Those of us who become interested in VDW's work almost inevitably get involved in consideration of immensely detailed questions - is that figure accurate or an error, should that * be there or not, what exactly does that sentence mean, which race was that named horse a "good thing" for when no specific race was stated, etc etc? And I can well remember engaging in several such discussions on various forums over the years, with assertions being made and contested, but never a consensual outcome. And the reason for that is very clear - in the absence of an authoritative statement by VDW himself, it is literally impossible to focus on a specific issue and be absolutely sure what he meant. As good an example as any is this short passage from his March 1981 article (item 39 of "The Golden Years of Van Der Wheil"): ".. what is form if it is not that one performance is better than another?" Who can say with certainty from those few words whether VDW was referred to the respective performances of two or more horses, or successive performances by one horse?
So how can one make progress and be as sure as possible one is on the right track in trying to piece together what I think of as VDW's main method? I suggest there are two questions we need to answer: are our hypotheses consistent with the evidence and are we achieving the results VDW claimed.
Neither of these questions is unproblematic. Taking consistency first, VDW wrote extensively, referred to methods, plural, gave dozens of examples, and regularly emphasised that he was in the main discussing methods not systems. On this latter, in chapter three of his booklet "Systematic Betting" he wrote:
"My view is that it is impossible to devise a set of rules, which are not ambition, that will consistently provide a string of winners",
and in his 18 January 1986 article (reprinted in "The Ultimate Wheil of Fortune") he had already made much the same point, adding that success can be found by "logical processes of evaluation tempered by knowledge of the fundamentals and finalised by experience".
Yet much else VDW wrote is suggestive of systems. His March 1981 article includes quite specific injunctions such as "select most consistent from the first 5 or 6 in forecast" (the apparent ambiguity here having been dealt with earlier when he made clear than one should consider the first five in non handicaps and the first six in handicaps). He also wrote that when we had understood his method we would all have the same horses as him, which is again suggestive of a system.
I suggest that the VDW main method is best thought of as system-like, ie comprising a set of clear rules, but with at each stage the need to interpret them in the light of "knowledge of the fundamentals" and "experience". But the fact that VDW claimed that if we understood his method we would have the same horses as him suggests that, for the most part, the rules predominate and relatively little interpretation of them is needed.
And VDW was helpful in guiding us to situations where interpretation was needed. Anyone who came to his Gaye Chance example (March 1981 article) having studied the ones he had given up to that point would not have noted Gaye Chance as a consistent horse. But VDW explained that, because its last run was in very much higher class than its others (and that of the race he was discussing) it could be left to one side, and indeed Gaye Chance was the class/form horse in the race.
So what we need to do is to find the rules on the known components of the method - those which identify the consistent horses, the probables, the form horses etc - AND the situations in which they need to be interpreted in the light of "knowledge of the fundamentals" and "experience", and the first question to be answered is whether those rules, as occasionally interpreted in the light of "knowledge ..." etc satisfactorily explain all the relevant selections VDW gave us by way of illustrations.
And that in turn gives rise to another problem: what are the relevant selections? - an issue which has also been the subject of much discussion over the years. Was the Prominent King selection made in the same way as those given in the March 1981 article? Was the Roushayd selection found by the March 1981 article method or by a different one, etc etc?
If we take the totality of VDW's selections, some are clearly not found by the main method (eg those such as Mithras referred to in the 26 January 1985 article, found by what is often referred to as the "handicap hurdles" method), and those such as Rivage Bleu mentioned in the short contribution VDW made to one of Jock Bingham's booklets. And some horses are mentioned not as selections but to illustrate aspects of the method (eg Weth Nan and Welsh Dancer in item 13 of "The Golden Years of VDW", Uther Pendragon in item 15 of the same booklet, and the various mainly unnamed "form" horses referred to in the very first article in "Betting the VDW Way"). And for a handful of horses - Pragmatic etc - listed in item 20 of "The Golden Years" there is doubt as to the race for which VDW made them selections. But when all these are left to one side, there are still over seventy selections, starting with Prominent King early in 1978 and running through to Quest For Fame in June 1990, all in my view found by the main VDW method, against which we can test emerging hypotheses. If a hypothesis about, for example, how the consistent horses are identified, fails to account for any of these selections, even when interpreted with "knowledge ..." etc, it is clearly unsatisfactory, and one can only assume one has probably fully understood the method when one is comfortable that ALL the relevant examples would have been found by one's understanding.
That leads to the second question, is one achieving the strike rate VDW claimed? Lee has argued that if one is not achieving the kind of strike rate VDW claimed, one's interpretation of the method is unsatisfactory. This is not unproblematic, for three reasons. First, VDW claimed that his method produced "85% to 90% winners Flat and jumps, year in year out" but as far as is known, never proved that claim. Second, even if the claim was true, VDW made it clear that at times he backed more than one horse in a race, and so we have no way of knowing whether the 85-90% claim related to single, win bets or those plus successful multiple bets. Third, even if the claim was true when VDW was backing horses, it is not impossible that there have been changes in racing since 1990 which would now make achieving that kind of strike rate impossible.
It seems to me that the only reason to put serious time and effort into a study of VDW's writings is because one judges them to be credible, and if one does that it seems logical to give credance to the strike rate claim too. So I tend to agree with Lee, and would view the attainment of a long-term strike rate - covering both single and multiple bets - of around that referred to by VDW as the second level of proof one has correctly identified his method. Allowing for perhaps a degree of over-statement, I would suggest that anyone failing to get three winning bets from four, long term, has failed fully to discover the method which I think must certainly include temperament - the ability to wait until one's selection has all the "winner in the race" characteristics. More specifically, one will achieve a very high strike rate backing the contemporary equivalents of Little Owl and Sunset Cristo from the March 1981 article, but not if one also backs the likes of Gaye Chance, Kenlis and Wild Gamble from the same article, no matter that in that example all three "non bets" won.
