The Curse of the Flying Dutchman

[whoneedsrio]

The Flying Dutchman, according to folklore, is a ghost ship that can never go home, and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. The Flying Dutchman is usually spotted from afar, sometimes seen to be glowing with ghostly light. It is said that if she is hailed by another ship, her crew will often try to send messages to land or to people long since dead. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is reckoned by seafarers to be a portent of doom. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The Systematic Punter, doomed to search forever for the winning system. Often thinks he has found the ultimate method only to find his hopes dashed on the rocks.

A few weeks ago I turned 50 and I found myself looking back and refecting on life in general and also on my chief hobby horse racing.

Now like most of my age I’ve been round the block a few times and theres a few things I’ve always intended to get round to which of course doesn’t always happen.

One of these is a project which I ‘ve been working on since around 2001 but its roots go much deeper into the past, over 30 years in fact.

In the late 70’s I was introduced by a fellow racing fan at work to the weekly publication the Sporting Chronicle Handicap Book. This still exists but is now known as the Raceform Update and though much has changed it still contains the readers letters page called sports forum.

Around 1978 a letter was published from one Che Van der Wheil suggesting a swop shop of ideas which would set the page alight. Replies included one that said “When passing round the hat it is normal to throw in some silver yourself, to encourge others and to get a good returnâ€

Another said that he was sure that Van der Wheil voiced the thoughts of many and that it was refreshing that he did not hide behind a ludicrous pseudonym such as “The Flying Dutchmanâ€

Of course after that he was often refered to by that name, hence the title of this piece and also as VDW.

Then the letters started, first a staking plan and then a way to narrow the field by use of the horses last three placings. An example was given using the Irish Champion Hurdle and how he arrived at the winner.

Almost straight away opinion polarized with one camp treating this like the second coming, here was the secret to fleecing the evil bookie and the other crying foul and “after timingâ€

More letters added to “the methodâ€

A way to evaluate class and ability and the use of form and time ratings, till another reader wrote in saying he had had four winners.

VDW replied that the four bets were indeed good things and congratulated the author on spotting the methods key.

Now the debate raged on over weeks and months as to this missing key, other methods were offered by Van der Wheil without ever fully clearing up the first, mudding the waters even more.

Both sides fired broadsides at each other and the whole thing rumbled on through the 80’s.

Sports Forum editor Tony Peach persuded VDW to wite a small booklet for Raceform called “Systematic betting†Other books were published after by Tony Peach of the letters to Sports Forum and interviews with Van der Wheil and at one time many thought that Peach was The Flying Dutchman, something he always denied.

The letters dried up during the 90’s and Peach reported that VDW had retired through ill health and later that he had passed away.

Bernie Ford took over as Sports Forums editor and still barely a week went past without those initials cropping up in a letter.

Then around the milllenium Ford passed the forum baton over to Graham Wheldon.

Many of you will know that Graham is probably the top expert on the draw in this country. He is the author of three Raceform books on the subject, writes a weekly column in Racing & Football Outlook during the flat turf season on the draw, writes also for Raceform Update and the Racing Post, he’s a very busy chap. He also falls firmly into the non-believer camp when it comes to VDW, many times he has asked for selections to be proofed up front and in these days of e-mail and instant messaging why not?

Shortly after taking over he effectivly banned any more Van der Wheil related letters.

Sports Forum now is hardly of any interest with only the occasional decent misstive.

I don’t think this is entirely down to Wheldon banning the VDW stuff, forums such as ours mean replies can be posted quickly, a weekly paper means months can pass while discussions take place where as we can do the same in hours.

However before Graham ended the VDW Sports Forum era he published details of a Van der Wheil forum on Yahoo groups and this is where my involvement really begins.

I have to say that I wasn’t a great believer in the VDW method myself, a lot of the after timed examples didn’t ring true to me and the thing I disliked most was the tone of the letters. I felt that whoever the author was he was talking down to his readers, as if we were expected to kneel before the great master and were unworthy of his wisdom.

