ChuckRock: BIG Stable For the Love of the Game!
This article continues a series where I have interviewed some of the biggest names in the game. You will recognize the names and hopefully like me will gain some insight into what it takes to have a lot of stables and turn them into a winning syndicate. They all have a unique perspective on the ins and outs of running the really big farms. Our next owner may not have quite the success as a lot of the big stables but has a real BIG time :
Some of you may not recognize the name of ChuckRock. He is certainly a fixture at Minnesota Downs and has been in the game a long time but hasn’t had the “Headline Screaming” success that some have. On the other hand, as you read this interview I think you will find as I did that his success is measured in his fun and enjoyment of the game and it that he may be one of the the most successful owners we have. Like many of us, it is amazing how much our lives are wrapped around this game every week. With that in mind I turn the interview over to one of our most enjoyable owners…ChuckRock:
I found the sim one night while searching for horse racing computer games.I signed up quickly but was highly disappointed that I couldn’t use the stable for a few days. I am not quite sure how long it took for me to actually run races, as I know I didn’t log in to the account right away, but instead stumbled back one night sometime later. My first week of races was 1950 with my cdonofri stable. My flagship stable, chuckrock, didn’t debut until three weeks later in 1971. My first win came in week 1978 with CHARGER MAMA, who found a weak field in the slop. By 1992 I had four stables. I think the initial motivation to open more than one was to make sure that I had runners every week. Looking back through my stable stats, it appears I took about 3 months off not long afterwards. I don’t even recall why I did so, but I know that I’ve never missed more than a week since returning.
I guess I had four stables almost from the beginning and they have gradually grown in number over the years, with my newest stable only having 16 races. I have 44 now. I have told myself I would never go over 50 stables, so there is still a little bit of room for growth. It is usually when I don’t have enough space in existing stables to breed what I want that I wind up opening a new one, although this latest one I opened because Ii wanted a stable named after the town I will be moving to in a few months, Patchogue. .
Currently, I live in New York City, Queens to be specific, although a permanent move to Suffolk County Long Island is coming in the next few months. I have so many horses that they run all over the world. I usually try and spread horses out from each other so they don’t run against one another as much. I guess I tend to run close to Minnesota and Puerto Rico more than others because of my membership in Minnesota Downs and my jockey, C. Donofrio in Puerto Rico.
When it comes to managing my stables, entering horses always seems like a daunting task, but I wouldn’t say overwhelming. I have always wanted to enter horses later in the week so that I can look at the fields, but I usually wind up entering them on Sunday night because that is the one night of the week that I know I have the time. I am curious as to how this will change once I move and am living with my girlfriend. Although she knows that I play this game, she definitely doesn’t know the extent and she doesn’t realize how much of my time it takes!
I continually open new Stables. If you sort my stables by amount of races, you notice that I don’t have more than approximately 20 races between any two stables, indicating that I usually open the next one before each gets out of that probation stage. This is true throughout, except between stable #43, maine, and stable #44 Patchogue. where there is a 75 race gap. Maybe I am finally slowing down now!
As I mentioned before, I wouldn’t know how to even venture a guess as to how much time I spend each week on the game. Basically any night that I am home I am on my computer and watching TV at the same time. Probably three quarters of my online time is spent doing something Sim related. Sunday night entries usually take a good 3-4 hours, depending on the week. I check in on the forum and the Minny forum several times a day at work unless i am having a really busy day.
I currently have 421 horses in the 440 stalls and that is actually a bit high as I usually like to keep more empties than that, but I have been claiming a little more than I usually do recently. I find training horses to be very easy, especially now that I have the train function in the all stables link. I am starting to think very recently that I don’t run my horses enough giving them too much rest in between races. I used to only race a horse if they was sharp and trained for a specific week with rare exceptions. I have noticed lately, partly due to some tbgifted forum posts and partly just from a conscious effort to see if a different method works, that this may not be the best way to do things. I have started running every non-2 year old early sharp If I can find a good race for them. I also am contemplating running ready to go horses on their train for week, though I haven’t committed to doing that just yet. I am also considering shortening my 4 year old training cycles by a week, though this will mean that entries will take longer each week. I LOVED Yoss’ Jockey Tool, and truly miss it. I no longer am able to assign jockies for all of my horses. We have the Minnesota Jockey Guild which I used to support in ernest, but these days its almost only by accident that i get a Minny jock. I still set them for my Stakes horses and any of my “favorites”. This is an area that I need improvement. I usually have the same couple of jockies at each track because it is one less variable to consider when reviewing how a horse has done.
