Let's Figure Out This Breeding Thing

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 8 years 2 weeks ago

There seems to come a point, in every player's SIM life, when they decide that It's Time to Get Serious About Breeding. This often occurs after the player has been in SIM a few game years, and has the basics down as to how to race their horses. Now that they know how to play, and are reasonably confident with selecting races to enter their horses in, they really, really want some higher level horses. But those don't grow on trees. While such players have often admirably built up their bank balance, they often still can't afford the extreme high prices at a Steward-bred auction. They might have spent large sums on buying allowance, or even stakes gallopers from other players, and found out that those horses aren't going to earn back what they cost.

What to do to get the great horse, when you have limited funds? The answer is to breed your own.

Doesn't that sound simple?

Ha! Are you ever in for a surprise.


HOW TO BREED HORSES
An article I wrote many game years ago is still mostly applicable, in that few things have changed since it was written. If you want to know how fake SIM horses "do it", please see "The Mechanics of Breeding Mares" (http://www.simhorseracing.com/featurerace/article.php?ArticleID=11723).

With the biological mechanics covered by the above, this particular article focuses on how to make decisions regarding which mares to breed to which stallions. (Warning: there's a surprise ending!)


MARE QUALITY
Let's start with mare quality. If one pays $10,000 to have the bloodstock agent Anna Liza Doolittle evaluate a mare (known as BSAing the mare), Ms. Doolittle will give one of six comments, ranging from the top "blue hen" comment ("Horse looks like a blue hen, what a special mare!") down to no potential at all ("Horse doesn't have any potential as a flat race broodmare; I'd be impressed if she ever produced a winner!") See this page on my website for all the possible comments: http://www.magicravenranch.com/commentsY41.html.

One can BSA any mare, regardless of whether or not they own her, but that can get really expensive, if you want to check a lot of mares before buying. With most mares that have had at least a foal or two, their prior owner has likely already BSA'd them, and the comment will be in the History tab. But you won't be able to see the comment unless you buy the mare.

In any event, just how important is mare quality, as determined by the BSA? This very question caused a big bruhaha a few game years back. Many of us had assumed that the very thing the BSA comment was evaluating was pedigree. In other words, the better the pedigree of the mare, the higher the BSA comment. But when many players got on the forum to rant about how poorly their new yearlings galloped, despite having planned oh-so-careful high quality matings, The Steward pretty much shocked everybody by suggesting that pedigree was something different than the BSA comment. In other words, by my interpretation, a mare might be a "blue hen", but have lousy bloodlines. So, in the latter case, she's not likely to produce good foals. That explains why you sometimes see blue hen mares for sale, that have had a whole bunch of foals by quality stallions that aren't anything special as racehorses. Whereas, I get a $3 million earning turf miler like War Lock from a mere "unpredictable" mare.

So what does the BSA comment measure? On an "Ask Em Anything" audio segment (produced by player Scott Eiland), The Steward has said that the BSA comment refers to the mare's "general ability". This includes a random element, since two created CAM mares, with the exact pedigree, can have two different BSA comments. Beyond that, I don't know what "general ability" means. But I'm glad it's not a black-or-white thing, because then all the wealthiest players would buy up all the blue hen mares, and other players would never have a chance at a good foal.


NICKS
Nicks are a grade created by combining a mare's pedigree with a stallion's pedigree. I assume that the nick is grading the strength of the first three generations of the foal's pedigree (since it's a fact that only the first three generations influence the foal). It costs 250 games points (the equivalent of a U.S. quarter) to nick a stallion and a mare. The nick grade can go from A+ (rare) down to C. (There might even be a C-, but I haven't seen it.) The most common grades are B+ and B.

However, like anything else in SIM, it's important to measure results against the backdrop of the particular breed/distance/surface category being discussed. With turf milers, I get mostly B, and will breed some B-, so I'm thrilled when a nick is a B+. With the the highly competitive Thoroughbred dirt route division, I'll rarely accept anything less than B+. With steeplechasers, A and A- are so common, that I won't breed a mating as low as a B+. With Paint sprinters, a B+ is acceptable, but a bummer, since A- and A are easy to come by with top stallions. Yet, with Paint routers, something as high as A- is more difficult, and I've had a lot of decent runners come from mere B nicks.