Anyway I decided to have a look at the Yahoo group and signed up. There were several hundred posts to read through and a fair sized membership. At first it was quite interesting reading but then it became like Sports Forum again with auguments breaking out. Usually this was someone who was following the masters way to the letter chastizing those who had strayed from the path. In short some of the ego’s in there were almost as big as the original.

Despite this I began to look again at the method and started to rate some races. After a few weeks a pattern seemed to develop and things started to evolve. At first I had seven categories for each horse rated and this took up quite a bit of time, even more so when I added an eighth which was an idea of my own. Gradually I refined this to what it is now four categories, three of the original ones and mine.

I have used this method for about the last five years but only on an infrequent basis, what I have always wanted to do is to run it for a full season, in action and test it completely and this is what I hope to do this Flat season.

The Groundrules.

So how is this going to work?

The method is based on class and consistancy so works in the better class races and non handicaps so I’m going to use Group 1, 2 and 3 races.

Because there is little to go on in many cases 2yo racing is excluded. On this point the racing of 2yo’s has changed greatly over the last 20 or 30 years, many trainers give their better 2yo’s a very light campaign often avoiding the 2yo pattern races and sometimes only running them once or twice in backend maidens and minor stakes. Therefore it is always best to treat 3yo only Group races with a degree of caution, certainly before Royal Ascot.

The Method

Having chosen the race I write down the entire field in racecard order down the lefthand side of my ledger.

Across the top are my four categories headed, F/F, %, E and F/C

F/F is a varriant of the VDW last three form figures. He added the last three placings together, for example: 812 = 11. Anything above 9 is usually given as 0 and would count as 10.

I use the Fineform method hence the F/F, however there was/is a copywrite on this which Fineform strictly guarded. Although I have not seen any of their ads for a good while I would not care to beak the copywrite here.

% is the number of wins divided by the number of runs.

For flat racing I include turf and aw runs together but any runs under NH rules are ignored.

E is for earnings.

The career earnings, win and place, for flat and aw added together in thousands divided by the number of runs (not wins) for example.

£136,500 would be rounded up to 137 and divided by the total runs, say 9 gives 15.22 to two decimal places.

F/C is for fancied/class

This is my baby and is a calculation based on the horses last run involving the prize money for the race, the horses starting price and it’s finishing position and that is as much as I’m saying at this point.

Each horse is rated in the four categories which takes about a minue each using the Racing Post form pages or web site.

Once all have been rated the top three in each category are awarded a star *

If there are joint rated each is given a star, for example a top rated and three joint second rated would each get the star but the next one in third would not.

Any horse with one or no stars is elimated.

Any horse with two stars are also usually rejected although in early season 3yo races a lightly raced type may not have a high E and F/C figure and it may pay to keep an eye on this type.

Three star animals are kept for the shortlist.

Four stars would normally mean automatic selection although the price available would determine if I would bet or not.

Once the shortlist is arrived at it is then a case of deciding whether to reduce the list further by normal form study or if prices allow to back two or more.

Three is usually the maximum on the list and two is the usual number, any race with a shortlist of one would mean, price allowing, a bet.

I have had the odd race with no three or four star horses and these races are best avoided.

Having arrived at the shortlist the idea then is to decide if a bet on one or more is in order, part of this experiment is to see if a true system can be made from this with four star selections the most logical area.

We shall see.

[whoneedsrio]

Nell Gwyn 16.04.2008 Newmarket 7f Group 3 3yo Fillies This is one of those early season 3yo races with lightly raced types & those with high Earnings & Fancied/Class figures from running well in the fairly new 2yo sales races. It's a race that gets the leave alone alarm bells ringing & there are plenty of races to come in a long season. However for the record, Shabiba has 3 stars Anosti, Quiet Elegance & Rinterval have 2 stars each. This early in the season there will be quite a few leave alone races, indeed it's rare for me to bet these days before the Guineas meeting but I have to start somewhere & this is it. Rio.