You Just Bought a New Horse - Now What?

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 8 years 3 weeks ago

One of the thrills of being a newbie is an obsession with buying new horses. In the glee of each new purchase, one can often overlook important information. This article is intended to help you notice things about your new horse that might not have been obvious before you bought it.


IS THE HORSE WHAT YOU THOUGHT IT WAS?
One of the most common mistakes of newbie players, is not noticing information given directly below the horse's name. For example, a player might buy a horse of racing age, and not realize that it says "Steeplechaser" beneath the name. They thought they were buying a flat runner, and now they have a steeplechaser, which is bad news, considering that steeplechasers can't be turned back into flat runners.

Another common error is to buy a filly, and not notice that it says "Retired" beneath her name. Once retired, a horse can't be un-retired. Now, you have a broodmare rather than a racing filly.

Yet another example is that it might say "Injured" beneath the horse's name, and give the date the horse will be recovered. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. As of this writing (Year 43), there isn't any lasting effects from an injury, once the horse is healed. (However, The Steward has strongly hinted that lasting effects from injuries will be introduced with the next SIM upgrade.) It just means that you can't race your new horse as soon as you'd like.

In all these cases, if you're unhappy with your new purchase, because you didn't realize the current status of the horse, you can try contacting the seller and asking if you can return the horse for a refund. While it's always possible that you'll be told "no", or that your message won't be responded to, most of your fellow players are sympathetic to newbies and understand how easy it is to make such mistakes, because most of us have also made these same types of errors. So, many will indeed take the horse back and give you a refund.


PEDIGREE
You probably looked at the horse's pedigree before purchasing it. Pedigree can speak to a horse's potential but, in my opinion, has little relevance once the horse is racing. It doesn't matter how good the sire or dam is, if the horse is struggling in its races. All outstanding stallions sire their share of bad racehorses (just like real life), so having an outstanding pedigree doesn't mean you've bought yourself a superstar, especially if the horse's actual races have already indicated that he's just an ordinary horse.

However, you can use the pedigree to improve a horse, so to speak, if its prior owner(s) has been racing it at the wrong distance or surface. If the horse has a sire and dam that were turf milers, and the horse has been racing in turf sprints, then entering the horse in turf mile races, where he belongs, will surely bring about an improvement.


THE HISTORY TAB
One of the most important things to look at, with a new horse, is the history tab. At first glance, this might seem like a lot of boring information about where the horse has shipped, and training it was given throughout its life. However, if you look closely, you'll likely see some comments in italics. Any comment in italics is one that only the owner can view. Comments that are in italics include gallops, equipment checks, vet checks, training over fences, horse whisperer assessment (which indicates the horse's preferred track condition, and is only available to SIMperior players) and, for broodmares, comments from the bloodstock agent (which players call BSAing a horse).

There can sometimes be a lot of valuable information in those italicized comments. If you see a lot of gallop and/or vet comments in a row, it's likely that a prior owner was trying to find a piece of equipment for that horse, because galloping or vetting can sometimes randomly reveal a second piece of equipment on a horse that needs two pieces. If there was any such revelation, it would be at the end of the gallop or vet comment. So, browse through those comments and see if there's an equipment hint. You might find, for example, that the horse needs a shadow roll, and yet the horse has been racing without a shadow roll, because a prior owner wasn't paying attention to the comments. (Or, a prior owner might have used a shadow roll, but after the horse kept losing, decided that the equipment hint must be wrong. As far as I know, there's no such thing as an equipment hint being wrong!)

Please note that, while a gallop or teaching a horse to jump can randomly give an equipment hint, an equipment check (which costs 500 game points) *always* gives information about equipment. Since assistant trainer Mary Weather is the one who gives comments in both situations, and both comments start out with "Trainer:" before presenting the actual comment, a lot of players get confused about what comment in a horse's history tab might be from an equipment check, and what might be a random equipment hint from a gallop. If the first part of the comment refers to how the horse galloped, then it's an equipment hint from a gallop. If the comment only refers to equipment, then it's an "equipment check", where a former owner paid 500 game points to get the information.