When it comes to breeding, I do lots of two year olds, I use retired mares, credits etc. Breeding is by far my favorite part of the game. I once went through a phase where I wanted to breed to every 2005 freshman sire (now third year sires) I accomplished that goal, but when Mike added even more to that year at the turn of 2007, I gave up. It was a monumental undertaking. It turned out that it started while they were two year olds in 2005 and didn’t finish until the end of the 3 year old breeding season. I have very lousy mares. My best are only at an E level and are all owned by many others jointly. I try and breed to some of them each year, no matter what the grade, but I haven’t had tremendous success that way. I like using the owned by ‘none’ mares and even use one or two unused owned mares after October each year. I have had much better success with this method. I certainly do a ton of scratch breeds though, definitely the bulk of my breeds are scratch. I have used credits often. Once in a while I will do the Sunday Night click-game at the opening of breeding, but not very often. I find that I am impatient and that I don’t like to wait until Saturday to do a breeding, and thus many times I won’t have enough BP to do a breeding that I want so I just use credits. I tend to be a Tues/Wed breeder for the most part. I would guess if I had to pinpoint a time period,. I would say 98% of my breeds are spur of the moment. It is rare that I actually will plan something out very long. I like to look at a sire’s Dosage Index on pedigreequery.com and use combos with similar numbers, but sometimes I am even too spur of the moment to do that!
My Saturday’s revolve around the races whenever possible. I usually will watch about 75% of my races as well as any key races that happen in Minnesota. I used to use Coker’s Viewer, but I had a computer crash a few months ago and haven’t gotten around to reinstalling it yet. Quite frankly I have grown to enjoy the basic viewer much more than I used to. I like to go to my local bagel shop around 11 on Saturday morning and get breakfast to bring home and eat while I watch.The rare weekends that I have events that must be attended at race time absolutely drive me crazy. Last winter I was highly disappointed when I discovered that I couldn’t log into my stable or watch races from my cell phone when I was waiting in the Buffalo Airport after going to watch the Bills for a weekend.
I guess I would have to say that my biggest challenge is winning races. I have a paltry 8% lifetime winning percentage. This has been climbing in recent months as I think my current year is at like 9.5%. I can’t plan too far ahead for many of my horses because of the abundance of work it takes to just get a horse entered each week. This probably hurts in knowing exactly which week to train a horse for. I often just pick the best race (or close enough race) for a horse rather than running a horse in its ideal conditions. I have never had a horse that was good enough to get into the big races, and I imagine if I ever get one that is that I would map out the future as much as possible.
I definitely know my biggest moment to date in the game. I literally screamed when I got my first (and only) Graded win. I enjoy any win truthfully, but I always get even more of a kick out a horse that I bred when it wins.
The only tool that I use regularly is the Super Sim Searcher. I have tried most of the others but just didn’t see the benefit from their use. I loved the jockey tool before it disappeared. Joining Minnesota Downs was one of the best things I did in the sim. It brings a sense of community to the Sim for me that wasn’t there before I joined. I owe much of my Sim enjoyment to Johnno and now Theo as well as the rest of the ragtag group we have assembled over there
I kind of doubt that anyone out there is really interested in how I do things, considering that I kinda stink at this game. I sure do have a pile of fun though! LOL
Isn’t it amazing how this game affects our daily lives? I recently was entering horses near a relative who asked me what I was doing. When I explained, he asked me if that was the same game that I had been playing for several years. When I replied yes, I realized that there wasn’t even one other Computer game or Fantasy Sport that I had continually played for even a fraction of that time. The others seem to come and go but the way that the Sim is set up, you are constantly making decisions that will affect your stables months and years down the line. How many of us name horses after family and friends and life events? That is the true magnetic draw of this game. It is the folks that “get” that point that truly enjoy the game and the long term friendships that they develop. Not many “get it” better than ChuckRock, a true friend of the game.
Email your comments to pazjazz.btb@gmail.com I love to hear from you!
