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Decipering the Tabs on the Horse Page

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 13 years 2 weeks ago

Horses have from one to four tabs on their pages. All horses have a History tab. All horses a year old or older will have a Workouts tab, as well as a History tab. All horses of racing age will have a Past Performances tab, as well as Workouts and History. Finally, all breeding animals will have a fourth tab, that of Progeny.

When looking at a horse, especially when considering it for purchase, what can each of these tabs tell us?

For concrete examples, I’ll use a filly I bred, Cuffed Aeroine (http://www.simhorseracing.com/horse.php?HorseID=132972), who is now owned by Alexandra Jaysman, the computer.


PAST PERFORMANCES
This tab is crucial, of course. It provides the detail of the horse’s race record. The most recent race is on top. By browsing the past performances, one can quickly see how the horse has performed in various types and distances of races. However, I would never, ever buy a horse without actually clicking on their most recent races, as well as their best races in the past. For starters, you might find that a horse with an impressive win/loss record has been running against one or two horses each race, so he really didn’t beat anybody. If many of his races are restricted to horses racing in a certain state or country, and/or are sponsored races (where a player pays game points to create a race to their own specifications), I would look at those races carefully. They generally have much softer fields, and much smaller fields, than unrestricted, regularly carded races.

A mistake I commonly made as a newbie was buying a horse, thinking its last race was a few weeks ago, without realizing until after the purchase that its last start was actually in the prior game year, or even two game years ago. In other words, I’d be paying attention to the week of the last race, but not the game year.

In looking at Cuffed Aeroine,’s race dates you can see that her last race was Week 7 of this year. It’s week 13 as of this writing, so she’s already gone six weeks without a race. If you wanted to purchase her to race (via requesting her from Alexandra Jaysman), she would probably benefit from a workout before racing again, as going at least five weeks between races is the general guideline for when horses need a workout. What’s more, Cuffed Aeroine was off ten weeks between when she last won and when she was fourth in the recent LA-bred stakes.

What else can we find out about Cuffed Aeroine from her past performances? She was actually a pretty consistent horse – rarely worse than fourth – as long as she was running in claimers or LA-bred races. Her first win was a maiden race just for LA-bred horses, and her second win was in a $5000 claimer for non-winners of two. So, hopefully anyone looking at her record would see that she’s decent as long as she’s in a low enough class. Her running lines in such cases mostly indicate that she finished “gamely”, “strongly”, etc. (In her third start, she did run fourth in an open stakes at Denver, but if you click on it, you’ll see that there were only six horses in the race.) She’s not the type of horse you would want to buy, thinking she’s going to win a stakes at Trial Park. There’s nothing in her record that indicates she has that in her.

Note that for each race, after the final race time and before the jockey’s name, is listed any equipment used. Cuffed Aeroine raced without equipment through finishing eighth in an LA-bred stakes. She then got a tongue tie (tt), and then later hind bandages (hb).

You can get a quick idea of a horse’s ownership history by noting the jockey for each race. Most players use the same jockey for all their races, and only go to a second jockey if they have more than one horse in a race. Cuffed Aeroine had the same jockey throughout her career, until her last two starts. That would suggest, in most cases, that she had the same owner until her second race back, and then had a different owner still for her most recent race. However, if you click on her last two races, you’ll see that, contrary to most situations, the player Radio Face was her owner both times, and he happened to use two different jockeys with her.


WORKOUTS
Let’s go to Cuffed Aeroine’s workout tab. The most important thing about workouts is to look at the year of the most recent one. Most likely, it’ll be before the horse ever started racing. If you’re considering purchasing an active racehorse, there’s really no reason for the workouts to matter, since the speed of workouts speak to the horse’s potential. If the horse is already racing, you should care more about his actual race performances, than his potential back when he was a youngster.

The exception might be for a horse that’s been off over four weeks, as in the case of Cuffed Aeroine. Ideally, you would like to see a recent work, so it would suggest she’s still fit to race. But no such luck. Her last workout was way back in Year 26, when she was a yearling.

If you are considering buying an unraced youngster, then the workout times are going to mean more. It can take some time to get a handle on what’s an average work versus a poor work versus a good work. Plus, of course, not all horses race as their workouts indicate. What’s more, the distance of the workout is only useful if it applies to the distance category of the horse. In other words, the 2f and 3f work distances are for sprinters, 4f for milers, and 5f+ for routers.


