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Newbies, How to Secure a Safe SIM Future
Original article written by Matilda Harry posted 11 years 2 weeks agoSo you just joined the SIM. You are absolutely overwhelmed by this amazing game and you can’t wait to start winning the biggest races, breeding the best horses and being No.1! Ok, just stop for a minute.
Number one. It is a fact that you WILL NOT win the biggest races straight away, that’s not going to happen no matter how hard you want to believe that. Number two. Breeding is not available to you until you are 6 weeks in, but let me tell you something, DON’T DO IT! Number three. It’s Impossible with the likes of Eric Nalbone or Laura Ferguson getting a massive head start on you, but if you follow the tips I will now give you, you may be close some day or even (dare I say) surpass these people (*collective gasp*).
The first thing you will ever do in the SIM is you will go to the Forum and you will go to the Help for New Players area and you will find a thread for Mentors. You will sign up and you will get someone experienced at the SIM to help you through and give you advice and answer all the SIM related questions you want.
Ok so let’s start with racing. The most basic thing you need to learn in the SIM is recognizing the horse types. These types are; dirt/turf/all weather sprinters(4-7f), dirt/turf/all weather milers(1 mile if that wasn’t obvious already) and finally the most competitive but most profiting types dirt/turf/all weather routers (1 1/16 miles-2 miles). To find out what type your horse is, look at its sire (the father) and the dam (the mother). Look for what distance they race at and look for which surface they took to. If either the sire or dam haven’t raced (in the case of your first horse that will be the situation) you will have to look at the types of horses that the sire or dam produce. For example, if I had a Blaze the Green foal, I would look at his 2 highest earners and see what they both excelled at. In this case its turf sprinting because both raced frequently on the turf and between 4-7 furlongs.
Once that’s done, you need to see how good a horse is. So the first thing I’d advise you to do is work your horse according to the distance that the parents indicate it would race best at and here’s how to brake it down. Sprinters work either 2 or 3 furlongs on their preferred surface. Milers will work 4 furlongs on their preferred surface and finally routers will work either 5, 6 or 7 furlongs on their preferred surface. To see how your horse stacks up against the best go to Racing>Workouts>Week 12(could be any week) Sat (most horses work on Saturdays), then adjust the breed, gender, age surface and distance. Then click on time once and the fastest times will be at the top and the slowest at the bottom.
Next, you could go back to your horse and gallop it if you like but you don’t need to although it gives you a better idea of what your horse is like. If your horse gets the stiff and awkward or needs a new career comment then it’s worth checking whether it can jump by training it to jump when it is a 3yo. If your horse gets either claimer, hard to tell or okay then you should race it in claiming races in Alaska where there are tons of those. If your horse is wings or great gallop then you should definitely race it at Trial Park, specifically designed for new players where a wings or great gallop will excel. If (trust me it is extremely unlikely for your first horse) it is a wow or stakes than you could enter it in stakes races and potentially win Grade 1’s (the best races). And if it by some kind of unknown reason ends up a scary good or special horse than you have yourself a potential monster there but as I said before, new players don’t get scary/specials so you can dream on (sorry to burst your bubble).
Then of course we can move on to the racing part. Being a new player means that you don’t exactly have the greatest successes on the track but that doesn’t mean you can’t win. In fact, winning comes with greater rewards, especially at Trial Park. Here’s why, at Trial Park, the Dare To Dream program is held where if you win specific dare to dream races you get to win a regally bred horse bred by none other than the masterful Eric Nalbone. Now this horse will likely be very nice such as a stakes winner. Another way to get a DTD horse is by earning a highest SF whilst racing at Trail Park (SF stands for speed figure and it can only be viewed by SIMPerior members) but that also means you win although not necessarily in a DTD race. As I had mentioned earlier, it’s much better to race wings and great gallops at Trial Park but if you happen to have a faster than usual htt (hard to tell for short) or okay galloper then they might do well too.
