Hard Playing or Dirty Tactics? Trying to steal a Grade/Group 1.
As an owner of real racehorses, I’m delivered by email a list of horses nominated for a race before acceptances, and quite often you will see a trainer nominating many horses in a race to scare away the competition, or make the field size smaller, in order to win.
So, I had the thought would this work well in the sim? What would the reaction to this be in the sim? Is it hard playing? or dirty tactics? Has it been done before? Are you for it or are you against it? I’m not one to shy away from controversy and while some of the feedback in the forum isn’t positive, but at least it gets tongues wagging.
The Plan: I don’t have many good staying turf horses capable of running derby races this year, I thought I found a possible contender in URC Shin Kicker as he managed to run a nice 101 over 9.5F (1st of April) in an alw2L although I’m not sure he would run 12F.
The problem is he only has 1 entry point, so looking at the derby races I see the Derby De English and the Adelaide Derby run in the same week, knowing all of the top horses would race in the Derby de English, the race had to be the Adelaide Derby.
Preparation: One of the secrets to my success has been the hot race prep, the idea is to remove travel factor by running a hot race at the track I intend my horse to race at next so on the 13th of April, I put Shin Kicker in a hot race on the Queensland track in preparation for the Adelaide Derby (FYI Adelaide is in South Australia not Queensland). This gives the horse about a 6-week break going into the race. But Hot races don’t give entry points.
Execution: How do I get a run? I went through all of my 3yo turf horses that had entry points in the long turf division and put them in the entries for the race with the intention to scratch before 30 min before the cut off time. Every week I would keep adding horses, I have no idea how a horse winning 4.5F races gets points in the long Division but anyway I added it as well.
I was surprised that another horse also with 1 entry point got into the nominations higher than Shin Kicker, Shin Kicker had a better, Win% ITM% had earned more money and had been entered before the other horse, so it beats me how it got in before mine (if anybody can shed some light on this it would be appreciated).
Once a lot of the higher ranked horses were entered Shin kicker was about 17th in the order of entry, some other horses may have been scared off because the entry points may have been too high, but there were 3 or 4 other horses that had been scratched as a result of not being able to get a run. Apologies to dixiedotco, rwhisper and whoever else had been scratched, it would defeat the purpose of my experiment and article if I had told you what was going on
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So, after scratching the horses I had put in we are left with a field of just 9 horses for the Adelaide Derby. Will Shin kicker win? it is hard to say, I doubt he will run the trip but will give it a shot anyway.
Aftermath: Before I get to rules and etiquette etc. I will be interested to see how this will affect the 8 horses I scratched, Once entering the race the horse had been trained for this week so now having to retrain a lot of them for other weeks, will it have an effect on performance? I did put one of them in a hot race as if I was doing a hot race prep as normal, a couple I put in other races while others I have trained for a different week.
The game itself is not entirely realistic to me because in Australia horses run every 2 weeks, they then have spells for 3 months or more, they have races starting at 6 or 7 furlongs to start a prep and get further out in distance as they go along. While in the sim horses normally take 4 or 5 weeks or more depending on the level of race before you can race them, and normally they always run at the same distances. But I understand why the game is this way as it needs a balance, you would have too many great horses, too many BP’s etc
As an example, I look at bluegrass derby winner Subtly Stated it ran a 110sp in the derby and 2 weeks later an 89 in the middle jewel. A real horse wouldn’t have that big a drop off unless it got injured.
So, in a game that we crave to be more like real life is it so wrong that a tactic that is used in real life be shunned upon? Is it against sim etiquette? Is there sim etiquette or unwritten rules? Is it good outside the box thinking? Would you have done it, if you had the chance? Personally, I think if I didn’t enter so many horses, I doubt Shin Kicker would have got a run, if you think about it, with 4 horses being scratched plus the 8 other runners it would have only taken 2 more entries for Shin kicker to be taken out of the race.
Personally I don’t have a massive problem with it, because it could only work on very rare occasions, for example I doubt it would be very affective unless there were multiple big races in the same week, and I don’t see it working with older horses or even 2yo’s. unless it was in a lower tier graded race.
Anyway If you have an opinion by all means post below, just keep it clean.
Personally I would say this tactic in terms of simulated racing isn’t in the spirit of the game.
Sure maybe 1 horse a bit sneaky hard to prove fair game. But multiple to the extent of 6-8 not a fan.
Ha , 8 horses! I applaud the effort. I’ve done this before, just not to that extent. Probably not the most kosher of things, but certainly not against the rules.
Why didn’t you just race your other horses also?
They couldn’t have been much worse than the one you did race.
In another sim I played that is no longer in existence, to avoid this issue they had set in place a “Late Scratch” system. If you were willing to pay the price and penalty only then could you scratch your horse from the race entered within so many days/hours prior to the race. Thus I agree with deyoto, that what was done “isn’t in the spirit of the game”. But I also agree with magoo2912 in some of the comments and examples he gave that this sim is not close to being realistic to real life racing, especially when it come to how often Maiden, Claimers and Allowance horses can safely run and the consistency in speed ratings of which our sim horses run. The consistency issue, I have seen concerns by many other players in the past that feel it should be looked at and addressed.