PROGENY
If you click on Cuffed Aeroine’s sire, Ultimate Aero, you’ll see that he has a Progeny tab. Clicking on it reveals an alphabetical listing of all his offspring. You can click on any of the headings for the first four columns, and the listing will sort by that column. In other words, click on “Earnings”, and the progeny with zero earnings will show first. Click it again, and Ultimate Aero’s top earning offspring will show first. Go back to Ultimate Aero and click on her dam, Cuffs. Her “Progeny” tab will show all her offspring, which of course is a shorter listing. Again, you can sort by any of the columns.

If you’re considering purchasing a youngster, or a filly for breeding, you’ll want to be looking at the progeny of the parents and grandparents. The potency of the pedigree matters in SIM.


HISTORY
The History tab can be both incredibly boring to look at, and highly informative in the right circumstances.

It can also be confusing. For starters, SIM operates on its own game years, and yet the History tab uses real life dates. The only way to marry these two together is to look at the Calendar (under the Community heading of your office page), and see which real life dates tie to which SIM weeks. (And even that isn’t the full story, because the Calendar unfortunately doesn’t notate game years. So, you have to be playing a while to have a feel for how many game years ago a certain date was.)

For the most part, the History tab shows the horse shipping back and forth between farms and tracks throughout its career. If the horse has only been shipping from track to track, indicating its current owner doesn’t ship it to a farm to rest between races, then, for starters, if you buy that horse, you can probably improve it by giving it farm rest.

The History also shows training that has taken place, other than workouts. If you have the patience, you might be able to pin down the training routine of the current owner, and see if you agree with it or not for that horse. Maybe there’s something you could change to improve the horse’s performances. (Bear in mind that some players choose not to do any training with their horses, other than the two workouts required before 2yos can race. In such cases, there wouldn’t be any training notations on their History tab.)

Where the History tab can get interesting is with ownership changes. For Cuffed Aeroine, she shows being bred by me for her first history note. There aren’t any ownership changes up until the time she started shipping around to race, so one can deduce that I, as her breeder, raced her most of her career. (You could also click on any of her races from that time and see that Regina Moore is listed as the owner.) Note that on Oct 19th last year, she was claimed for $5000 by Radio Face. If you look at her Past Performances, you can see that she won that $5000 claiming race. Since then, that new owner only raced her the two times, with her races widely spaced apart.

The History tab doesn’t show that Cuffed Aeroine was ever “Given to Alexandra Jaysman”, as it does when horses are sent to Greener Pastures. There isn’t any indication that Radio Face gave her up. I happen to know that Radio Face quit SIM, so all horses owned by him were taken over by Alexandra Jaysman. Hence, Alexandra Jaysman shows as the current owner.

Click on Cuffed Aeroine’s dam, Cuffs, and look at her History tab. Karie McBrian bred and campaigned her throughout her career. Then Karie sold her to The Steward for $250,000. The Steward bred Cuffs for over two real life years (six or seven game years), and then sold her to me for $30,000. (That is, I bought her off the sales page.) I bred Cuffed Aeroine and one other horse from Cuffs (I know that by recognizing the names on her Progeny tab), and then I put her up for auction, and she was purchased by Mundell Racing for $1,000. He got two foals from her, and then she died from foaling (the eventual fate of most all broodmares).

You can see some bizarre things on a horse’s History tab, and shouldn’t read too much into them. For example, a horse might show being owned by a player, then given away to a second player, but then bought back by the first player a few days later for a certain amount of money. The reason this can happen is that players have no way of giving each other SIM dollars, or of giving free breedings. So, to make these transactions happen, a horse (sometimes one that has nothing to do with the transaction in question) is used as a means of moving money between players.

An example of the above is, say, I give you a free breeding to my stallion Untamed, who stands for $35,000. The only way to breed your mare to him is to pay the $35,000. You would then sell the foal to me for $35,000. That’s how you would get your money back, netting to a free breeding. But now I have the foal, and we both know he’s your foal. So, after the 48 hour waiting period (which prevents players from buying a horse and then immediately reselling it), I give the foal back to you as a gift. The foal’s History tab is going to show that he was sold to me for $35,000, and then two days later I gave him to you. That’s going to look rather strange to someone who doesn’t know about the free breeding.

So, if something looks peculiar to you on the History tab, just know that probably nothing peculiar is going on.

In the past game year or so, the History tab has started showing stud fee changes for stallions. So, eventually, you’ll be able to see if a stallion’s fee has been going up or down throughout his stud career.


Each horse’s page provides a wealth of information. It’s up to each player to decide how best to use that information. The more you get accustomed to looking at different pieces of information, the faster you’ll be able to process what it means to you.



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