Hypomate is a waste of game points

[John Nicholson]

Hypomated my only 2 star mares with see you Monday and got a straight A and A- so bred them and got an allowance and a solid and been playing long enough to know nothing is guaranteed when you breed but like I say hypomate might as well be done away with as as a guide it’s pointless,would save $$ and game points.

[Laura Smith]

It's an indication of how good your foal has a chance of being, not how good it will be. IMO, hypomates do their best work as an indication of the relative quality or potential of a stallion or mare in general. Breeding is, as always, best done by researching lines and crosses that have worked in the past, and people are putting way too much stock in hypos as the only criterion for breeding these days ("kids these days" harumph).

I still think it would help the game to generalize hypos a little. Instead of letter grades with + and -, which I find is far too specific and leads people on a little, I'd love to see it toned down to three or four possible ratings, which would still help you judge the suitability of a mating but people wouldn't freak out over a + or - so much.

and hey I hear ya about SYM. I have seven A or A- this year and nothing better than alw. Two years in a row now. I swear his teaser is covering my mares. Can we get some SIM DNA testing??

[Fanta Arcadia]

I finally wrote hypomates as a waste when the Steward sent a mare I leased her to a B+ stud instead of an A- stud. That's all the proof I need that grades don't matter lol The resulting foal is now a stakes galloper.

[Carole Hanson]

It's an indication of how good your foal has a chance of being, not how good it will be. IMO, hypomates do their best work as an indication of the relative quality or potential of a stallion or mare in general. Breeding is, as always, best done by researching lines and crosses that have worked in the past, and people are putting way too much stock in hypos as the only criterion for breeding these days ("kids these days" harumph).

I still think it would help the game to generalize hypos a little. Instead of letter grades with + and -, which I find is far too specific and leads people on a little, I'd love to see it toned down to three or four possible ratings, which would still help you judge the suitability of a mating but people wouldn't freak out over a + or - so much.

and hey I hear ya about SYM. I have seven A or A- this year and nothing better than alw. Two years in a row now. I swear his teaser is covering my mares. Can we get some SIM DNA testing??

In exactly the same boat here. And same goes for the newest stallion 'wonder' on the block, Lord Black

[Laura Smith]

That's funny, I had great luck with LB this year! The SIM is a fickle mistress, lol.

[Carole Hanson]

I think the Turf Sprinter gods hate me That's ok, the Turf Router ones are very generous so I'll take it

[Ali Hedgestone]

Hypo mates only look at how the stallion and the mare pair together. It doesn't take into account the pedigree influence. So like Laura, it's a better indication to me of stallion quality or in the rare case a way of picking which stallion might have a better edge with a really nice mare.

[Louise Bayou]

See there is this old thing called the random slide and she can be one cruel you know what! That is what people (including myself!) always seem to forget about when we get a nice hypo.

[Robert Forston]

See there is this old thing called the random slide and she can be one cruel you know what! That is what people (including myself!) always seem to forget about when we get a nice hypo.

I think the truth lies somewhere between this comment and the original post. Random slides are important in the game but if we are wanted to spend real life cash to hypo they should have a little more bearing on results than they currently do. I'm not going to pretend I know the answer to this but I see both sides of hypo's and slides being important but I lean towards if spending real money then it should have more of a realistic view of what to expect.

[Lee Tuttle]

8 A+
4 freaks
3 allowance(-2 level slide)
1 productive(-3 level slide)
those were just standardbred and mixer crap

Totals
36 foals that were A- to A+ hypo
4 freak (50% of the A+) (11% of the entire group)
5 stakes (14%)
11 allowance (31%)
10 productive (28%)
5 solid (14%)
1 claimer (3%)

68 foals that were B- to B+ on flat or A- to A on steeplechaser
21 allowance
16 productive
7 solid
24claimers
*10 to 12 of that group are steeplechasers so I'm hoping for an improvement when they jump train.

I bred a few more as colts with 1 dollar mares to bottom priced stallies so I could breed fillies. These all came out as different career, which was expected. They'll go to AJ along with a bunch of the prod to claim junk.

[Robert Forston]

8 A+
4 freaks
3 allowance(2 level slide)
1 productive(3 level slide)
those were just standardbred and mixer crap

now my (A) hypos were just a kiss of death.
I had 4 thoro DR A hypos that ranged from claimer to productive.(3 to 5 level slides)
The A on the mixers wasn't much better.

I had a few(5-10?) A- hypos. 3 stakes out of those. The rest claimer to allowance(0 to 3 level slide)


But the A hypos were brutal.

Lee this is a very good post and a different way to look at the slides. I like the way you put this together.

[Ronnie Dee]

...and hey I hear ya about SYM. I have seven A or A- this year and nothing better than alw. Two years in a row now. I swear his teaser is covering my mares. Can we get some SIM DNA testing??

Based on her hypos and what others are doing with her full-sisters, Magic Candles is a turf miler. She is a star mare but her hypo with SYM was only a B. Her yearling by SYM is an allowance galloper. Her 2 other offspring by turf milers are each claimer gallopers.

Note: when I looked up her sire, Anabaa, it said turf sprinter.

[Michael Looker]

Hypo mates only look at how the stallion and the mare pair together. It doesn't take into account the pedigree influence. So like Laura, it's a better indication to me of stallion quality or in the rare case a way of picking which stallion might have a better edge with a really nice mare.

On an Ask Em Anything with Scott, Em said the exact opposite. I can't tell you exactly when it was, but I last saved the document where I wrote down the notes on October 2nd of 2015. So that's a starting point if anyone wants to go hunting.

The note I have, which may not be verbatim, is:

"Nicking is how the family tree, sire and dam, cross with sire and dam of the stallion you’re nicking with."

This gels with a more common quote from Em, seen in the Edge etc., where she says "So and so nicks poorly because he has a weird pedigree".

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That said, I use nicks mainly as a way to identify the best stallions and mares, since the best stallion will nick better than an average one with all mares, and the best mares will nick better than an average mare with all stallions.

I'm the opposite of Laura, in that I'd like to see MORE definition/clarity of difference in nicks. I'd like "dirt router x dirt router" to give a range of grades from A+ to D, instead of an A- to every stallion except the top half-dozen who are A. Though that's for selfish reasons more than anything; I'm rubbish at breeding and just haven't been able to get any better at it, so "just breed the best nick you can find" would make life easier for me.

It would take away an advantage from people who are smarter or harder-working than me, so I can't see it happening. It would kinda ruin the game for me if it was that easy too, so maybe I should be careful what I wish for. Although, if nicks made breeding that much easier then you at least would still have people spending GPs on them, as opposed to forum threads about how they're a waste of money.

[Gwayne's World]

Anyone ever breed a FREAK without the mare winning a Grade I or II race?

[Laura Smith]

Cat Named Boots comes to mind.