How To Do Well In The Sim (written by Taffy)

Tips and tricks to doing your best

I have seen a lot of people expressing frustration on the sim game. So I will let you know about me. I started playing in august of 1998 long time ago now 12 years. I sucked. I mean bad, 5% win maybe in my best stable. I didn’t get a win for a long time. It was not unusual to break 100 starts without a win. I had around 30 stables. I was bad at claiming and there was no breeding. What changed the game around for me was the breeding. I bred lots of bargain horses, and ended up with stakes winners. Now before you go all postal on me I realize that is a shocker today. I can’t breed half as nice of horses for that cheap. But you can breed and get decent claimers.

CLAIMS

One of my first best horses one was a claim for $2k. Summer Gene ended up ranked as a 2-year-old and graded placed. The Gourmet was a $2.5k claim that earned two grade 2 wins. Again, hard to do these days but not impossible, you just have to get lucky.

So today in the sim what does it take to win? Do I have to buy credits, do I have to spend hours on the game? The nice thing about this game is time in it does pay off. The more time you spend looking at horses and searching claims the more you see what you might have missed. This horse has Theatrical in it and has only ever started on dirt. I should claim him and try turf.   You get the horse and it wins next time out in an allowance. It is not always so simple. But it happens. Auction is another way to get some horses. If you have cash at all you can pick up decent claimers or horses with only one surfaced tried for cheap.

BARGAINS

Breeding doesn’t have to be expensive. You can breed bargain breeds and fill the stables with them. Figure if one wins first time out you get up to 50 points back. That covers what you paid and maybe more. Toss the crap after you try both surfaces, and have realistic expectations if it’s a 25 breeding point horse, run it in a claimer first time out. Put it where it belongs.

I have increased my weekly win percentage. I have been tracking it for almost 20 weeks. I wanted to keep track of my win percentage as I started hunting for races not just putting a horse in.

 

LOOK FOR EASY RACES

Now you can see I started looking for races to put my horse on week 4344.   I used RAFI (see below for instructions) and opened every race that met the distance and surface and age qualifications. Sometimes the easiest race is actually an open allowance race or a stakes race. I would have to say of those 4 stakes wins, two were by the same horse that I ran the first time because it was an easy 4 horse stake I lucked out in finding. He won it. I figured he would get third. Then he won the next one. I was shocked but suddenly I had a stakes horse. The third win was from a horse who I knew liked longer and had not really shown much I again found an easy stakes race and entered.   Pick weeks with lots of stakes races, generally that means fewer horses in each race. On Wednesday before entries close, I spend time looking to see if there are easy races. That was what caused the jump in win and ITM percentages.   The last stakes win was an allowance horse I liked and showed off in the chat room. Desperado took one look and said try stakes; I had considered but did not think it was good enough. The horse won easy.

Look ahead, plan for which race you want to put your horse in, or a week with lots of races that meet his qualifications. If you do this you’re not aiming for a week and compromising by running in the wrong race. If you get the right race but there is only one it will be loaded with horses. Lots of races often equal a smaller fields and easy pickings if you want to go through and look for easy spots. This does take time. I look for races with no horses or small fields with “crappier than my horse” fields. Match your horse’s speeds to the competition. Do not run a horse running 70’s in a field with horses running 80’s not likely to win. Unless he has only a few starts, place your horse where it has a chance.

FIND YOUR HOT SIRES

The graded win I have is from a Graeme Hall baby. Now if you go look at that horses stats, he produces claimers, but I for some reason have lots of luck with him.   Finding out what sires get along with you can help. High Chaparral and Indian Charlie are hot sires for me. I created a list in Excel. I go through my horses on a regular basis when a sire pops up a lot I add him to my hot sire list. If I want to breed a horse I look there. You still have to branch out and try new sires but the old fall backs are good too.

LOCAL BREDS ARE YOUR FRIEND

Take advantage of local bred races, they are there. If you have a crappy stakes horse with a (NE) tag, look for the local bred races.

RAFI

Click on the stable page click rafi. You give it your selections and it will show all races matching your horse’s restrictions. Say your horse has 2 wins. It will only show 3l allowances and up. So you know the horse is qualified. As you look you can search ahead 4 weeks and pick a week when there is a LB race you want to run in. set that horses training for that week. I like to search ahead for all my horses but for local breeds because there are so few races it is important.

