Quitting With a Horse - When to Quit

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

How do you know when it’s time to give up on a horse, or otherwise call it quits?

First, congratulations if you’ve ever wondered about this. When you’re new, it’s pretty common to think every horse in your barn is an asset, and view a sorry race record as simply meaning that nobody has heretofore bothered to understand the poor, neglected horse’s needs and figure him out. I know I tended to look at my first purchases the same way I’ve looked at shelter dogs in real life – I’ve accepted responsibility for them, and now it’s my responsibility to see them through to the end of their lives.

I must say, though, once I got rid of a SIM horse for the first time, it became a lot easier for subsequent horses, and the sense of responsibility I felt for their remaining lives went out the window. (That is, until I started breeding my own. But that’s a different subject.)

So again, the fact that you’re willing to think in terms of parting with a horse is a *good* thing; otherwise, you’ll quickly find yourself overwhelmed with too many horses to manage.

Here are some suggestions for determining when it’s time to remove the horse from your racing barn.


THE EASIEST METHOD
The easiest determination is when you can say, “It’s no longer fun racing this horse.” Whatever your hopes were for that horse when you acquired him, if you now feel annoyance whenever you click on him – because you can’t ever figure out the equipment, you can’t find enough races for his best distance, he suddenly started doing poorly when he used to be consistent, etc. -- then it’s time to let go. If campaigning the horse is no longer fun, then there really isn’t any further point in keeping him, is there?


THE "THREE STRIKES" RULE
Before I had a lot of homebreds, my favorite criteria was what I called the “three strikes” rule. Once the horse was off the board three races in a row, he was gone. Really, just how much ability can a horse have if he can’t manage to get up for third at least once every three races? I would give a little leeway if I’d been deliberately experimenting with the horse – such as trying him on All Weather for a race or two – but that was unusual. By following the three strikes rule, my young stable stayed lean and mean, despite my purchasing new horses frequently. At any given time, it consisted mostly of horses that were moving the stable forward, rather than horses that were dragging it down with repeated poor performances.

If one likes the idea of applying the “three strikes” rule, and are eager to build up their bank balance, then there’s a good argument for applying the rule only to races where the horse finishes worse than fourth, rather than worse than third. Fourth place pays 7% of the purse, which is almost as good as the 10% that third place pays. It’s just that finishing fourth makes one’s OTB (on the board) stats looks bad. So, if you’re a player who obsesses over impressive stats, you’ll likely shy away from the idea of being okay with a horse finishing fourth. (Please note that finishing fifth only pays 2% of the purse, so that rarely does more than cover of the cost of shipping. Running for fifth place really isn’t very worthwhile.)


THE "CLUNKER" RULE
Your better horses are the ones that tend to be reliably consistent. For this group, I’ve got what I call the “clunker” rule. A clunker is a race where your horse runs, say, eighth or worse. In other words, they were *badly* beaten, and that hasn’t ever happened before, at least not as long as the horse was racing on the race surface, at the right distance, and having his races adequately spaced apart. When a horse has a sudden clunker, especially if he’s an older fellow, your first inclination might be to part ways because his talent is spent. (It is a fact that a horse’s form can take a sudden, permanent turn of the worst.)

What my experience in SIM has taught me is that all horses should be allowed one clunker. Last year, I had a quality 3yo finish second in a Grade 3 stakes, then finish 12th in a listed stakes. To this day, I don’t know why she performed so badly in the latter race. But I didn’t panic, didn’t change anything, and her next start, she was right back to finishing second in graded competition. She then moved on to her first stakes victory a few races later. This year, I had a wonderfully consistent 7yo start off the year with a third in a listed stakes. He then won an allowance race. I put him in a Grade 2 stakes and he was clobbered, finishing tenth. Because of his age, I thought that might be the beginning of the end. I dropped him into a 50k claimer and he won with a respectable 73 speed figure. Then I dropped him further to a 30k tag, and he won easily with another 73 speed figure.

So, just from these two examples, I think that no matter how disappointed you are in an otherwise good horse’s poor performance, any horse should always be allowed one clunker.

However, if an otherwise consistent horse throws in two clunkers in a row, then I’d feel pretty safe in calling it quits, at least at his current class level. If you have a stakes level horse, you can drop him into claimers and see if it helps. But if he’s already a claiming horse, or if you don’t like the idea of reducing a nice horse to a claiming level, then I’d say he’s done. (Again, I’m calling a clunker a genuinely *bad* race, and not merely finishing fifth or sixth in a large field.)


LOGICAL CONDITION BREAKS
A conditioned race is one that is restricted to horses with a certain number of wins. Maiden races are for horses that haven’t ever won, a NW2 (non-winners of two) is for horses that have only won once, etc.

A horse that is a maiden has all its conditions left. It can run in maiden races until it wins. Then it’ll logically run in NW2 until it wins again, and then NW3. While SIM does card NW4 and NW5 races (and players can always sponsor them), only Standardbreds have a good number of them. For the most part, horses in other breeds are “out of conditions” after they’ve won three races. That means they must race in open company, where they’ll often face, even in cheap claiming races, older horses with six-figure earnings and a lot of back class. It’s very tough for a lot of horses to be competitive in open company – even horses that were fairly consistent from the time they started racing until the time they got their third lifetime win.

Probably the biggest class jump most horses have to make is when they break their maiden and now have to race in NW2 competition, where they are facing other winners. A lot of horses never win a second race after breaking their maiden. In my experience, most horses that can win a NW2 can probably also win a NW3. But the next toughest break is when they graduate from NW3 to running in open company.

So, if you want to part company with a horse when its race record still looks good, and it might actually be worth something to another player, the best times to sell it are 1) Right after it breaks its maiden; or 2) after it has won it’s third race. It’s possible that you might be parting with a horse that still has some good races ahead of it, but most everyday horses are going to suffer a drop in performance when having to make either of these two jumps in class levels, and you’re better off selling them when you have the chance.


Of course, you can develop your own guidelines for when it’s time to quit with a horse. The important thing is to have *some* kind of method for quitting. Otherwise, your population will just grow and grow and grow. Not only will you be flustered that you’re losing so many races, but it’s inevitable that you’ll decide one day that you don’t have enough time or energy to manage so many horses and, in a fit of determination to fix the problem, you might end up selling your good horses as well as your bad horses. So that, essentially, you’re starting over. There’s no reason to reach that point, if you have a a hard rule or guideline in place to establish when it’s time for horses to leave your racing barn.

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