase was 2nd on class/form with last 3 placings involving a Fall, Pulled Up and a 6th (much higher class though)?
Where is the commonality in all that?
Tufnel, who has contributed more to discussion about VDW's methods and their possible application to current races than anyone else on this forum over the last year or two, responded to my post with a pm explaining what puzzled him, and I replied as helpfully as I am prepared to be.
Leodis's comment re weight and my response in the post after which Tufnel pm'd me, a thought occurred which hadn't before (though it is so very obvious I wonder why it hadn't) - namely that in addition to the publicly available win prize money divided by number of races won rating of ability (and the time/merit rating for young horses on the Flat), with handicaps VDW had another publicly available rating of ability, that made by the Official Handicapper. It is the case that for most of the "VDW years" exact ORs were not possible to know in many cases, but that is actually beside the point with handicaps. With them, VDW could easily have ranked a field by the weight each runner carried. He would have had to decide whether to rank by weight allocated or weight actually carried and, with either, whether to adjust by wfa where it applied. I am thinking that maybe the relationship between his ability ratings and an Official rating ranking based on weight, may help make sense of the "easy cracking of the handicap" comment. It would certainly cover the "easy" bit.
