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The New Player: A guide of what to do and what not to do
Original article written by Fogell McLovin posted 13 years 0 weeks ago"I am a newbie. There are many like me, but I am special."
Greetings! First let me welcome you to a game I and many others have been having a great deal of fun with. This game takes patience, insight, and the ability to share your fun with others. If this is you, you will like this game.
I started playing about 6 weeks ago and have enjoyed every day. That being said I am writing this article to help educate new players to the pitfalls as well as the ways to suceed in the early stages of this game. I'll go through things as I experienced them, but I am not going to spoonfeed anyone any information here. Part of your ability to suceed in this game is your knowledge level and the ability to actually go look for things.
My first sign-in. I had my one horse and 100k in my pocket. I read a couple things. Most I didn't understand or know where it was... so.... Oh... buy horses. Perfect! Hmmm, the horses times are important, so is their lineage. I'll just browse this new player area for the good horses. Ok, I look at one horse, his speed (at some random distance), and his dad. Repeat 2 times. On the 4th horse.. wow he must be fast. He is $7500 and runs a 59.20 at 5 furlongs. That was way better than the 59.50 that was the best the others had. His dad (Sire) made $600,000. Ok sounds like the one for me!
STOP
Ok already I had made a lot of mistakes. Lets list some and see why this horse was a complete piece of garbage that took 7.5% of all my money out of my pool.
#1) Really nice horses are hard to find and you can bet they aren't gonna be available for $7,500. You can also bet that if someone made this mistake the other players who play this game would have snatched the horse up real quick.
#2) Not reading or knowing about the distances, speed, what times were good, and the effects of age before going anywhere near the sales page. The tools for finding out the anwers to all these questions regardless of your knowledge level of horses rests in 3 places. On the forums, In articles written by players, or asking questions in the chat room.
#3) Patience. Don't be overeager to get horses. Some will just fall in your lap. Some you will get for cheap. Some you may win. Be patient and get horses that you think can be profitable. Notice I didn't say good. Profitable is the key, your not going to have good horses for a long time. But to get a profitable horse you need to know about income and expenses. More homework. Do it.
#4) Lineage matters. Understand how many generations to look back on a horse. Another key concept is the general rule of thumb that horses will prefer to run the distances and enjoy the same track conditions of their parent horses. If I mate a cow who likes grass with a champion horse who loves to run far on the dirt, well ok, it can't happen, but it would be one messed up funk of a horse called "man are you messed up"! (On the bright side he may have some success on the cow racing circuit!) Look for horses with the same skill sets of high quality. Each difference or imperfection just reduces the likelyhood of the horse being successful.
Back to the story. I got a few more horses in the manner selected above and now what? I should train them! Maybe I should read a little first. I read some newbie articles and a few in the TB forum. Says I can train them every other day. Ok, but first I better get them in some races. I enter them in races similar to the workouts they have done. I better check and see if they like other distances, so I make a note of that. Ok, all of them are entered. Now time to train. Lets see. I'll jog him. Ok now lets train him in the gate. Better train him in the paddock. I remember that I need to check to see what other distances he likes. I'm so smart. Run a timed workout. Lets see, the previous owner tried 2f turf and 3 f turf. I'll try 6f dirt. See how he likes the longer races and maybe the dirt. 2 birds with one stone. Man, I am clever. I do this with all 4 and the train them every other day, like the article said I could do, up until their first race. Cmon horses WOOHOO! Last place, Last place and hurt, Last place, and Last place hurt.WHAT!?!?
STOP
#5) Training. In the article I scanned it had actually said I "COULD" train horses every other day... not that I should. Horses need training once every 2 weeks or so. Use that as your rule of thumb until you KNOW that some form of training should be done. Oh I didn't mention the vet bills were around $20,000 for my hurt horses did I. Cash is getting creamed!
#6) Very few horses will be able to run equally well on 2 different surfaces. It's possible, but don't bother trying. I should have looked at the horses lineage and realized it was a turf horse and that there was no reason for me to even try him at dirt and certainly not at that length either.
#7) Horses need rest before and after a race. Fatigue is a factor in the race. I had run my horses virtually to the ground prior to the race. When it came time to race they either got hurt because of the intense training I had given them or just had nothin left for game time.
#8) The horses were entered for the wrong lengths. Their lineage should have been better researched. I didn't get them all wrong, but it could have been better.
#9) I had not asked a single question on the forums or in chat at this point. I had not posted a message stating I was new and saying hi to everyone. After this first week disaster I corrected both of these. I asked a lot of questions. Many of my bone-head mistakes became clear as day. Ooooh, I found some nice resources through better research. You will too. I now have standards.
Now with all these "newbie mistakes" my career was almost at an end. Now, I feel pretty good about my stable. We have designer racing silks, a premium subscription, and a barn of 77 quality horses (except for my 1 year olds, got 10 for sale cheap!). Money is not an issue and I am having a blast. You can too if you approach the game with a clever mind, patience, and a strong desire to have a lot of fun with a lot of really fun people.