I’ll let you all debate the ethics of went went down and stick to what I know to be correct (or at least believe to be), if two horses have the same number of entry points the tiebreaker for order of preference is the AVERAGE SIM$ EARNED PER RACE
Also need to post from my master stable…..sigh…LOL
Master stable haha
I see no problem with it. At all. Bravo. At the end of the day the points system is limited at best, broken at worst. I see horses entering in some of the biggest races in the sim, especially early 3YO-only races, who earned points in one fluke race back in August keeping out some monster who is just hitting his growth curve. Unless the game is going to reward recent performance over a flat year for points earned, you do what you have to do. Good luck this weekend!
Ryan
I am going to have a long talk with Mike about this! We are going to get to the bottom of this once and for all.
The game is broken!!!!
The game is not broken, people in the game just look for ways to get an upper hand … too bad it is at the detriment of their morals.
Play is classy or arsey, the majority will rate you on the way you play the game!
But some people posting on here or on the board might need to take a look at themselves before jumping on the “Bash ‘Em Up” band wagon.
The game isn’t broken, the point system needs a tweek. Now I ask the question of tactics, if you were playing say a world of warcraft or some other game and you had Excalibur, would you not use it? Because you gained an advantage. I have received a lot of feedback, some negative, some positive, most somewhere in the middle. Taking away that I was not sure if the horse would run the distance, I thought it had a legit chance of winning. So how can I give it the best chance of winning, while making sure I got a run? There were also 3 horses in the race that had never run 100sp, do you have a go at trainers for putting in horses that have no chance? I’m at a disadvantage in the game, just because of where I live, do I complain, no. While it is great to get people talking some need to lighten up.
You’re not going to get out of this one mister! As of this moment, you are on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!
Shouldn’t we all be talking about the winner?
LOL .. you were the recipient of another player’s cheap shot Dan. But congrats (genuine).
What we will never know is if your runner was going to beat the 5 horses that missed their chance to compete due to the shenanigans.
If one of those horses runs a 110 at 12f NTO we can talk
Well, i Never posy anything Really havent for almost the entire length of the game I think i joined about 3 months after the very first release. But i feel this particular instance has brought about something on a broad, game wide subject. I say this with all due respect, (mostly) The sim is a FREAKING COMPUTER GAME GENERATED BY A BUNCH OF ZEROS AND ONES.
This isnt real racing where you garner fame and glory and Dollars. Some of you are spending REAL big bucks with zero chance of Real dollar return. WFT? Too much money in your account? anyway….. You garner good feelings about maybe doing small things, like breeding well or claiming well, spotting your horses well. But that the end of the day, ITS STILL an imperfect computer game generating COMPUTER (zeros and 1’s) decisions on Results. Good God people. Check your freaking egos at the door and try to have some fun with it, make some friends, World wide even, enjoy the competition, as i have done for 20 plus years.
Mike really does try (spending alot, and i mean ALOT) of real money to make it a smooth game with intelligent, non biased decisions on game play. He really does. I know this for a fact. So as the guy said in Stripes, lighten up Francis
Well done Dan. Best horse won.
Well done to Mikehustler for bringing some sanity.
Stoner’s I’m the guy that cheers the villan, because I don’t like normal, surely with some of the tiffs you have been in over the years, you can appreciate that.
I don’t mind playing the villan, as long as people are talking about the game.
I am just goofing around with you. You aren’t the first to do this by a long shot. Back when entries for regular races(non-stake races) didn’t split like they do now, there was a player from the great state of Texas that used this tactic on a regular basis in ALL race types.
A player doesn’t have to spend a lot of real life money to have any kind of decent success in the game. I have only spent more than 400 to 500 credits on any given sire share no more than three or four times in the twenty years I have been playing the game. All my Galileo’s, Frankel’s, Giant’s Causeway’s, Sea The Stars, etc have come from Breeders Points. Same thing with DS/DDS. I have never spent more than roughly 400 credits on either.
We need a like button
Not too old and not too young in the game either. Only reason I would do multiple entries in a Graded race if all the horses have a chance or do not have a better suitable race. I have never done multiple entries to scratch them off later but its not against the rules and don’t mind if they fix it for good reasons or leave it as it is.
As for the layoff time of horses, its a huge concern for everyone. I personally don’t know if a horse has been good enough to win both Derby and Preakness with those 2 weeks layoff. Its a huge ask unless it gets fixed. So far I was believing in the special horse that can do it.
This game is not broken, some horses get in on a fluke ok , like bourbonic this year didn’t get in the derby by winning a big race on a race he was not really meant to win come on its racing. Have to agree the ones that are bashing are just bashing, I think I’ve been here 7 years I’m sure there are more longer but I had my share of winning Grade 1 etc, I also had some real shit horses even after spending money LOL that’s the way it is. I understand everyone thinks they have the best horse and should win and should be in the biggest races but it’s a game and you get what you put in it.