The cool thing about local breeds is a lot of time people do not want to bother. I would try to stay with 3 year old and up but if you search claims and auctions for horses that have unusual Local Bred tags and are struggling against non local breeds they may do very well. Look at the local bred races running and compare I have 3 year olds hitting the board frequently in LB claiming races with 60-70 speeds. They are getting tougher as there are not a lot of races and people are figuring out that there a good way to keep a crap horse running and profitable.

WEEKS BETWEEN RACES

2 year olds need about 5-7 weeks between starts; some people say longer, some shorter. Also, I specifically used to have lots of nicer two year olds and would run them 8 times at 2. First, they were cheap and unlikely to be better during their 2nd year. Second, they were likely to be peaking as 2yos. Now I have started after 5 starts the baby gets 8-10 week break. This I find keeps the horse from getting burned out too fast. Remember there is a wear on your horse for every start. Pushing horses leads to injuries.

3 year olds I run about every 4-5 weeks. If he comes back needs rest he gets 7. Lay off 8-10. Injured gets 10 weeks rest. Don’t over run your horses; it never bodes well for them lasting.

BE A PART OF THE COMMUNITY

The last trick I have is being a part of the community. Going in to the chat room and asking for help, and commenting on the message board, can be helpful. People post all the time asking for breeding advice and help. We like to help, and answer questions. This is a good way to gain knowledge from players who have been playing for years.   We are around and if you are really suffering ask for a stable review on the new player or main board forums. We offer the help to those that need it, if you are embarrassed to ask buck up and realize we all started out knowing nothing and getting no wins. I had no clue not to run my claimer in an allowance because I didn’t know. I gave away horses with no starts on one surface because I didn’t know the breeding suggested otherwise. I have had horses claimed because they ran like crap only to go to a new trainer who tried a different distance or surface and they started winning. It happens a lot even now, but after 12 years of playing it happens less frequently. I ask advice and I get help; the best players do. It’s how they learn enough to start doing it on their own. And even then people say; hey have you tried that one on turf.

Advice does not always work, but it tells you something. It is worth claiming the horse because there is a chance he could do better with different conditions. Chance he could bomb but then you dump and auction and cut the loss. See what others claim, there are players out there with years of experience, the help is there if you ask

Also by sitting in the chat people post their horses they claimed and won first time out for them or a new horse they bred and how it ran. This experience of watching actually gives you so much more because you can see what others are doing to succeed.

Join a residency, lots of residencies are smaller communities and they want to help their members do well. There are tons of options and if you want to learn more about a residency ask on the message board or in the chat. Again there are people in there who can help.

Now I am not guaranteeing graded wins, I am still working on getting that myself. I do buy credits, I write articles, and use them to buy credits. I breed decent horses by claiming crap horses with nice bloodlines and using cheap HOT sires and I get good horses. There are ways to spend less and still do well. But the game takes time you need to learn the sire’s stats so that you can make good decisions on the breeding. (See my other articles).

TIPS

• Get advice from other players, fresh eyes always see better
• Plan ahead for weeks where your horse has lots of options or the specific local bred race you want is
• Breeding cheap does work initially; eventually you can save and spend a bit more.   Just remember to run at the level you think the horse is at breeding wise. If you do not know or are not sure ask.
• Residencies are there to help their players who need it.
• Credits are very helpful but not necessary for stakes winners.
• Those elite graded races, they are elite for a reason there are those people who are at the top and repeat. Get their advice, they obviously have some trick
• Realize if you work hard and the stable still sucks, some stables’ horses run better than others. Dump the crap stables.   Look at my RASH stable: 7% win and everything, almost everything I put in there sucks.   I will dump it soon. And they can change year to year I have noticed.
• I spend a lot of time on this game, unemployed currently. I know others don’t have that much time to spend. There are tricks, people e-mail claiming files that have that week’s claims and you can sort them easier than by looking through by hand. Or looking for empty races on Yoss’s site though updated infrequently does show what races have less horses.   There are lots of tools and tricks ask other players what they do. The more effort you put in to learning about the game and learning how to use it the better you will do.