Van Der Wheil ratings or VDW ratings as they are usually known are a way of rating a horse by its class or ability and form.
It was created quite a few years ago by the mysterious writer, Che Van Der Wheil and nicknamed the Flying Dutchman, who wrote his notes in the old Sporting Chronicle Handicap book.
There is a ton of information on this subject and a whole host of people who have their own idea on the subject, the method used and even whether Van Der Wheil was real or a fake.
I am not going to go into full detail about the number of different methods that he came up with but I will give the basis of the idea as I know it as I have read a lot about the subject over the years, in fact I had one or two of the updated little books that have been published since myself.
Books like VDW The Golden Years and VDW The Silver Lining are two that I remember and can still be obtained today if you wanted to look for them.
The books however did seem to me at times to confuse the matter as there were answers to questions that had been asked that gave rise to new angles not mentioned before and other previously written articles giving different reasons for past selections being given.
The Basis Of VDW Ratings
The ability rating is used to find the class of each horse in a race and can be calculated quite easily by dividing the amount of winning prize money each horse has won by the number of wins.
So a horse that has won seven races and a total of £175,000 for these wins (not place money), will have a VDW rating 25,000. You would then divide this number by 100 to get a final rating of 250.
Another horse may have won ten races before with a total winning prize fund of £42,000 and this would give that horse a rating of 4200 or 42.
So you can see that it is not how many races the horse has won, it is the average of prize money he has won each time and is in itself a very good way of looking at a horses class.
In the two examples above the first horse has won in races with an average prize fund of £25,000 whilst the second has been winning races on average worth just £4,200 and just from this you can see which horse has been winning the better races.
Inform Racing provide the VDW ratings for every horse on the race cards, making it a very easy way of comparing all of the runners of a race very quickly without having to work through each race and calculate all of the ratings yourself.
Form together with ability
Van Der Wheil also said that consistent horses, or those who consistently performed better should command interest and his second formula was a very simple one that looked at a horses last three runs.
Simply by adding up the last three form figures and given anything over 10, or that was a letter such as F for Fell or P for Pulled Up, a rating of 10 you can get the form figure for each horse.
So a horse that won its last three races would score 3, 1 + 1 + 1. A horse that had form figures of 72F would score 19.
By taking horses in a race that were in the top 3 for both the ability and form ratings, VDW said you can narrow down the field to those that have the best class and those in best form.
I believe that in essence this is a sound formulation that you can use in your betting toolkit but it will not be everyones cup of tea.
It is the sort of topic that divides people right down the middle and if you explore more about Van Der Wheil, his methods and his writing, then you will probably see why.
Using the VDW ratings
I personally find the VDW ratings useful as another way of confirming any selections but I cannot say I would start my form research by them alone.
The ability rating is certainly an excellent method of looking at the class of a horse but I believe both this and the form ratings need to be used in conjunction with other form reading criteria.
For example, a horse may have won only one race before but it was a high class Heritage Handicap a few years ago and has run poorly ever since. However he will still have a high ability rating just from this one win.
I would personally like to see a horse has won say three races before I take the VDW rating seriously, or maybe has a 15% or better strike rate perhaps.
As for the form rating, well a horse that has won its last races can certainly be said to be in form, but just how much has he gone up in the handicap for these wins and does he go on today’s soft ground?
The VDW ability and form ratings provided by Inform Racing will certainly save you time calculating the ratings yourself and is a very easy way of comparing the horses in a race.
As you may or not know by now, I am quite a fan of the top weights in Handicaps so I took a look at the Inform Racing race cards at the weekend to see what would happen when the horse with the highest VDW ability rating was also the top weight in a race.
Well the answer is, they didn’t fare too badly.
There were 11 horses that were top on ability rating and top weight in the handicap and from these there were 3 winners at 8/1, 15/2 and 9/2 giving a profit to SP of 12 points over the two days.
The winners were Bayan Kasirga Won 8/1, Sinbad The Sailor Won 15/2 both at Wolverhampton and Emperors Choice Won 9/2 over at Haydock.
A small sample but a 27% strike rate and a half decent profit to boot.
This little system idea gives you the horse thought to have the most class as well as being the best rated horse on Official Ratings in a race and should be quite a powerful formula if you think about it.
