I’m a slow learner, but I do learn.

I woke up feeling inspired today, so I’m going to pour some nonsense out onto the pages to hopefully educate, inspire and amuse the masses. 

It was March 2015, and I had some downtime. I decided to do a little research on the crop of 3yo runners going into some of the Kentucky Derby prep races. I found my way to Horseracing and saw this banner ad about breeding and racing your own horses online. So down the Mike Wallace rabbit hole I went. I knew horse racing better than most and had been a fan of the sport for years, so naturally I thought I would both enjoy and do well in a game like this. 

I started my stable, got my gaggle of nags that you get day one, and started reading everything I could in the help section. Then I watched all the Youtube videos about how to breed horses. I wanted to make sure I had all my bases covered before I really got into playing the game. I knew all about racing and the history of American racing for the past 40 years or so. What I knew very little about was pedigrees and what stallions were good, which were bad, what each one brought to the table, and I really knew nothing about racing on grass. 

I bred a couple horses based on horses that I knew from days past. I think the first horse I bred was by Colonial Affair. Yeah that’s how clueless I was about pedigree. I bred Colonial Affair and expected a decent runner, well it was awful. So I quickly realized I didn’t know what I was doing. I set out to learn as much as I could about key stallions and what they were good at. In the meantime I started claiming some horses on the cheap and buying a few in auction and breeding them. I fired up the ole credit card and bought some credits, so I could breed several horses with at least middle of the road pedigrees. I was scratch breeding some pretty cheap but solid older backends and having mixed success. I knew the most about California racing growing up, so many of my early breeding was focused around California horses, or horses that were standing in California that I was familiar with. One of my early scratch bred success stories was a horse I named Vendetta Mesa. This was a filly that was Sky Mesa x Pleasant Colony x Rubiano. I was impatient in those days, so I ran her in a hot race which she won by daylight going a blazing fast 56 speed figure on April 10th, 2015, I immediately wheeled her back around into a stakes race on April 25th which she also won with a speed figure of 75 coming from off the pace. Her next start was in a grade 2 race that she finished 7th in, and her 4th start was a close second in another listed stakes race. So obviously I had it all figured out and knew what I was doing right? Clearly I could just breed middle of the road stuff and be successful. Around this same time I bred my first hemare. The hemare was Tiznow x Deputy Minister and I did not pay a whole lot for him in auction. Since I was cheap and value minded I bred him to Bluegrass Cat. This horse would go on to be one of my first graded winners. 

2016 rolled around and I was breeding like a mayfly with a day left to live. I bred more and more cheap stuff and unfortunately a couple of those cheap horses won graded races. So here I was, I had graded winning 2 year olds and I had finished 2nd in Equinics. Everything was perfect and it was just a matter of time before I was going to dominate the game. 

Early success can breed arrogance or delusion or both. I was convinced that I could get away with breeding cheaper stock and still get winners. I was winning the occasional listed stakes and had picked up graded wins in the first 18 months. I had some fast horses that struggled when they would step up in class and it frustrated the hell out of me. I’d ask folks in chat for help and they’d tell me my pedigree wasn’t up to snuff and that is why I was struggling to win the higher rated races. I joined a residency and was getting my butt kicked in residency competitions, members would needle me a bit about my cheap horses. It was all in good fun but I still wasn’t listening. I was being cheap, I could buy credits for the game and breed 10-20 horses for the price of one blueblood and it did not appeal to me at the time. I was stubborn and by this time I really felt like I knew pedigrees better than most of the players in the game. I had done hours and hours of research on the topic and felt like I knew enough to get away with my cheap stock. I had 350+ horses by this time. My win/ITM rates were in the 18%/38% range. 

2017 was not to be as kind. Those blazing fast 2 year olds were exactly that, they couldn’t with a potato sack race after October. My 3 year olds had turned 4 and they were nothing special. I was holding on to horses too long that weren’t any good, and was afraid to let them go. I was becoming disillusioned with the game. The year just kind of dragged along, I wasn’t winning races and I had no good prospects going forward. The end of the year was nearing and I decided to make a change. I used some open mares late in the year and bred to good stock, and I also breed some scratchbred horses with less suspect pedigree. I was going to at least have a few with good pedigrees to run and see if I was really fed up and finished with the game. One of these late in the year horses that I bred won a residency race in a romp. I mean she destroyed a field of bright yellow bluebloods with ease. This was the first time I had won a residency race against open breedings that was not restricted in any way. This horse encouraged me to start changing my ways a bit. Sure I had bred a blueblood here and there before and when they don’t turn out to be any good it’s a tough pill to swallow knowing you spent a good amount of credits or worked hard to earn breeding points only to see them pissed away on a pretty looking lawn ornament of a horse. What changed my mind though was that I had bred several with better pedigrees and the law of averages will tell you that if you go to the well enough times you will find success. This little turf filly by the way was named Trash Panda, and she is now an Eclipse Award winner and has started her 5 year old campaign to repeat that award if she is able. 

This success convinced me to breed some more horses with top shelf pedigrees and I was rewarded in 2019 with that Eclipse award and 12 graded wins. The most I had in years past was 3 graded wins in 2016. So obviously some of the changes I made were paying off. I was also learning to let go of horses that were not performing. That stable of 350+ horses was dwindling fast. By the beginning of 2020 I was actually down to 150 horses from my peak. My 2020 win/ITM rate is currently around 30% winners and 65% in the money. Cutting out the horses that don’t win races really improves your chances. It’s something that took me a long time to learn but after you waste 10 starts on horses that run just good enough to be frustrating and don’t win you finally will get fed up enough to cut them loose. 

So to summarize, I’ve been playing this great game for 5 years now. I’ve learned way more about the game and about horse racing in general than I ever thought I would. I’ve learned that pedigree really does matter. Yes we all have fun winning with horses of questionable pedigree and there are several examples of those types in the game. The really elite and consistent horses though are the bluebloods and if you want to increase your chances of winning the big races you have to go big in the shed. Yes that often does require you to fire up the credit card and buy credits. People have mixed feelings about that, but the spenders are the ones that pay to keep the game going for everybody. I spend my fair share, I won’t claim otherwise. Some will think it’s a stupid way to spend it, but you know what, it’s my money. Some people play golf, I play pixel ponies, we all have our thing. In the end I have learned that there are no shortcuts to knowledge of pedigree, you’re not going to play the “value” game and win at the highest levels, and you have to learn to let go of dead weight. All that only matters though if you like to win, and I do. I want to win the graded races, listed stakes, allowance races do not excite me at all. I don’t get fired up over a big speed figure in an allowance race beyond hoping it turns into a graded winner. That’s the way I play the game, right or wrong. I say in chat all the time that a 3 win horse is either a stakes horse or it is a claimer, and I mean it. There’s exceptions for local bred horses and horses you haven’t quite figured out yet but really 3 wins you need to be winning stakes and graded or be in claimers just like horses in the real world. Again, that is how I choose to play the game, others enjoy the claiming game, some like to hot race, some are just here to socialize and enjoy their few stables of horses. Play your way and enjoy. 

I’ve had a range of feelings about this game in the past 5 years, from elation to heart crushing disappointment but honestly it really is a great game. It’s not perfect, nothing ever is, but this goofy game of pixel ponies really does bring enjoyment into my life, and so do the people I have met along the way while playing it. 

Enjoy, stay safe, and don’t despair. This too shall pass.