How I Choose A Sire

1. Which sires seem to perform best for you? I have great luck with Graeme Hall but not very many other people can get a runner out of him.
2. Go to your horse and look up the sire’s dam’s sires stats. Which sire appears many times in the top few horses? (note: If your breeding for a good 2 year old look and see what is doing well for 2 year olds. If you want a good three year old look at the statistics for horses 3 and then up. That way you can see trends. )
3. Make sure that a sire that produced a good three year old last year can do it again this year. Generally I find that a sire doesn’t change a whole lot between his freshman and sophomore year at stud in the sim. But by the third year his babies are hitting the sales rings in real life and his stats could be different. So if the sire produced great last two years there is more risk breeding him his third year. Unless you know he has been doing great in the sales ring, they upped his stud fee etc.
4. Do not just use the sire stats on the site. If you have an idea for a good combination plug the sire id’s in to the retired horse database. This allows you to add that data, maybe the combo was only tried once a while ago and the horse was retired. He was a runner but no one tried it again. There is a good idea for a combo. 

I am now going to do an example. I have a horse who is an old Stakes horse who is Fusaichi Pegasus X Seattle Slew. The first thing I look at is what is in his pedigree; we have Seattle slew, Mr Prospector, and Danzig. So he covers the three things I like to balance in a pedigree. This makes the breeding harder because you have to either inbreed or breed to a more obscure sire. 

My initial thoughts are Storm Cat, Rahy, Dynaformer, and anything else that is not Northern Dancer, Mr. Prospector, or Seattle Slew lines. When I look at Fusaichi Pegasus statistics as a dam’s sire for 3 years old and up I see that he has crossed successfully with Dehere, Awesome Again, Pivotal, Montjeu, Giant’s Causeway, and Sky Mesa. I can eliminate some of these sires by being too closely bred. Some people do not care and breed anyways. I like to have none of the same sires present on the 3 sires shown. It happens though. At this point if I was looking to breed a bargain I would use http://www.racingwhisper.com/simfair/siresearch.asp
And look up the babies of these sires and see which ones fit your price range and have a dam’s sire that appeals to you such as Buckpasser or I like to try to get Nasrullah in the pedigree. Again this is generally related to how well you do with certain sires. 

For me this was a good horse and I am going to try to breed him as best as I can as he is a male and I only get one try. I like Giant’s Causeway because he has Storm Cat and Rahy. Rahy is by Blushing Groom which I have good luck with him. I also like the idea of Pivotal who would be no inbreeding but I have one baby by him and it is not running well so I am hesitant. I have two Dehere X Fusaichi Pegasus already one is good and one is not so good. I would like to move in a new direction. Sky Mesa has been doing very well but is not a top horse yet so I will pass. 

Dynaformer would also be a nice balance but he never showed up in the top ten. So I will check the retired horses and the active horse’s lists to see if that’s just a bad combo or not usually thought of. When I looked him up in active horses I only found one and he was a claimer. Then in the retired horses I found two again best is a claimer there for not a good combination. 

 
After looking at all of that I think I like Giant’s Causeway best. He has Blushing Groom which is a great influence. As well as Storm Cat which the Fusaichi Pegasus is a dirt sprinter fits in very well. 

Some of you will shake your head and disagree with my choice, everyone has their own methods. I like freshman sires but in this case I wanted to go with a proven sire that will enhance the qualities of my stakes horse. I just thought if a few players who breed well talk some about how they choose their sires, one it will help newer players learn some methods for picking their own sires. And two it will help everyone. I would love to see how other players choose a horse, which is why we always ask which sire you would choose. This is my method I hope it helps someone.