I then looked at all of the non handicaps where there was at least one horse with a VDW rating, so no Miaden races for example, just selecting the horse with the highest VDW ability rating and saw another decent profit made, albeit with most winners at short prices.
9 winners were found, while there were 2 seconds and 3 losers.
The winners were Field Of Dreams Won 2/1, Rock On Ruby Won 15/8, Criq Rock Won 15/8, Surtee De Berlais Won 15/8, Illegally Blonde Won 7/4, Jaboltski Won 11/8, Irving Won 10/11, O O Seven Won 4/7 and Vautor Won 2/5.
With the five losers this makes a profit of 7.77 points with an even better strike rate of 64%
So, my little take on the VDW ratings and something you may want to take a look at over the next few days or so.
Inform Racing provide these ability ratings every day on the race cards and will save a lot of time calculating these for every race.
If you have any comments to make about this post then please do so below or on the Forum link for this post here thanks.
http://informracing-blog.com/forums/topic/van-der-wheil-ratings
For me VDW’s method was interesting but not as clear as it should have been. There were a lot of arguments on the right way of doing things.
If I was doing a form rating for the AWT as opposed to turf and there was plenty of form to go by I would be inclined to split the form for the last 3 runs into a few groups. The reason I give is at the moment there are only a few AWT’s so its not very labour intensive.
So if I was to look at Lunar Deity I could see that turf would be 14 14 11 and a strike rate of 4 from 34 but on the all weather it would be 7 1 6 and a strike rate of 4 from 8. I would also look at track type to see if there was any preference.
I use microsoft excel to sort out my races and especially the conditional formatting which saves time. I do a lot more as well as this with some of my ways steeped in VDW fineform and Sad Ken but I try to think outside of this area as well. Always trying to keep one step ahead of the bookie.
It is always worth reading Timeform/Betfair comments and the racing post comments on each horse as they do give you the odd snippet.
Paul B
During the time I was a member I found the VDW ratings very good and well worth considering, I mentioned this to Ian over a year ago.
Ive been very impressed with James blog and also ideas from the members, I particularly like the top 50 % idea and I certainly wouldnt let the number of selections put me off. If the maths work out over a month and your bank steadily increases then why not.
Informs ratings are as good as anyones and has soon as my present provider finishes this month I shall rejoin Inform.
Good luck to you all and its good to see people working together.
the vdw system i was given was, pattern races only , top 5 last time out, within 5 lengths, top 5 in betting ,
Use the VDW to confirm the selection.
Medicean Man in the Chelmsford 1535,a case in point.
Top rated in all the key categories,has been running well in Class 1 company.
Has the top rated VDW Ability Class rating…with a top jockey pairing.
A nailed on 80/20 contender,won a shade cosily at 14.0/4.15 early prices.
The 80/20 Rule cures the Seconditus frustration and keeps your confidence levels high.
That’ll do for Today methinks……..
Handicaps today had one winner at 10/1 and four losers, however two of the races were Nursery Handicaps for two year olds and I would think we are better looking at races for older horses only.
Not good for the non handicaps with four losers but a small profit overall.
As you know, I am not a computer nerd,but by falling your selections today, I had three winners in a Yankee.
First time for weeks,really appreciate all the help and hardwork,you put into this system.
Thanks again.
There is one selection today for the Handicap system, which is:-
Sedgwick. 2.20-Retrieve the Stick(5/1).
I can not see any other qualifiers.
Gavin.
Gavin, I also see Lovcen in the 2.30 Ling as he is joint top weight and By Rights in the 3.10 Southwell is also joint top weight.
If you wanted to squeeze three more out, for the sake of one pound in weight (second top weight), you could have:
2.20 Sedgefield Silver Stick
2.40 Southwell Lexington Bay
3.40 Southwell Pabusar
However, sticking strictly to the rules there are just the three, Retrive The Stick, Lovcen and By Rights.
Thanks James
I didn’t take into account the joint top weight runners.
Let’s see how these three perform, all at nice prices.
Decent enough today Gavin, a winner at 7/1, a 3rd at 33/1 and a loser.
Hi James
Yes a great day, backed all three each way about 10 points up. A good system not to many selections and takes only minutes to find them.
Great post !!
Two selections today :-
Font 1.10 – Decimus
Kemp 7.45 – Plover
You missed the one in the 5.15, check out my post on the forum for this subject Gavin.
