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The first thing I would tell a New Player is....
Original article written by Thomas Fallon posted 12 years 0 weeks agoI would tell them to try and understand this game. Upon first glance it doesn't seem too difficult, especially if you understand Horse racing a little bit. However what little experience I have has taught me that there are many Nuances involved in being successful within this game. I would tell them to forget about finding the next Secretariat and concentrate on learning how to manage what you have first. If you can't learn how to maximize the most potential you can derive from the Horses you have, then even if you were handed a Brilliant Horse you probably wouldn't help it each it's inherint greatness.
The next piece of advice for any New player is to find yourself a Mentor. I have found one and so far she has been invaluable in helping me become a better player. You can go into the Forum and just introduce yourself and ask for a Mentor to help you. There are many experienced players who would be willing to help you.
I have only been playing since November 27th and I can already relate some of the silly mistakes I have made which I am sure others have as well. I think my first biggest mistake was over training my Horse. You see for me anyway, I was too anxious to play the game at first and that caused me plenty of errors. I think once your Stable is full of Horses it will be easier to back off a bit on training them so much or racing them too often. Or in my case, doing both. Yes, I have done that which lead to near Catastrophy by severly injuring two fairly decent Horses and costing me quite a lot of money to heal them. One of them just came back and recently took 3rd place, which pleased me. The other poor Horse is still healing up and won't be ready to train again until January 20th.
I am starting to understand the basics of caring for your Horse as well as when to race and train your Horse and most importantly how often. Most newer Horses I aquire now I time run them every week, maybe week and a half with various equipment until I get a decent Idea about them. My Mentor helped me a lot by pointing out that I was entering some of my Horses at the wrong distances. She recommended I look at the Horses Sire mostly, not so much the Mare even and check out his past performances. What surface did he run on of course, was he a Miler, a Sprinter, has he had some of his better races at certain Tracks? I was familiar with the terms AW, Dirt and Turf but Router/Dirt Router, Sprinter I wasn't too clear on. I thought 6 Furlongs was a mile when it is 8 furlongs. I would enter a fairly good shorter distance horse, 5 furlongs to 6 or so into a Mile race or longer.
Plus many time I would enter them in Races against other Horses that were out of mines league. It takes a lot of careful studying to understand what you are doing. I look for a lot of New Player races and I like to Race up in Canada and Alaska often. I have a few seconds and a third but I cannot wait for that first win. This is what I mean by not geting to carried away looking for that home run Horse early. You may get it, you may have to wait a bit. The key is to recognize it and to know what to do with it if you do. In the meantime, enjoy the game. There is so much more to it. The ensuing break will be hard on a lot of us. However at least I had a few weeks to get my feet wet. Good luck to you all and I will see you in the winners circle.