Hypo-mating for Newbies (WALL OF TEXT)

[Gwen Morse]

First off, I'm not an expert by any means - more experienced people who are masters of breeding please don't come after me with torches and pitchforks.

Hypos. Hypos are such a weird, confusing topic. They're a huge trap for new players (or longer-term players who don't understand them).

Hypos aren't actually information on how good a particular breeding will be. They're a rating to compare the "relative quality" of stallions and mares. What do I mean by the relative quality? The quality of a stallion (or mare) when compared to a different stallion (or mare).

To start with hypos, it helps to know who is the 'top'. I only know the top hypoing stallion for Turf divisions, but here they are: TS - Dirk Pitt, TM - Nightwatch, TR - Impacts.

After we know who the best hypoing stallion in the division is, we want a range from "top" to "bottom". Bottom is the lowest quality stallion you're still willing to use.

In the turf miler division (as examples), we have Nightwatch, Backstreet Boy, Fight the Good Fight, and Distant Galaxies.

Nightwatch is the "top hypoing" stallion in the division. No one hypos better than him and I don't think any stallion is equal to him right now.

Distant Galaxies ("DG") is my standard for the "bottom" hypo that I'll use. I won't use any stallion that hypos worse than him. NEW PLAYERS: **you** should not use horses like DG. You want better hypos than that because you'll breed relatively few foals and so every gallop "matters". Talking about hypos to to DG are in order to teach you about relative quality. It's not an endorsement of his breeding prowess.

Please note there are caveats (a few, uh, provisos, a couple of quid pro quos...) to any statements on what players "should" or "shouldn't" do. The first rule of the sim is to play the way you want. For those wanting to "improve" the quality of their foals but not quite sure what they're supposed to be doing, my advice is purely on how to use hypos effectively and as just one of the tools in your breeding toolbox. Stallion stats still matter, a mare's produce record still matters, pedigree still matters. Bloodstock Agent labels ("BSA"s) can sometimes matter a little. You may also want to be pickier than me and set your "bottom" tier stallion to a better stallion than I'm using here. There's noting special about DG except that I own him so I'm not "trash-talking" some other sim player's horse.

Somewhere between DG and Nightwatch are Backstreet Boy and Fight the Good Fight. Fight the Good Fight hypos decently but worse than Backstreet Boy. Backstret Boy costs more and has better foal stats than Fight the Good Fight. However, hypos that match Fight the Good Fight are perfectly fine as a "bargain" or "value" option (as long as the stallion owner doesn't charge a lot).

When breeding you want a mix of foals. You want 10-15k geldings from a respectable value stallion like Fight the Good Fight and fillies from more expensive high quality stallions like Backstreet Boy and Nightwatch. If you spend big on every foal you'll go bankrupt fast. With luck you'll still get strong allowance gallops and maybe even the occasional stakes runner out of a value stud and their earnings will help cover your filly breeding costs.

A fairly common spread of hypos on adequate newbie mares would be: A to Nightwatch, A- to Backstreet Boy, A- or B+ to Fight the Good Fight, and B+ to DG.

Sometimes mares will get a particular letter grade to every stallion. A couple of my best mares hypo "A- to everyone" or "A to everyone" in this list. While it isn't guaranteed, these mares tend to be better than the adequate mare I showed above this sentence.

So now I'm going to explain what I mean by "relative quality" by using examples. Let's pretend I have two broodmares: Excellence, and Mediocre.

Excellence hypos A- to Nightwatch, Backstreet Boy, Fight The Good Fight, and DG. She's "A- to everyone".
Mediocre hypos flat A to Nightwatch, A- to Backstreet Boy, B+ to Fight The Good Fight and flat B to DG.

Excellence has higher "relative quality" than Mediocre. Excellence gets A- to any (usable) stallion you throw at her. When you have a newly-retired broodmare, this is the sort of mare you might send to a pricier stallion for the first try.

Mediocre has a poor "relative quality". That flat B to DG lets you know she probably sucks. We already know DG is a "sad" stallion but he can manage a B+ fairly easily so a flat B to him is a problem. You might still give her a try, but she isn't likely to produce very good foals, even geldings. I personally cull mares like this unless they're a test mare.

If you just hypo'd both mares to Nightwatch, you would think Mediocre was "better". This is why I say hypos on their own don't mean anything. It takes multiple hypos to show me that Excellence is the better quality mare relative to Mediocre.

There comes a point where players are working with a full barn of high quality mares and a single hypo works for them. If you're playing at that level then you don't need my lessons. I'm here to explain the basics of hypo-mating to people who don't understand them and give a couple rules of thumb to get started.

The reason Medicore's getting A/A-'s even though she sucks is that the (hidden) calculation that compares a stallion to a mare to assign a hypo is giving a lot of weight to the best stallions in the division. This can be read as "Even with a mare this crappy, Nightwatch is so good he's an 'A', and Backstreet Boy is so good he's an A-".

What it does _not_ mean is that Nightwatch or Backstreet Boy are equally likely to give both Mediocre and Excellence a high quality foal. Excellence is still the better broodmare option based on hypos.