COMBINING BSA AND NICKS
Want to get frustrated? Take, say, a formidable mare and nick her with a few stallions. Maybe you get a B for each breeding. Since you know there's higher grades out there, you keep spending more and more game points, nicking her to more and more stallions -- even expensive stallions that you can't afford -- trying to get a grade higher than that boring B. But you keep getting B. What's up with that?

Of course, I don't know the programming behind nicks. But what I am sure about, from breeding over 2500 foals of all breeds and types, since we got nicks and the BSA in Year 30, is that each mare has a certain level of ability. She can't nick beyond her ability. If it seems pretty obvious, after a few nicks with decent stallions, that she can't nick higher than B, then I wouldn't waste game points in the fruitless search for a higher nick. Does that mean the mare isn't worth breeding? Again, the answer to that depends in large part on the breed/distance/surface division one is talking about. If the mare is a turf miler, I'd say, "What's wrong with a B?" If the mare is a Thoroughbred dirt router, I'd say, "Surely, you can find a better mare than that."

In general, the BSA level of the mare, and nick grades, go hand in hand. *Usually*, a blue hen mare will nick higher to a stallion than a formidable mare nicked to that same stallion. But not always. Some stallions nick high with a large variety of mares. Those are stallions that everyone wants to breed to, and those stallions are usually therefore on the expensive side. The problem is that your foal with a high nick is going to have to compete against a whole bunch of other foals from high nicks, so maybe you don't want to pay that high stud fee if you don't have a great mare, to begin with.

Also, some mares that, say, nick B with most stallions, might nick B+ with a particular stallion or two. That's how I got my $3 million earning turf miler War Lock. His mom was an "unpredictable" mare that nicked B with over a dozen stallions. Then, thanks to the Edge newsletter, mares by her sire were recommended to breed to Held High. So, I tried her with Held High and got a B+ nick, which was thrilling. The foal wasn't thrilling, at first. He was just an "okay" galloper (now called "solid") with bland workouts. Then, midway through his 2yo season, right before his debut, he galloped "scary good", which was the top comment at the time. Such was how War Lock came into being. So, that was a case of an "always nicks B mare" that crossed particularly well with a certain bloodline, resulting in a rare (for her) B+. Still, know that War Lock's full sister, with that exact nick and bloodlines, hasn't been anything special -- as a racehorse or a broodmare.

What's more important, the mare quality or the nick grade? Since Year 30, my observations prompted the tentative conclusion that the nick grade is more important. A dozen game years later, I'm still convinced of that. What's more, in an "Ask Em Anything" segment, The Steward indicated that she'd consider the nick grade to be more important than the BSA comment.


PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER
So, how do you pull all this together, in order to make good breeding decisions?

For one thing, that can be hard to do from the sheer standpoint that the SIM changes at times. Every so often, the nick scale is adjusted, or the broodmare scale is adjusted, just as gallops are sometimes adjusted. In other words, a breeding might be an A- nick, but after something gets adjusted, it now might be only a B+ nick. The nick quality is the same, but the label has changed. Such periodic adjustments can make it difficult to evaluate a mating in light of past matings. So, that's an added level of complication, when trying to look at historical results.

But more importantly, know that a "good breeding decision" isn't any guarantee of a particular quality of foal. For starters, all foals are subject to a "random slide", so no matter how great their pedigree is, the random element can make for a lot worse foal than the pedigree suggests. Or vice versa. If you get a foal that gallops "claimer" as a yearling, it doesn't mean you've done something wrong. It doesn't mean you've made a bad decision with breeding your mare. In fact, if you breed that mare back to the same stallion, you might get a much better foal. Or, you might not.

I've been tracking all the details of my foal crops since Year 30. I can see, at a glance, what the mare quality was, the nick, and how the foal turned out. I'd say that, with an eyeball estimation, that roughly 60-70% of the time, the best foal in the crop, for a particular division, came from the most obviously best breeding. In other words, if my herd had two blue hen mares, one with an A- nick, and one with a B+ nick, then I'd expect the blue hen mare with an A- nick to produce the best foal in the crop. A lot of times, that's indeed the result. But a lot of other times, it isn't.

Some examples in looking at my Year 42 foal crop, in terms of how the foals galloped:

TB Dirt Routers -- 11 mares bred, including 2 blue hens. The blue hen that nicked A- got only a solid galloper. The blue hen that nicked B+ got a stakes galloper. There was a star mare with an A- nick, and she got a productive foal.

