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C Van der Wheil, the Flying Dutchman
C Van der Wheil, the Flying Dutchman
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Replies: 151
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As you may know by now it has been fairly well established by a reliable source that the VDW letters were written by a G Hall from an address in Market Harborough.
What reliable source please? |
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he could tell you ,but then he would have to kill you.
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Dr Crippen if you have been following the VDW saga as closely as some have then you will know that G Hall was the one who stirred up the interest in the original VDW letters. He did this by claiming to have found the "key" to his system and following that letter the demand for VDW letters spiralled. The problem is G Hall and VDW are one and the same and whilst Tony Peach seems to be just another duped party in all this,as a journalist he should have been able to nip the whole thing in the bud if he'd just noted an address on one of VDW's letters. It was a road in Market Harborough and the reliable source i mentioned knows for certain that living at that same address at the time was a Mr G Hall. There is someone also who has spoken to Mr Hall/VDW in the recent past at that address. That person did virtually all the leg work in exposing the myth and so it's only fair they should sit on the full story. I might add that i understand their intent was to discover a more enlightening ending,not to simply confirm what so many others always thought. That VDW was in fact a fraud or hoax. Like I say some people will be enraged to learn they were duped over many years. I say let Mr Hall alone to his own demons and fantasies. Live as a gambler in denial is no fun as we all know.
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Thank you, mingvest.
I can only add that I am pleased to post that I 'could not have it' at the time - and now look on in amusement at the daydream believers who are still searching for that 'holy grail' today. |
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http://vdw-analysis.blogspot.com/
The thick plottens.  |
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Ah, thanks top2rated, I see now where mginvest got the bones of his story from.
It's a pity he couldn't have told us from the start. Whatever the true story is behind VDW, the fact remains, that the VDW letters have always been a good starting point for anybody interested in looking for their own winners. He gave away more away in that respect in most of his letters, than you’ll find on here if you read every post for a year. Not that I agree with every word that he wrote, but then everybody has got their own opinions. |
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Dr Crippen - I actually heard the story a long time ago and tbh the first time i have seen the blog top2rated posted was about half an hour ago. To be fair it only outlines the bare facts. It's upto to anyone to make up their own mind but take it from someone who did spend a considerable time looking at the vdw suggestions. There's nothing more there than decent form analysis. One good point though is that the odds have a bigger part to play than most people would like to admit. Horses get turned over at short odds for all manner of reasons but the positive outcome is a better price next time i suppose.
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levelstakes you opened a can of worms
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ttt
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Whatever the background, the discussion he generated served to help many punters begin to approach their betting on horses in a more intelligent manner. Using a name like VDW clearly worked to gain attention but his methods/advice stood up to a lot of analysis and I always thought the 'missing link' was temperament.Trying to apply that helped me turn from steadily losing to an occasional profit for what has always been my fun pastime. R.U sadly missed but it had gone downhill badly over the last few years.
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Any one that knows anything about making gambling pay knows that VDW talked a lot of sense and I've never actually heard anyone say it was a waste of time trying to work out the missing link.It certainly made my betting more enjoyable.
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and more profitable sc
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If G. Hall. was van der wheil as worked out, i believe he was just seeking more atention because no one took the bait at his first attempts at deceving folk. Also as stated above, its was a great pity this was not nipped in the bud by Tony Peach within the first year, or he requested some sort of proof from this person because of his such extravagant claims.
Ok he knew a little about form, but it was all very contrary most of the time, horses going further in some examples, also some transending well up in the weights after their last runs, seemed more like someone knowing very little to me. Also it seems a great pity Jack Bingham took his life, i allways thought at the time this sort of thing could happen, he seems like a condescending cult figure to me, not really interested in helping people really, was just a pretence, also he seemed very devious and conniving and very full of himself in his manner. |
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It was in Tony Peach's own interest to keep the Van der Wheil letters, et al, going - rather than it be, "nipped in the bud within the first year," - for two reasons.
One, apparent at the time - with Peach being the Deputy Editor, I think, of the Handicap Book - so any extra, or continued, sales were welcome. Secondly, and a more recent manifestation - Tony Peach is still, to this day, offering books about Van der Wheil, and intimating the 'Holy Grail' is there within, through a third party.  |
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90% winners is less likely than 90% success rate curing cancer.
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Yep Onlooker i suppose that was true! still it all happened many moons ago now, and i know i was only young at the time, and i did try it for a while, till i began to learn more about form, and see obvious flaws in many of the examples he gave, so i say mayb its best to let sleeping dogs lie as they say.
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the family that owned the handicap book at the time had the initials VDW as well I believe, which seems a coincidence or not!!