(For more on understanding equipment, see my article: http://www.simhorseracing.com/featurerace/article.php?ArticleID=13090.)

A final comment about gallops is that they can change during a horse's career, and change more than once. While the majority of horses retain the same gallop comment throughout their racing careers, there have been extreme cases of a horse jumping three or four levels at once (say, going from a "solid" galloper to a "freak".) Most that change, however, will only change one level, up or down, in the gallop hierarchy. When browsing through the gallop comments of an older horse that had some past stakes success, and you now bought for a cheap price, you might see that its gallop comment has recently regressed, and that's why its owner was willing to let him go for a low price. (For a listing of gallop and other types of comments in SIM, see this page on my SIM stable website: http://www.magicravenranch.com/commentsY41.html) Gallop changes only happen at the beginning of Week 1 and the beginning of Week 9, of each game year.

If an italicized comment starts out with "Whisperer", then that means a prior owner (who had SIMperior status) paid SIM dollars to find out what type of track condition the horse prefers. While the comment itself is usually stated in a riddled way ("This horse doesn't even like to get a bath in the morning!"), the horse's main page will show what that comment means on the "Weather Preference" line (eg, "Loves Dry"). If there isn't any indication of weather preference, then a prior owner has never paid to have the horse whisperer visit the horse.

If you bought a horse with steeplechasing bloodlines, but it hasn't been turned into a steeplechaser, make sure you check the history tab to see if the horse was schooled over jumps by a prior owner. (If it hasn't been, I would do so before turning it into a steeplechaser.) If the horse was schooled over fences, and the comment is anything other than the top "natural" comment, the horse isn't worth turning into a steeplechaser, in my opinion, since "natural" ability can cover anything from top level stakes horses all the way down to consistent claimers. The next level down, which refers to the horse having confidence over fences, is usually good for a maiden victory, but not much beyond that, in my experience.

If you bought a retired filly or mare as a broodmare, check her history tab to see if a prior owner paid $10,000 SIM dollars to have her bloodstock checked. If so, there will be a comment assessing her ability as a broodmare.

One frustrating thing about the History tab is that the dates are real-life calendar dates, while timed workouts and races are in SIM Year-Week-Day mode. The only way to marry them together is to look at the Calendar page (under the "Community" heading of your home office), to match up a SIM date with a real-life calendar date. Even this isn't an ideal solution, because the SIM Calendar doesn't include the SIM year, but only the SIM week. Still, one can count backwards from the weeks if, say, that want to try to figure out how the horse did in its races, based upon how he was being trained, or what the vet comment said, etc.


WORKOUT TAB
You probably looked at the horse's workout tab before purchasing it. Now that you own the horse, you might want to look a little closer. When I was a newbie, one of the biggest surprises, when I looked closely, was how long ago the workouts took place. Most timed workouts are given as yearlings. So, if you bought a 4yo horse in Year 43, all of his timed workouts probably took place in Year 39 -- ie, a long time ago.

There are player-compiled data being passed around (including available on my website) that break down workouts by percentage brackets. These are useful, but I suspect a lot of players are putting too much emphasis on them. For one thing, horses work faster with correct equipment. So, a whole bunch of workouts are "bad" because of incorrect equipment, which makes the workouts in the higher brackets seem better than they really are. In other words, I can have a lowly "different career" galloper hit the 50% bracket, if I've found his correct equipment. For a horse that I gave a series of, say, five weekly workouts, using a different piece of equipment for each work, four of those workouts are going to be deceptively poor, while the one workout with the correct equipment piece is going to rank higher than the rest.

Also, I consider workouts to be completely irrelevant for a horse that has raced at least a few times. So many newish players will eagerly buy a horse, because of his fast workout times as a yearling, but completely overlook the fact that the horse has been racing a couple of years, and is just a so-so racehorse. Once you have racing data to indicate the horse's quality, what point is there in looking back to see how fast his workout times were?

What's more, The Steward has recently revealed, in an "Ask Em Anything" session (see forum thread http://www.simhorseracing.com/simforum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37662, as just one example) that timed workouts were never intended to tell players how good their horses are; but, instead, are intended as a training/conditioning tool. (Yet, there's little doubt that better horses, with correct equipment, *usually* work faster than lesser horses with correct equipment. Just like real life, however, there's always exceptions.)