TB Dirt Sprinters - 18 mares bred. Two blue hen mares each nicked B+, and both foals were productive. There were three allowance foals that all came from B+ nicks -- two were star mares and one was a formidable mare.

TB Turf Sprinters - 21 mares bred, including two blue hens. The blue hen with an A- nick got a claimer foal. The blue hen with a mere B nick got an allowance foal. There's two stakes gallopers, neither bred by me, and both from star mares. One was from a mere B nick (a Steward-bred, actually) and the other from an A- nick. There were five "unpredictable" mares in the group, which all had B or B- grades. One of the B- resulted in a productive foal. The rest were all solid or claimers.

Paint Sprinters - 23 mares bred, including three blue hens. The one with a solid A nick got an allowance galloper. The two A- grades got a stakes and a productive. There were three solid A nicks from lesser mares: a star mare got a "freak" foal, another star got an "allowance" foal, and the third mare with an A nick was only formidable, and she got an allowance foal. I bred one "unpredictable" mare, who got a B+ nick, and the foal was solid.

QH Routers - 22 mares bred. The one blue hen had an A- nick and produced a claimer foal (by a TB stallion). Three other A- nicks were from star mares, and results in two allowance and a stakes. Three other allowance foals came from B+ nicks -- one a star mare, one a formidable, and one an unpredictable.

Arabian Sprinters - 25 mares bred, including five blue hens. The one with a solid A nick got a freak foal. (A situation where everything worked out like it was supposed to!) The one with an A- nick got a stakes foal. The other two blue hen mares had B+ nicks and got an allowance and a claimer. A lot of "unpredictable" mares with B nicks had "different career" offspring. Yet, one lowly "potential" mare got a productive foal from her B nick, while the other potential mare had a B- nick and got a claimer.

Are you getting how difficult it is to predict the outcome, regardless of the mare quality or nick? All in all, better foals come from better mares and better nicks. Lower quality mares and lower nicks are much more likely to result in lower level foals But there's still a lot of room for the unexpected to happen. That's why I never have expectations at the breeding level.


A LOOK AT TWO STALLIONS
You want to know how difficult it is to Figure Out breeding? I'm bursting at the seams in my eagerness to tell you about two turf mile stallions I stand.

One is the aforementioned homebred, War Lock. One of the best racehorses ever, in the turf mile division. Stands for a 40k fee, offspring have average earnings over 50k -- a successful sire. From his same crop was Steward-bred Speak in Rounds. Speak in Rounds won less than 500k on the track. He stands for $10,000 and has had little interest from breeders, except for -- wait for it -- The Steward. War Lock is siring 21% allowance/stakes gallopers, Speak in Rounds less than 3%. So, War Lock is a way, way better sire than Speak in Rounds from every standpoint, right? Except in one little category. War Lock hasn't sired a freak galloper. Speak in Rounds has sired a freak (a Steward-bred, actually).

Does the above little fact make your head spin?


ANOTHER "REAL SIM" EXAMPLE
As with all the other divisions, I've been breeding Standardbred pacers for the entire 19 games years I've been playing SIM. I have lots of blue hen mares. I've seen lots of variations of A nicks, including A+. My very best Standardbred pacer homebred? A gelding that has earned less than 140k. Talk about frustration! I've done all the right things. Bred top quality mares with high nicks. Got some top galloping foals here and there. But the breed has been so saturated with quality youngsters, that there's always many dozen of horses better than my best, in any given year.

Then it happened. In Year 41, one of my star mares got her usual A- nick. One of the blue hen mares got her usual A nick. From a crop of 16 foals, both youngsters from those mares were freaks. But I knew better than to get excited about it, since I've had top galloping youngsters before in the breed that turned into nothing. Then Week 5 came along and I worked all those yearlings in a group, expecting to see the fastest times by the two freaks. Indeed, they were the fastest. But one freak (A- nick out of the star mare) was way, way, way faster than the other (A nick out of the blue hen mare). I went searching through the records, and my quickest boy had easily broken the record for the fastest workout ever by a Standardbred pacer. Early in his 2yo season, in another workout, he broke the SIM's *track* record.