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can't think of the original owners something like van de wessom or suchlike
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peachy used to say,vdw sometimes became reticent or taciturn if the questions were direct,and that he would sometimes hang up on him,lol you couldn't make it up,vdw must have laughed his socks off,but fair play to him,he went over 30 years without being rumbled,I don't know who it reflected best on vdw or peachy for his incompetence.
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"it was the end of an era today with the Weekender now incorporating the Raceform Update"
Got an old copy in front of me when it was the end of an era under the Sporting Chronicle banner. It was July 30th 1983 (price .70p) No.1 edition of the new Raceform Handicap Book. Alan Smethurst was Editor. Chris Judge Deputy Ed. Ken Hussey as Split Second. They had a new policy at the start 'no tipsters or system sellers allowed to advertise' Hoever, they soon backed down on that one, huge amount of advertising revenue that way. At one time the Sporting Life had the same policy but they also changed it. Re Van der Wheil, I was never totally convinced about those articles at all. There was a Sports Forum on the back page and a few clever d1cks on there, and this dutchman or whoever he was (?) appeared to be a bit smarter than most. But the way he wrote his articles always with this missing link, I didn't buy. May be totally wrong of course and he may have been completely genuine, but I don't think so. And someone got a lot of mileage out of that. |
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G Hall -
re: your 21:43 post Raceform, and it's Titles, including Raceform Handicap Book - carrying that title following on from the demise of the Sporting Chronicle, in the early 1980s - were published by the de Wesselow family. The publisher at the time being Ian de Wesselow. James de Wesselow is now the Managing Director of Racing Post Books & Raceform Ltd. There was a predecessor Ivan de Wesselow --------------------------------------- Van der Wheil first appeared in the Handicap Book in February 1978. Raceform had joined forces with the Sporting Chronicle in publishing the Annual Form Books in 1970 Raceform published a book - purported to have been written by Vander Wheil - in 1990. |
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Recently got hold of VDW book for no other reason than to bring back old memories of the days when i used to make oney at this game.
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*money
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^ before that book, Tony Peach collated all correspondence from Van Der Wheil
and was selling photostats for £1.50 in 1983. As I said before, got a lot of mileage out of that. I didn't buy it. And all this missing link stuff. Did Tony Peach ever have absolute proof that he was really making money from backing horses. My opinion - and could be wrong here - just another clever d1ck because he would never submit the vital ingredient, and of course you wouldn't expect him to, but don't think he had it anyway ! |
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Tony Peach is still flogging his books.
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Where were you last night Onlooker, You'd have liked my quiz, sent a few of em scratching heads for a while
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Apologies for my absence, zilzal - and no 'letter from my mum' either.
I had a prior appointment with a pint glass. |
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The one who really got it right flogging books was Clive Holt.
He was selling his systems years ago in the old Sporting Chronicle Book. Someone gave him the idea of doing it as a book and it was a stroke of genius. Very clever man and knew exactly what he was doing, full-page adverts for years in the sporting press. And he must have made a million selling that book. He was probably the first tipster/system seller to become a millionaire out of it. Very clever guy. RIP. |
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Thanks onlooker couldn't remember the name
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Ffs. I remember this rubbish when it started.
The letters page of the old Sporting Chronicle Handicap Book was more or less moribund. Peach invented the whole thing to keep it going. And the "system" was purposely unintelligible. How some people still fall for it is beyond me. |
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TELL DEL -
The opening 'rule' of Van der Wheil was very similar to Clive Holt's basic Fineform Formula. - and 'BASIC' that was, too! Clive was a decent man, but cute with it - which he probably got from his father - Clive's parents being a really lovely couple, who were lifelong friends of my parents - and even went on my parents honeymoon with them, a motor-bike weekend to Blackpool. As Clive, quite openly, said to me one day at Haydock - "You could write the Fineform Formula on the back of a postage stamp" ... before adding, with a shrug of his shoulders, and a smile ... "But there will always be punters." |
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vdw was a clever man,replied to his own letters on the peach page to stimulate discussion and then kept it going for 30 odd years.
His introduction of the three probables baffled many but like everything he wrote there was a lot of logic behind it. |
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ttt
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For those of you who still need your Van der Wheil fix. Updated every day of gthe week,
http://vanderwheil.com/ |
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knock him all you want but van der wheil advocated sticking to the better class of races,ie good prize money,in the event of just todays racing alone,I think he was spot on.
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"There came into Egypt a Pharaoh who did not know." ......the rich being doing it to the poor for years. That's all these Fineform/VDW scribes are.
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Just thought I would resurrect this again,I am putting up a selection today Hamilton 4.10 Border Reiva.
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Give it a rest G Hall.
They buried that b*gger decades ago. |
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lol onlooker,can't mate,i'm obsessed
you say you knew clive holt,i bought his original book,about finding winners,i was young and it helped me a lot at the time. |
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There seems to be a never ending string of people wanting to help punters, why don't they just help themselves ?
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