Using Search to Find Horses

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 12 years 2 weeks ago

The Search feature, located along the menu at the top of your office page, is one of the most powerful and useful tools you have in SIM. But because it has so many faucets, and can do so many things, it might at first glance seem overwhelming.

Trust me. The Search page is your friend. It can only be to your advantage to learn how to use it, and experiment with the information it can give you. I’ve been playing SIM for three real-life years, and sometimes I still discover ways it can give me information in one search faster than I’d been previously trying to gather by hand, or from multiple searches.

First, know that the biggest drawback to the Search page is that if you realize you missed a particular filter, and page-back to the Search page, you lose all the other filters; in other words, it doesn’t remember your prior Search filters. So, if you missed selecting one important filter, you have to go back and re-select all your filters. However, if there’s one particular search you do over and over again, you can bookmark the results of that search, and future searches will bring up results with those same criteria.

The left side of the Search page is for searching for horses. Here’s some examples of situations where you might want to find particular horses.

Let’s say that John Jones (fake name) gets on the Forum and announces that he’s a new player and really needs help with his horses. If I’m feeling inclined to assist, I can go to the Search page and fill in “John Jones” in the Owner field. I press the Horse Search button at the bottom and – voila! – I can see all the horses owned by John Jones.

John Jones has got himself into financial trouble by spending way too much money on youngsters, and that makes for a very long list of mostly horses that aren’t even racing yet. I can sort the list by age, and go down past the yearlings to get to his horses that are old enough to be actively racing. Or, another thing I can do is go back to the Search page. This time, in addition to filling in John Jones in the Owner field, I go down toward the bottom of the page and check the “Raced” box. When I click on the Horse Search button at the bottom, I now only get the horses owned by John Jones that have started at least once.

Let’s say that I’m curious about Mary Mayberry (fake name), because she is an excellent player in SIM and I wonder what horses she has. If I fill in her name in the Owner box as the only filter, I get a huge list of horses that goes on for a couple of pages (there’s 500 horses per page). I notice that a lot of her horses are geldings in their teens, indicating that she’s a player who pensions retired geldings to her pasture, rather than sending them to Greener Pastures. I’m more interested in her other horses. So, I go back to the Search page. I not only fill in Mary Mayberry as the owner, but at the bottom, I check “Not Pensioned”. I now get a list of all her racehorses, youngsters, and breeding stock, and the old retired geldings don’t appear.

Let’s say that I’ve heard that Steward-breds are ideal horses to have. I wonder if anyone has a Steward-bred broodmare for sale. Under gender, I select “Female”. In the Breeder box I put “The Steward”. I go down to the Sale Price box, and select “Greater Than or Equals” and put in 1.00. That will insure that the search includes all females for sale that were bred by The Steward. I can go down farther and select “Retired”. But if I’d be equally happy with a filly that is still racing, then there’s no need to check that box. Once I select the Horse Search button, I’ll see all Steward-bred fillies and mares that are for sale. By running my cursor down the dollar signs on the right, I can browse through the prices for each one.

Let’s say that you’d like to breed some LA-bred foals to compete in LA-bred races. That means you need to breed your mares to stallions standing in Louisiana. If you’re a SIMperior player, you could use the Stud Book and sort lists of stallions by location. But if you’re not a SIMperior player, or intended to breed LA-breds for multiple distance/surface categories, then it might be easier to use the Search page. In the middle of the page, find the Stud Fee field. In the box, select “Greater Than or Equals” and put 1.00. That insures that all stallions at stud will be considered. Now go down to State Located. Put “LA” in the box, and click the Horse Search button. You now see a listing of all stallions standing in Louisiana. Perhaps there’s some mixed breeds in there, and you only want to see Thoroughbreds. Go back to the Search page, repeat the filters above, and also choose Thoroughbred from the drop-down list in the Breed field.

Let’s say your first broodmare is by Saga. You’re looking for a stallion to breed her to, and the advice you get from other SIMsters is to look for stallions that Saga mares cross well with. Find the Dam Sire box on the Search page and type “Saga”. Click the Horse Search button, and you’ll get a list of all horses that have Saga as the dam's sire. You can then click the top of the Earnings column a couple of times so that the largest earning horses show first. Under the Sire column you can see which stallions or sire lines show up multiple times for the top earning horses, so you know that’s a successful cross. But this particular list goes on for more than two pages, since there’s over 1000 horses with Saga as a maternal grandsire. Go back to the Search page and, in addition to putting Saga in the Dam Sire field, also select “Stakes Winners”. Now, the list only has 100+ horses in it, since it only includes stakes winners, and is much easier to evaluate.

Let’s say you hear players talking on the Forum about a particular horse. You want to see for yourself what makes that horse worthy of so much discussion. In the Horse Name box, put the horse’s name. Click the button at the bottom, and that horse’s page will appear as the only search result with that name. You can now look that horse over and see what everyone else is talking about.

Let’s say you’ve bred your first foal and you’re thinking about naming it Flighty. You wonder if any other horses have been named that before. Put “Flighty” in the Horse Name box. You get a list of seven horses – one named “Flighty” and six others with the word Flighty in their name. Since that name is in use, you’ll need to choose another name, or add another word, or alter the spelling. (Perhaps Flightie. A search on that name brings up a blank page, meaning no other horse is using it.)

Sidenote on naming: When you actually name a horse – whether at birth or later – the system will tell you when a name can’t be used because it’s already taken. Sometimes this gets frustrating if you keep trying different variations of the desired name and they, too, are already taken. If you want to use a name that you suspect might have already been thought of by someone else, it can be a time and frustration saver to check with the Search page before actually trying to name the horse.

These are merely a few examples of how to use the left side of the Search page. It’s the most valuable tool in SIM for finding horses.

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