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  • Hi Guest Just in case you were not aware I wanted to highlight that you can now get a free 7 day trial of Horseracebase here.
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VDW.... How to Find the Solution.

The reason most struggle with this IMO is down to looking for interpretations within others words,instead of just reading what was there-nothing more nothing less.There are people that have not even read the letters as I understand it.

I have tried to show how I worked many times on various forums and found that regardless of success or failure(had a lot more of that lol),you are damned if you do and damned if you dont with this subject sometimes from the most unlikely quarters.

I pointed out that Nessie(poster from the gummy forum days)was right when they said the truth was buried under a 1000 posts.

I have told people who posted the relevant information(Lee).

Yet no one bothered.

My best time publicly as I am sure a few members here can attest to was a winning streak around 14-16 winners back to back using what I believe the method to be.

I even done a racecard at one posters request(sorry cannot remember who you were but again the post was public)six out of seven correct.

But alas no cookies for me lol.

So dont be frustrated if your struggling because there is way more frustration coming if your not lol.

I always loved one sub paragraph in particular;


"The basis for this selection method is improvement in higher class determined by speed figure and then being dropped in class to collect.Registering part of the credentials is no good although many times you would still come out on top."
 
Cheers Bold Gait.

Hi again Arkle,
We certainly spent some time in the same trenches lol,there was sky's ,kimmys as well I believe and of course the forum that shall not be named.

I can remember comparing our differences to dutching,do you still favour that type of bet yourself?I do a few now and again myself but I am more conservative than I used to be for sure.
 
DBMB, i was looking at Kimmypops the other week for the VDW rules that Black Cat posted and was having some success with, i had no joy locating the list. Would you happen to have the list of rules or a e-mail address for Black Cat. BC was on this site, but has not posted for some time.

Arkle
 
All credit to Black Cat who wrote what I post below and to Kimmypops for maintaining the information.

FLASH IN THE PAN

The Thirteen Factors

Although largely a system, some flexibility and thought is allowed!!

1. Forecast: Fav in the betting forecast and live market

2. Class: Top RPM

3. Prize money: LTO must be same or higher than TTO.

4. Days: I look for a horse running within 30 days. (But be a little flexible - keep in mind that some horses do go well after a break, so look for what is there in their past form to confirm this. Also, better class horses won't always have opportunities within 30 days).

5. Consistency: One win and one place, (or better), in its previous three runs. One of those placings should have occurred on its last outing. If beaten LTO, it should be within 2L (flat) or 5L (NH) of the winner.

6. Two Furlongs: VDW says look for horses making a fight of it in the last 1 or 2 furlongs during its last 2 or 3 races. Usually no problem with this, using my consistency assessment. But there are instances where it helps – for example, where the horse won so easily LTO that there was no test - is this then one to exclude).

7. Weight: I do not like to see a horse going up by more than 10-12 lbs from LTO. (I use 12 for the system). I do not like to see it giving weight away to horses that have shown recent good form. When I am feeling extra keen, I use the weights LTO and TTO of both horses, in conjunction the with RPMs of both horses to try and ensure they are roughly “level” in weight rises compared to their respective RPM rises from LTO.

8. Going: The horse should have proved somewhere in its history that it can carry the weight in today’s class of race and going.

9. Distance: Is the horse proven at today’s specific distance and at the same class?

10. Jockey: I want an in-form Jockey. I want a proven Jockey. The ‘worse’ the Jockey is, the better the horse must be (relative to its rivals) to compensate. Racing Post has a wonderful statistics thing on its web site.

11. Trainer: I look for is a trainer that has a reasonable strike rate over the current and previous season. By the other factors, we should already know the trainers intention: he has a fit horse, an in form horse, and a horse that is fancied to have a realistic chance of winning.

12. Runners: Max flat = 16
(I used to have a table that went something like this. Don't know if I used it for Flash)
5f-6f 10
7f 11
8f 12
9f 13
10f 14
11f 15
12f-14f 16

13. No 2 y.o races. No NH bumpers. (I also would sometimes exclude 5f & 6f sprints, but can't remember if I did that when doing this particular Flash test). And be very wary of races where there are horses with no form or no UK form.


FLASH IN THE PAN TWO

For the ˜Flash-in-the-Pan' system, I don't necessarily use the factors in the way described. I have developed quick ways of doing certain things because of time restraints. Nevertheless, each of the factors is accounted for – there is a 13 factor assessment done before the money is placed.