Where the workout tab can be valuable, in some cases, is if a prior owner used workouts to find the horse's correct equipment. If most of the timed workouts are with alternating pieces of equipment, while all took place at the same distance, then I would sort the workouts by fastest time, and note the equipment piece(s) of the fastest workout. If, say, the fastest time was with a blinkers (b) and a shadow roll (sr), and the horse has been racing with blinkers and ear muffs (em), then I would change the horse's equipment to blinkers and a shadow roll, unless an equipment hint in the History tab indicates otherwise. Hints in the History tab should always prevail over workout times, when it comes to correct equipment. One reason a timed workout can be deceptive, even when a horse has correct equipment, is because the horse might not have been fully rested at the time of the workout. Also, a prior owner may have not made it through all the possible equipment pieces when doing timed workouts.


SIDE COMMENT ON EQUIPMENT
I've mentored a lot of new players in the past, and one thing I heard from many of them was their surprise at how often they would buy or claim a horse, only to find that it was being raced in with incorrect equipment, even though the correct equipment was indicated by the timed workouts and/or History tab. They're amazed (as I am) at how few players will pay attention to the useful information that's right in front of them.

If you find all this talk about equipment overwhelming, even after reading my overview article on equipment, linked in the earlier section, above, you're welcome to drop me a private message to ask for help in deciphering equipment for a horse you've just purchased. You'll need to provide me with the horse's name, and paste everything from his History tab into your message.


PAST PERFORMANCES TAB
Surely, you gave the most attention to the Past Performances tab before buying the horse. In addition to using the race information to determine the horse's quality, you might also be trying to see if you can improve on the horse's record -- perhaps by changing the distance its been racing at, or the spacing between its races, the level of races its been running, the equipment its raced with, etc. Or, if you're impressed by the horse's past races, make a point of not changing anything.

In any case, you're probably eager to race your new horse. Make sure you pay attention to the date of his last race, and give him at least two weeks since his last start. Where this can get confusing is if the horse last raced at the end of a game year, and you've purchased him near the beginning of a game year. Horses don't get a break between game years like players do. Week 1 of a new game year is like Week 17 of the prior game year, for the horse, and Week 2 is like Week 18. So, if a horse raced, say, Monday of Week 16, don't race it any earlier than Monday Week 2 of the current game year.

One mistake I often made with new purchases, as a newbie, was not realizing that a horse's most recent race was actually over a year ago. This is particularly likely if the horse was purchased from Alexandra Jaysman (the computer), and had been with an abandoned stable. So, if it's Week 2 of Year 43, and the horse last ran Week 15, you might now realize the last race was Week 15 of Year 41, rather than Week 15 of Year 42. That means the horse hasn't raced in over year. The Steward has recommended a timed workout for horses that have at least five weeks between races. So, I would give it a timed workout, for fitness purposes, before entering it in a race. (Horses that are fully rested when given a workout will usually be back to full rest within four or five days.)


TABS FOR BROODMARES
If you've purchased a broodmare, she will have a tab for her Progeny, listing all her foals. If she has an offspring that is age 0, then that is a foal from the current year, and she can't be bred again this year. You would only obtain such a mare via a private transaction with another player. Mares that have already been bred in the current year can't be sold via the sales page or via auction.

If the mare has been nicked with one or more stallions by a prior owner, then the nick grades will show on her Hypo Grade tab. So, check this tab before spending 250 game points to nick her with a stallion you like, just in case she's already been nicked with that stallion. Be aware, however, that nicks are only recorded when they are paid for by the mare's owner at the time of the nick. In other words, if you nick a mare with a stallion before purchasing her, and then buy her, that nick won't show on her Hypo Grade tab, because you didn't own her at the moment you did the nick. So, you'll need to put the grade in her Notes.


Unless they're very young, horses in SIM have a huge amount of information on their pages. You'll get more and more adept at deciphering this information quickly, as you buy more and more horses. There's a lot to be gained when one pays attention to the historical data.

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