As of this writing, those two freaks are less than two weeks from their debuts. Fast workout times don't always automatically translate into racetrack performance. But whatever happens on the racetrack, I can at least say I've bred the fastest Standardbred pacer, ever. And it was from doing nothing different from what I'd always done before. I just kept trying, crop after crop. Weathered the frustration and disappointment, crop after crop. Finally, one day, the SIM gods smiled upon me.


CONCLUSION
I promised a surprise ending to this article.

You want to Figure Out breeding?

Answer: There is no figuring it out! It's a murky, murky, swirling sea of unpredictability. And that is absolutely the very thing that I love about it.

Think about it. How much fun would it be, if you knew Exactly What's Going to Happen at the time you breed a mare to a stallion? Heck, there wouldn't be any point in running races! Everybody would already know who the top foals were from the moment of conception. And all the rich players would have the best stallions and mares, so there would be no point in anyone else even trying to play.

You can, however, introduce some broad parameters into your game play. For what it's worth, since I don't consider myself to be a particularly capable breeder, here's my suggestions, in no particular order:

1. If you're a SIMperior player, read the stallion articles of the Edge newsletter. More often than not, stallions are featured that aren't "obvious". If you're looking for stallion that could be something special, despite credentials that wouldn't normally catch your attention, the Edge is a good place to start. Also, a SIMperior subscription gives you access to the Stud Book, which gives a multitude of stats on all stallions at stud, as well as rankings.

2. If you can't get your hands on star or blue hen mares, go ahead and breed formidable and unpredictables mares. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a formidable mare. The wonderful thing about them is that they're cheaply priced. But they can nick well and sometimes produce high quality foals. The next level down, "unpredictable" (some call "good", based upon the wording of the comment) is more iffy, but if the mare has a strong pedigree, that's all the more reason to give her a try. (Reminder: War Lock was out of an unpredictable mare, and she'd produced other somewhat decent foals prior to him.)

3. If you can afford the game points, nick before you buy. If a higher level mare doesn't nick any better than a lower level mare to the same stallion, then I'd suspect that higher level mare has a weaker pedigree. (Or, the lower level mare has a particularly good pedigree and might be a better buy.)

4. If you want to know which stallions are more likely to sire quality mares, check out the Broodmare Sire rankings in the Stud Book.

5. Racing ability and reproductive ability are two different things. Don't assume a poor racing filly will automatically be a poor broodmare, or that a great race mare will automatically be a great broodmare. Remember, all foals are subject to a random slide, which can turn an iffy pedigree into a great racehorse, or a brilliant pedigree into a poor racehorse.

If you're the type of person who wants to turn everything into an understandable a+b=c formula -- where the outcome is known, as long as you start with the correct ingredients -- you're going to find breeding to be an extremely frustrating endeavor.

SIM is not unique from that standpoint. I can assure you, in real life, that no top breeder, who has bred dozens of outstanding mares to outstanding stallions, has ever sat down at the end of the breeding season, brushed off their hands, and declared, "Well, at least we can be sure that one of our mares is carrying the crop's Kentucky Derby winner." The odds are somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 to 1! No one knows how the foals are going to turn out. SIM is a bit easier, but not by much. Even the top, old-time players in the game, who have bred Thoroughbred dirt routers for nearly as long as SIM has been in existence, are fortunate to get a Louisville Derby winner once every SIM decade or so.

My favorite thing that The Steward has ever said on the forum is that, "Breeding is *supposed* to be hard." What would be the point, if all you had to do, to get a quality foal, is breed a quality mare to a quality stallion? What's the point of having the story end right there?

Bottom line: my overall advice, when it comes to breeding, is to lighten up! Don't be afraid to have fun with breeding. I like to be playful about it. While doing all the oh-so-serious mare nicks and such, I also leave room for some rather dubious pairings, just to keep myself amused. In fact, here's a funny "real SIM" story: Years ago, an old-time successful player deliberately bred a horrible foal, with the goal to have it finish last in the Louisville Derby. Which it did (I think). I don't remember the horse's name, but the funnier thing is, the player later turned him into a steeplechaser, and he became a top quality runner! So, even when somebody was deliberately trying to do something dorky, just for the fun it, there was a completely unexpected outcome.

Breeding is unpredictable. Period. That's the beauty and the joy of it.

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