1. Forecast: Position in the betting forecast.

2. Class: VDW gave an ability rating, but suggested that this should be backed up using two further ratings. This class assessment method is not relied on solely, it must be backed up with other ratings which also indicate that the selection is the ˜class' horse. (I use RPM and have begun to add an assessment based on Topspeed, as recommended by Swish).

3. Class TTO compared with LTO compared with the others in the field. This is NOT the same as point 2. A horse may have better overall class rating. But due to whatever circumstances, has been racing against lower class animals recently. (No good).

4. Days: I look for a horse running within 30 days. (But keep in mind that some horses do go well after a break, so look for what is there in their past form to confirm this).

5. Consistency: You all know what was written by VDW concerning consistency. For my system, I like a horse to have one win and one place, (or better), in its previous three runs. One of those placings should have occurred on its last outing. If beaten LTO, it should be within 2L (flat) or 5L (NH) of the winner.

6. Two Furlongs: VDW says look for horses making a fight of it in the last 1 or 2 furlongs during its last 2 or 3 races. (Usually no problem with this using my consistency assessment, but there are instances where it helps – for example, where the horse won so easily LTO that there was no test).

7. Weight: Weight is a great leveller, he writes. I do not like to see a horse going up by more than 10-12 lbs from LTO. (I use 12 for the system). I do not like to see it giving weight away to horses that have shown recent good form. When I am feeling extra keen, I use the weights LTO and TTO of both horses, in conjunction the with RPMs of both horses to try and ensure they are roughly "level" in weight rises compared to their respective RPM rises from LTO.

8. Going: The horse should have proved somewhere in its history that it can carry the weight in today's class of race and going.

9. Distance: Is the horse proven at today's specific distance (and at the same class).

10. Jockey: I want an in-form Jockey. I want a proven Jockey. The ˜worse' the Jockey is, the better the horse must be (relative to its rivals) to compensate. Racing Post has a wonderful statistics thing on its web site).

11. Trainer: I look for is a trainer that has a reasonable strike rate over the current and previous season. By the other factors, we should already know the trainers intention: he has a fit horse, an in form horse, and a horse that is fancied by the media to have a realistic chance of winning.

12. Race assessment: You have looked at the best races, and have a selection shortlist based on class and consistency. You are happy it can carry the weight and will go on the going. And the Jockeys no mug. I now go through each horse previous three races in the RP to see how they have been performing, and write a little summary on each. At the end of that, it will either confirm my selection(s) for the race, or it will throw up some concerns, which will lead to a no bet race. E.g. the up-to-now sure thing was recently beaten by another contender!

13. Odds: What is ˜value' in your book? Only you can answer. I have a price I don't go below. (I also have been experimenting with a simple way of assessing odds. Not very scientific, and I'm not even sure worthwhile at the moment).

And the fourteenth factor if you like, that I don't use in my system, but would use if I were "doing it properly"...

14. Type of Race: VDW says keep to the best (highest value) races of each meeting, best two at main meeting. Again, I would have to say this is simplistic and for the novice. These are races where the horses would be deemed to all be ˜trying' to win. The other point is that ˜good' horses, consistent types will more likely be found among the better races. So, how low do you go? When putting up a "VDW" race, I think you would have to keep within those parameters the maestro set. But you may consider that any race worth say £10K or £20K or whatever will contain triers among the main protagonists.



Hope this helps Arkle
 
Hi all,
I have not visited this forum for quite some time, and have to confess to being out of touch with current horse-racing form. I have just been having a look round last night and this morning and it is great to see that discussion of VDW is still so popular.
I hope that it will be OK to occasionally browse until I can get back in touch with form a little.
Good Luck to all
 
I really enjoy reading discussions of VDW methods. I’m another analyst who benefitted from the original letters. But in my case it was indirectly in my study of horses and jockeys racing each other rather than trying to reverse engineer a specific method from the cases that he published.

There are a couple of thoughts that I bear in mind when trying to jog my thinking by reading the contributions of others.

Firstly, any folk who discover a method of prediction that produces value from investing, will have probably put in a vast amount of personal research time and developed and used several hard earned skills. I assume therefore that they will not widely publicise the whole manual of how to apply the method in order to safeguard that value.