Oh, very important things to note is, as a new player, race your horse every 3 weeks. So if you start out week 1 its next race will be week 4 and then week 7 etc. once you get the gist of it you will be able to recognize how much racing one horse can take but NEVER and I mean N-E-V-E-R race your horse in consecutive weeks (unless we’re talking the official Triple Crown in the SIM which is modified so the horses don’t get too tired but trust me, your first horse is not going to be a Derby winner). Right, back to the Dare To Dream program, I won my stable star (Interfere) through this program and she galloped wow, was a fast worker and is now an undefeated Graded stakes winner oh and did I mention she has a fantastic pedigree meaning that when she retires she has a greater chance of producing some more wows along the line? Well, now I did. Ah breeding, this moves me on to the next point.
When you’re a new player it is recommended to not breed until you’re 6 weeks in but I say screw that rule, instead, DON’T breed until you feel like you have specialized in a division and you know good horses in that division. Why? Well because if you breed a bad horse with another bad horse, a scary good is never going to pop out no matter how much random slide affects it. Also, the thing is if you have to learn more divisions you will have to wait longer to breed and of course you could do that but it’s better to familiarize yourself with just one or two. So once you feel you have done that and you think you’re ready, put all the good stallions in that division in your alerts, it will come in handy later. Then you go off to the sea- - actually before you even do anything, do make sure you have a good income of money every week and to do that just go to the New Player sales page and buy a bunch of horses READY TO RACE for $100 and not $10,000 unless they are REALLY good. Then race these horses at Trial Park or in Alaska and watch as the money comes in!
Right going back to where I left off, go off to the search page and in the owner box type in Alexandra Jaysman and then select Female for gender and adjust all the other stuff if you want and go crazy buying horses. Oh I should mention, if you’re buying from AJ (Alexandra Jaysman) you will have to message her with the name of the horse and the link to it and then she’ll offer it to you privately for $1,000. Do make sure that the mares you buy are from your preferred division and have either got a good race record or a good pedigree (the latter being better) or both if you’re lucky. The next thing to do is to look at the sire of the broodmare you just bought so as an example I’m going to use my mare Sweet Surrender. She is a turf sprinter with a bad race record but a very nice pedigree being out of a champion mare and a very nice sire in Perfect Night. So her sire is Perfect Night, right I’ll remember that. I’ll go to search and under dam sire type in Perfect Night and do the search. Then I’ll click Earnings once to show the highest earner at the top and see who the sire is. In this case it’s Sockie but I notice the two horses after are both by Hand of God and a different mare so there is some consistency there. I then go back to the search page and again type in Perfect Night as a dam sire but this time I fill in the column for sire with Hand of God and select winner at the bottom of the page and I see 5. Okay that’s cool but Sockie had the highest earner so I’m going to do the same with him and I get 3 winners so seeing that Hand of God is more consistent at producing a winner from this cross, I’m going to breed to him. To do that go to your mare’s page and then click ‘Breed this mare’ and I will select Hand of God from my alerts (see I told you they came in handy). Then, I will choose a name if I want, pick a color if I want and choose either a filly or colt (if I want). Fillies are great because they can become broodmares afterwards but on the other hand if you get a colt then if it turns out not so great, you can geld it, get $1,000 and see it race for a few more SIM years if you like. One last thing I should say about breeding is that you should try to go for the cheapest option but remember cheap is not always great so do look at how good the sire is in terms of producing.
Wow that was a long paragraph. Anyway, the last thing is, in this game we strive to achieve high, win big races and be the best. But you don’t have to be better than everyone else. The best thing to do is set yourself some smallish goals such as win my first race or earn over $100,000 in a season or could be something like enter your horses regularly (hehe, I’m guilty of not doing so). As long as you set yourself small goals that are achievable, you will enjoy the game and you will slowly be building up your stable into a great racing and/or breeding operation. Also, do log into the forum and get to know people, be friendly and always ask for advice if you’re not sure about something. Other players are more than welcome to help you.
So in conclusion, race smartly, breed when ready and enjoy the game with all you’re new SIM pals!