When to drop a Horse

When to drop ahorse?

Ok, we all have come to a point, where we didn’t have any idea, what to do with a certain horse, you tried him sprinting, routing and even the obvious 16f stamina try, switched surfaces, but nothing worked. At that point, there are two chances, keep on running the horse and pray, or drop it into an auction.

For some horses it may not even be that easy, for example, if you have a homebred, you invested 1000 BP or even more, and the horse simply can’t win an MSW, the question may be, wait till you can use it as a mare or hemare, or go with it in an MCL, and give someone a shot at your royal bred.

Those questions may never be answered the right way, there will always be two opinions, and both may be right to a certain extend.

Look at the easy things first, those new stable owners likely have gotten 5 original horses out of the horse pool, that can hardly get into the money, not even thinking about a win, once you hit the 20 race mark for your stable, you wanna get rid of all the rubbish, to me it’s simple, if a horse hasn’t scored a Top 3 finish in his last 3 races, and has shown no signs of improvement, plus has been tried on all combinations of distance and surface, go give him in the auction, let me show you two examples:

http://www.simulatedsports.net/hr/runtime/prettyhorse.asp?hossnum=19615

http://www.simulatedsports.net/hr/runtime/prettyhorse.asp?hossnum=19411

Both horses I owned with the huberteng stable, and they were original horses given, as you can see they got no BP in 3 starts, and everything was tested, so i dropped them, well one was even bought for a dollar in the auction.

http://www.simulatedsports.net/hr/runtime/prettyhorse.asp?hossnum=48141

The decision here was not so easy, the horse won it’s MCL first time out for me, but after that he couldn’t confirm that, and it looked like he went no where, I dropped him to a 5K NW2L level, and he still couldn’t score, well some may have tried him at 2K level, but from my point of view, there is not much class difference between 2k and 5k Claimers.

And overall, every stable space in a claimer stable is about BP, so if a horse can’t get it done, get rid of him, either via the auction, or by dropping him to the lowest level of claimers possible, however remember, if you claimed or bought a horse, there is a claim penalty, so before not being able to gain points because of an expansive buy, better use the auction.

The much difficult choice is, when to get rid of your homebred horse, that you bought for all mighty worthy BP. Forst of all, your heart is into it, second, you somehow want to get your investments back, for example, if you have a mare, she still could be good for breeding, as a royal pedigree still could produce in the barn, if it couldn’t on the track.

As I have no experience with it yet, let me pick up a case discussed on the main message board this week:

http://derbyfever.com/hr/runtime/prettyhorse.asp?hossnum=88742

This nice Rock of Gibraltar Colt was dropped into an MCL as an early 3yo, well, the question everyone should ask themself, how would I have acted, on the one hand, there is a horse not having won a race in 10 tries, on the other hand, he has shown improvement, from the upper 60s, to the mid-80s, so as a early 3yo, there is room to improve, what perhaps suggested claimers was the inability to get the 11f, and the 83 over 9f, 3 speed points lower than his previuos best. But, what you have to say, he came second so often, it was just a question of time until he won, and well, even at 100 K this horse wasn’t sure of being claimed by someone spotting something. The one who claimed it brought the horse right back at ALW level, and it took him 4 races to break the magic 100, and from then on go for a great career, which still has lots of potential left.

I don’t want to point fingers, and it’s tough to give general advice, but from my point of view, if you can afford it BP wise, a homebred should never run in a pure Claimer stable, take your time with those horses, and give them the time to mature, especially, if they are longer distance or expected to be late bloomers.

A stable which is created just for 2yo homebreds, and then those transfered into it is ideal, so you can go for the BP with your other stables, and give those babies time, even if they take till the age of 4 to produce.

Thats it for this week, more Sim magic will return in three weeks, I’m off to the Magic Island of Ibiza for two weeks of partying J