If that is anywhere near the mark, I assume that VDW published his method minus extra workings and ideas that he used. Not knowing what these might be or how many there were will create a very difficult if not impossible problem for those who try to reverse engineer just the published ‘scraps’; or try to ‘break the code’.

‘After timing’ is another point. I’ve been lucky enough to know a number of people who are tops in their different fields. They never stop thinking and questioning what and how they do things because others keep improving and the world keeps changing. They are all very busy people. A few wouldn’t discuss their mo, whilst others were flattered that you are interested in what they do and they try to help, up to a point.

Following an aim of continual improvement will therefore result in some ideas that one can be confident about whilst others are likely to be in various stages of development including pilot testing.

I am therefore grateful to anyone who has taken the trouble to pen some thoughts or cases no matter whether they relate to the past, present or future. Of course I’ll do my cross checks on any new thought that comes to mind and that requires me to keep an open mind to spread my net wide enough to catch a new idea. I rarely find that I can use the exact point someone else is making. I assume that’s because we’ve already invested much effort in doing our own thing that we are all slightly or significantly thinking and working in different ways.

So, I take this opportunity to thank all of you for posting to this forum.
 
mjay student i hope the following does not read as OTT because this would never be my intention.I feel it is fair comment to say that i (and others) have proved via pre race selection on this forum that turning a worthwhile profit is possible.During the past five years i have always included my reasons for backing any horse.Some of these are possibly based on original thinking which took me many years to glean and fully understand there best use.

Why have i posted the above ? because despite this sharing the avg price of my selections and winners increases.In truth there are no secret holy grails most of us work with the same ingredients but the profit or not straightener is how we use what we have, and in this respect the very best teacher will always be yourself.

I do not feel that there are any gurus or experts in this business but experience counts for plenty, and although others can help point you in the better directions it is only your own effort and tenacity which will earn the experience and enable the success.I think your user name is a good one because we are all students. :)
 
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I have been reading through some of the old now defunct forums where Lee posted. I paid particular attention to what Lee wrote.

I may be wrong in this but I get the impression that something changed in Lee's writings from 2004 onwards.It appears to me that in the years 2001 - 2003ish, that Lee hadn't fully solved the saga. He then appeared to post with much more confidence from early 2004,to the extent that he posted up a lot of pre race selections.

I could of course be wrong in that,but I certainly detected a change in tone.

I had a few drinks at the weekend with a couple of racing journalist friends of mine, and we shared a few stories and had a great evening.

The conversation stayed on racing as you can imagine,and their modus operandi centres around value,indeed they are very rigid when it comes to value. You can also appreciate that these guys are privy to information which most don't have, they talk to a lot of owners, trainers,jockeys etc.

I loosely outlined how I operate, and they were more than surprised at the success I have achieved. I actually convinced them that value is not the be all and end all for me. It amazed me that they said they wouldn't make their betting pay,if it wasn't for value.

I may be wrong here ,but I can't recall Lee ever mentioning value. We all have our own way of operating I guess.

There was one huge imo, issue that we agreed on and that is the psychology of gambling,to me that was the biggest obstacle I had to overcome

Anyway enough waffling theres work to be done, maybe more later.
 
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Good morning T Thomas your above post contains some interesting comments. Could you "loosely outline" how you operate with the rest of us, because with respect reading your previous posts i still have no idea. ? Re Racing Journalists my thoughts are that if they are such good judges then why do they need the second income.?

Re value and its worth i am going to suggest that anyone who makes it pay long term will have been obtaining value along the way and as an important part of. I know little of Lee but as i recall the few pre race picks he shared where all at short prices and perhaps this played a part in his increased confidence which is hardly enlightening because playing at the front of the market is going to give any punter a higher strike rate and a better chance of backing winners but for how many does this equate to long term net gains.?

You close by mentioning the psychology of betting and on this i do agree with many hard lessons needed to be learnt. I would suggest one of which might be that before any backer can anticipate becoming a long term winner he first needs to learn how to lose, and perhaps this thought ties in well with some of the above because imo those who follow the any winner is worth having regardless of price MO might find that disappointment awaits.
 
Hi Guys,
Is it possible that anyone could post the form of Credit Card who beat Prominent King in his penultimate race before the Erin and the form of the horse he finished 4th behind in his 3rd last time out race. Thanks guys, I've only just had a look at this site and will come back to it for a more informed read.
 
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