I'm amazed to find it is getting on for a year since I last added to this blog, and when I did I see I was pre-occupied with speeding up data downloading and had recently gone back to the redoubtable Peter Clayton.
In the event Peter was unable to help me so I struggled on for a while before casting around for someone else who might, and I struck absolute gold in finding an expert in Indonesia, Daniel. A more patient and competent Excel expert I doubt exists, and over the last ten months or so he has taken my Excel applications to new and previously unimagined levels.
I now have two main race analysis applications. The first is for downloading data, which was the bugbear of my life in peak season, when on a busy Saturday there could be up to twenty races I wanted to add to my database, which took care of most of Sunday morning. With Daniel's help I can now download all the data I want for a race in, literally, a minute. I open the Post's website, open the race details, select the complete data and paste it into the application. All I then have to do is click on a "post data" button and the data I want is added to an Excel sheet in exactly the same format as my database, unless there is a horse in the race running from outside the handicap, in which case another screen appears and I have to type in a number (depending on how much allowance I want to make for the outside of the handicap runners). Either way the whole process takes no more than a minute.
As a direct consequence, what used to take as much as two hours before now takes no more than 15-20 minutes, and most days about five, so no longer a grinding chore. But it has also opened up hitherto impracticable options:
1) in December 2011 I took the decision to stop collecting data for my handicap hurdle database so that I could add class 5 handicap data to my flat database (the class 5 data being essential for the analysis of class 4 handicaps, very often the best class races available on the AW from November to March). By about May 2012 I found I could easily collect data for all Flat handicaps and indeed decent non handicaps, not just run within the UK but also Ireland (as there is often one or more runners with Irish form in the better UK handicaps), so now my Flat database comprises every UK race except maidens, seller, claimers and very low class classifieds, and the better Irish handicaps and non handicaps;
2) because of the ease of adding data I spent some hours going back to 2011 to add the same data for that year, so now my four year database contains two years (2009 and 2010) of class 4 handicap data and two years (2011 and 2012) of much fuller data, with the result that nowadays only very rarely do I have to add any data manually to the results of running my analysis application;
3) also because of the ease of adding data I have added new elements to the database, with another three items per run for each horse;
4) finally, I have restarted collecting handicap hurdles data and gone back to include all handicaps and non handicaps except maidens and sellers for the 2010/11 and current seasons.
The second application, comprising my database and the various means I use to analyse races, has undergone similar development with Daniel's help. As a result, to analyse a race I merely have to open the card for the race on the Post site, select the contents, copy and past it to the application, press a "post it" button, shift to another page in the application, press a "select horses" button and then a "proceed" button, and within seconds are created summaries of what I regard as the key statistical data for the race - 26 cells per horse - as per those I post on the Mathematician's website, a second analysis sheet setting out the material needed to appraise the "form" horses as per VDW, and a career sheet for each horse with the relevant data for every run in the database. Not only that, but after data has been added to the database I can print out the same material, with the data for the recent race and results added, which is perfect for study purposes.
In short, the last ten months have seen the solution to the problem of the daily grind to update the database, a massive expansion of the database and the development of a parallel one for handicap hurdles, and a substantial improvement in the application for generating the material needed to analyse a race. For every three hours I have to spare for racing matters, nowadays only about 15-20 minutes is spent on data processing/manipulation, leaving a very much higher percentage of time available for the real work, analysing what the data tells us and identifying sound betting opportunities.
In parallel, Daniel has created two other applications for me. The first a means of interrogating my databases to get resolved all those VDW-related questions one tried to get Racing System Builder to answer but failed because that otherwise excellent application doesn't allow class to be handled the VDW way (or through what I regard as a better alternative). The second a means for me to explore whether or not there is anything in Kevin Booth's contention - in "ISIRIS Unveiled" - that one can learn a great deal through careful reading of bookmakers' early prices, to which end I've added two seasons' worth of Flat race early prices from the Pricewise columns and am looking forward to analysing it once the current turf season ends. (My current and very provisional view is that there is a lot less in it than Booth asserts, but more thorough exploration may lead me to modify this view.)
Anyway, now with what are the perfect tools for the job, I continue to analyse races most days using my development of VDW's main method, content that both Marvex and VDW were essentially right in their approaches to the problem of race analysis. Judging by activity levels on the forums of which I am a member, interest in matters VDW seems very low, which is both unsurprising (the fifth term of VDW's equation finding most wanting) and in some ways very welcome (otherwise good bets from a VDW perspective would all be short priced).
More concerning is that, because of the retirement of Tony Peach, and the impending retirement of Alan Seddon, proprietor of Browzers Books, future would-be analysts may find it more difficult to get copies of the VDW booklets. Already, for example, Alan tells me he has no stock of "The Ultimate Wheil of Fortune". Tony in particular has come in for stick from some posters on VDW threads - quite unjustifiably in my view. Without his efforts, those of us who read the VDW articles years ago would still be leafing through ever more dog-eared cuttings from the Sporting Chronicle Handicap Book or the reprints the SCHB made available at one point. As it is we have everything of value in half a dozen booklets and "Systematic Betting". But more on this another day.
