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Let's Figure Out This Breeding Thing - Summary

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

In my original article with the same title (http://www.simhorseracing.com/featurerace/article.php?ArticleID=14246), I hopefully presented enough evidence to support my conclusion that breeding can't be "figured out" -- at least, not with being able to depend up on any degree of consistent results.

However, considering the article's length, I feel I neglected to do a summary regarding the different aspects of breeding that I was talking about. So, I want to do that here, as well as add some further thoughts.

The reason breeding is so very, very difficult, is because one is trying to combine multiple concepts simultaneously, and each concept has it's own myriad of its, and, or buts, so that you're being neglectful, in my opinion, if you put blinders on and develop a black-or-white attitude toward any aspect of it.

Factors affecting quality of the foal:

1. The mare quality, as assessed by the bloodstock agent, Anna Liza Doolittle (costs $10,000), but which isn't The Last Word on the mare's ability to produce good foals.
2. The stallion quality -- all kinds of ways to define this, as the Stud Book has five different basic rank categories, and stallions too young to have foals racing aren't even going to be in the rankings.
3. The foal's pedigree (stallion and mare combined), which can be given a nick grade, for the cost 250 game points
4. The random slide the foal gets

The above seems like pretty straightforward ingredients, doesn't it? But it isn't straightforward.

I've seen players get on the forum and declare that they won't allow any mare less than a "star" into their broodmare band. Well, I'm certainly glad I don't follow that black-or-white outlook. I never would have gotten $3 million earner War Lock (out of a mere "unpredictable" mare), or my current "freak" 2yo turf miler filly, who is out of a formidable mare, and just won her debut in impressive style.

Certainly, all other factors being equal, I'd say you should buy a blue hen or star mare, before you buy a formidable or unpredictable. But when are all factors equal? Almost never! Why would you pay bucko bucks for a blue hen that has had, say, five foals to race by decent stallions, none of which have earned more than $20,000, when you can by a formidable mare for $10,000 that has produced two stakes winners? Or, if she's young, is from a female family that has produced multiple stakes winners? The latter is obviously the better producer -- most likely has a much stronger pedigree -- yet, most players will coming running to buy the blue hen, with their wallets out, simply because she has the label "blue hen".


JUST WHAT THE HECK IS A GOOD PEDIGREE?
As mentioned in the prior article, the Steward reiterated on the forum a couple of game years back, the importance of a good pedigree, over and above the BSA comment for mares.

I haven't seen "a good pedigree" defined -- in real life, nor in SIM. People throw that phrase around like it's an obvious concept. But it isn't, is it? To me, a good pedigree means that the horse's bloodlines have a history of breeding on successfully, generation after generation. That's a straightforward sentence, and yet it still covers up a whirlpool of question marks and things that one simply can't know with any certainty.

For example, if a mare earned a million dollars on the racetrack, she obviously came from a good pedigree, because a bad pedigree couldn't have produced such an outstanding race mare, right? Wrong. There's that pesky thing known as the random slide. It can turn an ordinary pedigree into a multiple graded stakes winner, and a blue-blooded foal into a mere claimer. But even that footnote is over-simplifying things, in my opinion.


SOME THINGS JUST CAN'T BE KNOWN
Say, you look at a mare for sale. She's by a pretty decent stallion. But the female family concerns you. Even though the mare's pedigree has stallion names that you've heard of before, the female family hasn't produced any stakes winners for the past two generations. So, she's not a very good broodmare prospect, right? Probably not. Or maybe she is. I can think of three reasons why the mare's family doesn't have any stakes winners:

1. It's a poor pedigree, and the mare in question is unlikely to produce a good foal.
2. The female line has had really bad luck with the random slide, and it's actually a decent line, but nobody can tell such.
3. The female line is from a breeder that hasn't had much time for SIM in recent game years, and therefore hasn't bothered racing many of the foals the past two generations. So, those foals show $0 earnings, through no fault of their own. So, one can't know how strong the female line is, when the vast majority of the offspring have never been given the opportunity to race.

You can use the above reasoning to also explain why a female line that has produced good foals might not really be all that good.

So, the idea of simply finding a decent broodmare is a myriad of factors, all interacting simultaneously, and all swirling around without any degree of absolute certainty. And that's without even getting into the stallion side of things, in terms of who to breed your mare to.


CONCLUSION -- TAKE TWO
This is why my overall advice, in the prior article, was to "lighten up" about breeding. I hate to see players who have been frustrated with their breeding attempts, decide they're going to "get serious", and spend a whole lot of game points nicking potential breedings, and/or spend SIM dollars BSAing mares, only to still end up with a hugely disappointing foal crop. When that disappointment happens (which, frankly, is par for the course for most of us, most of the time), the player usually feels one or both of the following:

1. That they must be terrible players, who can't figure out how to do good breedings, and maybe they should just quit; AND/OR
2. That the SIM is screwed up in its programming, which needs to be "fixed", so that the player can get better foals from their exhaustive efforts

In my opinion, the SIM does an outstanding job of mimicking real life. Do you think there is a single Thoroughbred breeder on planet Earth who has declared that breeding champion racehorses is "easy"?

As for being terrible players... I've bred a few mighty fine SIM horses in my time -- nearly 300 stakes winners overall. But I've also bred a gazillion more claimers, and worse. You think a veteran player like me has "figured out" breeding? Last year was my biggest foal crop, of over 400 foals, which included 180 Thoroughbreds. You know how many freaks I got from all those Thoroughbreds? Zero. You know how many stakes gallopers I got? Two. Just how bad must I be at breeding? Yet, last year, I got a "freak" turf mile filly (the aforementioned, out of a formidable mare), as well as that record-setting Standardbred Pacer colt, mentioned in the prior article. There's good years and bad years. Occasionally, a few good years in a row; sometimes, a whole lot of bad years in a row.

All you can do is the best that you can. The more knowledgeable you can become about bloodlines and such, the better off you'll be, but it's still no guarantee that you're going to get a high quality foal, any particular game year.

Breeding can't be "figured out". It's wonderfully unpredictable. Period.



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