However, Mediocre wouldn't be completely useless. It's exactly because she has a range of hypos that Mediocre becomes **very** useful to hypo new/lightly-used stallions. Many top players keep a few mares like her around as "test mares". When a new stallion comes out, hypo him to your test mare. If he hypos 'A' or 'A-' you know he's somewhere between Nightwatch and Backstreet Boy. 'B+' is between Backstreet Boy and Fight The Good Fight. Flat 'B' means between Fight The Good Fight and DG (and maybe even lower than DG) and it's time to run away screaming!

When people launch a new stallion, they hypo him to mares similar to Excellence that hypo A+ or flat A to many tiers of stallions and include the hypos in their forum post announcing he's at stud. But if I were to hypo that same stallion to my test mare, I might actually see he's a B+ (or maybe even a flat B). This is for the reason I just mentioned. "Even with a stallion this crappy, the mares in the adverts are so good that they hypo A+ or flat A to him." It can be confusing and even a little deceptive for people who don't understand hypos, but "everyone" does it and you're not going to stop it. The best you can do is know it's happening and avoid relying on hypos in forum posts to pick the stallions you use.

If you're a newish player (or a longer term player who never quite figured out breeding), then hypos are a good first step for culling potentially crappy mares.

To get the best chance at the best babies you want to cross high-hypos-to-everything mares and stallions. To determine which horses deserve those high hypos, you want to test them lower-quality mares and stallions. I hope this makes sense but if not let me know. This is a really important point to understand about hypos and breeding.

Which hypo letters are "high" and which hypo letters are "low"? To the best of my knowledge, this only works for flat Thoroughbreds as hypos in the other divisions aren't granular enough to work correctly. If your mare is a "<letter> to everyone"-type mare then you want any stallion you use to at least match that letter - so if a mare is "flat A to everyone" then a stud that's A- or lower isn't a good relative quality. If the mare has a range of hypos (ie: if she's A/A-/B+ to the different tiers of usable stallions) then you at least want a B+. B+ is usually the bottom for both. I own a couple "B+ to everyone" mares who produce allowance gallops, and some other mares that have a range of hypos and gave me stakes gallops off B+ stallion crosses.

The B+ hypo isn't good or bad on its own - you need to know the relative quality of the mare and stallion. A turf miler mare getting a B+ to Nightwatch and flat B to everyone else is probably terrible. A turf _router_ that gets B+ to Nightwatch may be a candidate for versatile breeding in both TM and TR divisions.

Now for the more delicate question of "Why would people stand a stallion as crappy as DG?" It's because he's not *entirely* a bad stallion. He's an *okay* stallion. He has a place in breeding and people who stand stallions like him can do well if they understand the consequences of what they're doing. Why people use him isn't part of this lesson.

If you're a new player (or a not-so-new player whose been quietly chugging along without making any progress at breeding competitive foals), buy some Game Points and hypo your mares.

[Gwen Morse]

Before I dig into this any more than I have, I want to explain that my goal isn't to sell Game Points to you. I don't get any concessions or commissions for writing this post .

I'm trying to educate people about a tool that is often poorly understood. It's perfectly fine to ignore hypos completely, or do things like BSA all your mares and only hypo the Blue Hens (or Stars and Blue Hens). You might find a mid-tier stallion you like and do one hypo and group any A/A- mares for fillies and the B+ mares for colts.

Read this and play around with it until you understand it, and then adapt it to be useful for you.

Hypos Part II:

So let's pretend you've scampered off and hypo'd every mare you own to 3-4 stallions in their division. What do you *do* with this information?

Just to start, until you've gotten a couple foals out of her, I would send any mare that you own and hypos "A (or A-) to everyone" to a mid to top stallion and gender select fillies. For any mare you own that is a mix of A and B+ hypos to decent stallions, I'd send them to value stallions and gender select colts.

When assessing the foals a mare has produced it probably helps to keep in mind that very successful players have average foal gallops somewhere between 30% and 40% allowance and above. That means between 60% and 70% of their foals are lower gallops than that. If a mare gives you one bad foal that's pretty normal. If she gives you two in a row then start feeling concerned. Three bad foals and it's time to think about culling her. If at least 1/3 of her foals are keepers she's doing well.

If someone has offered you a mare lease you can probably assume (for now) that she's decent and should be sent to a mid tier to top tier stallion for a filly.

There is so much more than these simple rules to understanding breeding in the sim. But for any clueless New and Junior players these rules should get you started.

[Darat Ayam]

Awesome info, thank you for sharing this

[Kelly Haggerty]

Hypos, in aggregate, do give you an indication of quality, but like most things in the SIM, they also mimic something in RL TB racing. In this case, it is something called a "nick." Nicks are when two bloodlines cross particularly well. Nicks are how I got several nice stakes horses and freaks, including a SC winner, by crossing California Chrome with Walk off Grandslam mares. The results would not have been as good if I had paired those mares with a "better" stallion or if I had crossed Chrome with "better" mares from other bloodlines. A nick makes 1+1 add up to more than 2 somehow.

I surprised one player last season by getting a flat A to his new stallion with my formidable mare, but I could see there was a "nick" there. It used to take a bunch of research to find these, but now they are on the stallion's studbook page. When I breed mares, I consider the best nicks for her sire, dam, and damsire in selecting the stallions and it seems to help.