Matchmaking

Original article written by Sue Wentz posted 6 months 0 weeks ago

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a freak!
Maybe a stakes, could it be an LB?
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, check the stud book,
And make me a perfect freak!

For Papa, let my colt win a Classic,
For Mama, make my filly a hen,
Me, well, I wouldn’t holler if it ran and pro-duced like Dave Matthews Baaaaaaand…!

“Uh, Sue?” you say.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, for low stud fees,
Can I breed a champion who wins me SC’s?
Matchmaker, Matchma-

“SUE!”

WHAT?! Dang it, I was right in the middle of the second verse!

“There’s a cat out here trying to be violently sick.”

That’s just Barty. He always makes that noise when I sing in the shower. I bet Lin Manuel Miranda doesn’t have a cat, furry little music critics. Are you quite done interrupting?

“I guess. Yeah. It’s just.. I mean, with all due respect…”

“With all due respect what? Am I singing off-key?”

“I agree with your cat. But what I meant to say was, you know you have to do your own matchmaking in the Sim, right?”

I have to… What?

“You pick the stallions for your mares.”

…!

“Are you okay in there?”

“Crud. No. Throw me a towel. I have work to do.”

I’ve sometime fantasized about running a breeding barn clearance sale, jettisoning all my broodmares, ignoring all the pretty stallions, and earning an honest living by buying and racing horses that OTHER people sweated blood to produce. I feel like I’d be a lot less stressed around this time each Sim year. And yet, the siren call of having my name attached to a superstar keeps me going.

There are several methods that Simsters use while choosing a potential Mr. Right for each mare. For some, it’s breed the best to the best, within the limitations of one’s bank account. For others, there’s an intense study of bloodline affinities going back to the days when dinosaurs roamed the Sim. And then there’s the Jackson Pollock method of randomly throwing mares at stallions with the cutest headshots and/or highest earnings to see what happens. The latter is a method which I may or may not have used in earlier times.
But we don’t need to talk about that.

Over my first few years, I’ve made steady progress in the breeding game. Nope, to my consternation, I still haven’t produced an actual freak, but my percentage of stakes progressive or stakes late blooming foals seems to be improving each year. (Although results will undoubtedly continue to vary.) There are, to my gratified amazement, actual graded stakes winners in my barn that resulted from my plotting and planning. Not many, but we’re getting there!

Here are a few things I look at now (instead of headshots) while determining which mare to match with which stallion.

1. What’s she already produced?

It’s a no brainer. If I’m using a ‘proven’ producer—bought or leased—there are already useful indications in her record of which stallions she’s done well with. Or at least not terribly with, although the opposite is also true. With my usual luck, the best stallions she’s seen are often pensioned. But if not, and depending on circumstances, I might send her back to that stallion or a close relative. No matter what, I’m going to jot that information down for later cross-referencing purposes. On the other hand, if she’s produced nothing much in multiple tries, I might save myself the stud fee and send her down the road to other gainful employment.

2. What have her female relations produced?

If there are sisters—especially full sisters—I’ll take a glance to see what their racing careers looked like, if they’ve retired to the shed yet, and what their production records look like. What has or hasn’t worked well for them. The same goes for mom, if she’s still making babies. If there are half siblings out there who burned up the track, who sired them?

3. Dam Sire Search

Although the stud book provides more information than it used to, especially how many times a stallion has been bred on a specific cross and how many winners resulted, I always use the Sim’s search feature for an even bigger picture. For example, exactly what kind of winners did the cross produce, and did any of them win stakes? (Five winners out of five attempts looks great on paper, but less so if the five broke their maidens in $1,500 claimers after their 12th start and never won again.)

I especially take note of which PEOPLE have bred their horses on the same cross. If the Steward or one of the acknowledged elite SIMsters have experimented in that direction, at least I know I’m on the right track in my thinking! It’s a warm fuzzy feeling, trust me!

4. The Stud Book

I alluded to it above, but it never hurts to study the stud book. (If you don't have SIMperior, give it a whirl. You won't regret it!) Yes, of course I’ll look at specific stallions' pages, but I also look to see how a prospective choice rates next to similarly bred options. Maybe the budget isn’t going to stretch for the best possible stallion, but there’s a very serviceable near-relation at a better price point. Or maybe the truly best option IS the most expensive and I need to plan for that. For a bigger picture, I’ll also look at the percentage of freaks and stakes gallopers produced, bearing in mind that with the relatively recent gallop adjustment the younger stallions’ stats might be at a bit of a disadvantage.

Another useful feature if you REALLY want to get in the weeds is the Stud Book’s Rankings tab. You can see a really nifty overview of the top fifty stallions’ runners to winners, average money earned per runner, progeny earnings, all sorts of things. Yes, you can break it down by horse type. You can even break it down by crops for the younger stallions, which is really invaluable information since many of them don’t have the raw numbers of their senior counterparts!

5. Top 50 Workout Times

Yeah, it’s true that some horses race better than their workout times would indicate, and some morning speedsters don’t live up to expectations in the afternoon. Having said that, I always keep an eye on the top 50 yearlings for my mare’s breed and type, to see which stallions are churning out the fastest babies. I switch the ranking drop down to Top Horses from Top Times, for a fuller picture. It's a useful validation to see a stallion on my short list represented there. It's also a great way to see if any young stallions are gearing up to make their mark once they have runners going to the starting gate. As a caution, these results are more telling towards the end of the racing year once everyone has had a chance to get equipment sorted earlier. The beginning stats are a little murkier, so I might click on each of the top ten to see if their equipment is set yet.

In Conclusion...

Although it looks like a lot, the cost of stud fees justifies taking a bit of time to make an educated choice for your mare. Results are never guaranteed, but these are all ways to hopefully stack the odds more in your favor!

So how do you choose? What did I miss? Shoot me a message if you have other methods I should consider! Thanks for reading!

Oh, and by the way, what exactly did you mean by, “I agree with your cat?”

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