Hi James
I’ve decided to bet e/w using this idea (Handicaps only) and as at now, I am 16.35 points up from six selections.
There are four selections for tomorrow.
Gavin
evening ,
would thurs selections be
12.45 Pennine Warrior
1.35 Kalifourchon
3.05 Tellovoi
6.10 Harlequin Rock
7.10 Starcrossed
only 2 carrying my money 12.45/3.05 races (20/80 bets )
bloody hell 3 non runners and the 2 that took part should be put out to the grass
If you read one of my earlier comments PJ you will see I said it may be worth leaving Nurseries out as the horses are only two years old and the Ability figure may not be calculated from a lot of runs or wins and this would remove Harlequin Dancer today – who did run very badly.
Results so far have been ok so maybe stick to races for older horses and see how it goes for a few days.
Thanks james —– missed your comment on 2yo nurseries , so will aviod ——- 2 races shortlisted today
Don. 12.15
Wol. 5.45
1215 ?????????? 1610 wolves was a winner albeit 15/8
neil , maybe I am doing something but i thought NIGHT IN MILAN was a selection in that 12.15 race —maybe james can confirm ??? as for the Wolves 16.10 that was a nursery so therefor non starter for me
neil , maybe I am doing something (wrong) you should be able to edit any typeing errors
Nice column James – enlightening. Years ago i was an avid fan of Tony Peach’s column in the Raceform Handicap book. It was brilliant, as were article by VDW, Jock Bingham, GD Taylor and Methodmaker. This blog goes along way to filling the gap left by the papers demise. The actual end of Raceform was planned. Once the Racing post bought it out they deliberately demolished it. It was gradually reduced to nothing – the systems column got rid of. It was a fabulous racing paper in it’s day – had it delivered every week.
i have been a vdw follower for many years and I now use inform ratings to good effect without having to do the calculations myself. Has anyone suggestions of which other columns can be used with the vdw one?
An interesting idea, today I am looking at the VDW rating and the pace connection, I looked at the 18:10 at Chelmsford City and used the last 3 pace rating to calculate the Humour was likely to show pace in this race. I calculated the Venus Grace would be a likely pressure to the leader and quite prominent. However my thinking is that Venus Grace may get hampered by the slower pace horses in the race and I surmise that Humour could then have the run of the race and be the lone fast pace in the race. Looking at the Ability rating there is not much to chose from, however I took the Ability rating and multiplied it by the current ISP and that produce a very interning value for each horse with a much bigger range of values:
Venus Grace – 0
Luna Mission – 49.3
Justice First – 16
Gentlemen – 23.4
Nouveau Foret – 16.9
Balliol – 29
Star Of The Stage – 33.8
Flying Fantasy – 46.8
Humour 17.55
I took a view to rule out Venous Grace, and that leaves 3 possible contenders with a value below 18 (High values rule them out), of the three I reckon two are closer and so are left with Humour as the selection of this race. Assuming this is Fast Pace race with one lone front runner in the form of Humour, a low value for the Ability * Odds value narrows down the field. I am using Ability to rule out 5 horses and then using pace to make the final selection. Of course all this calculating may be completely different to what happened in reality, still will be interesting to see if this prediction works out..
Using a similar idea for the 18:40, and using Pace to determent this is a race with four possible horses who want to lead then there are three horses who could press the leaders:
Greek Islands – 7.5
Hold Firm – 14.4
Celestial Vision – 0
Ruling out Celestial vision on it’s Ability score plus I think this horse may get hampered by Claude Greenwood (one of the possible front runners) two possible contenders are left, and so I am on:
Greek Islands
Hold Firm
Greek Islands would seem to stand out, but Hold Firm is in with a chance if can press the leaders.
Using same ideas for Pace and Ability then for last race at Chelmsford City, preference goes to:
Compton Prince – 4.5
RE: For example, a horse may have won only one race before but it was a high class Heritage Handicap a few years ago and has run poorly ever since. However he will still have a high ability rating just from this one win.
One of the things that I would like the share is that I have added an extra form line to my interpretation of VDW.
I also add up the price money that was offered in the last three races that the horse ran in. I find that this gives a better picture to the recent form figures.
So it use the ability rating , form rating and have added what I call a current class rating.
Can I just add VDW only got involved with the better class racing, I know inform offer the VDW ratings for every race, but I can tell you from experience lower class racing with only produce frustrating lower class results.