Sometimes it\u2019s fun to learn what\u2019s behind some of the screen names we see in the game. Folks who\u2019ve been around the game a while have great stories to tell and advice to give. This is the first in a series of BTB articles that will give them an opportunity to tell those tales.<\/p>\n
My first victim is Trotter<\/i>, who runs the Trotter1 Stables<\/i> empire (and I do mean empire \u2013 there are 26 stables under this master stable). Famous in springtime for his Derby Watch articles, Trotter<\/i> has been playing the Sim since September 2002. As a veteran of almost five years, he has seen tons of changes and has experienced plenty of ups and downs. When asked for a theme song, he named Traffic\u2019s \u201cWho Knows What Tomorrow May Bring,\u201d so you can just imagine that playing in the background as you leave.<\/p>\n
In real life, Trotter<\/i> goes by the name of Peter and lives on Long Island with his wife of 32 years. They have three children together. He works at JFK Airport as a Safety Specialist or possibly an FBI agent, depending upon whom you ask. His involvement with real-life racing is limited to watching and betting, though he says \u201cI have torn up enough tickets to have bought a horse or two in my lifetime.\u201d Among real-life racers he is particularly fond of Forego, saying \u201cthat horse was scary good.\u201d <\/p>\n
Trotter<\/i> came to racing as an elementary school kid, when his father took him to Aqueduct. He says, \u201cI could read a racing form long before I could read Green Eggs and Ham.\u201d He reminds us that back in those ancient days of yore, your sports game choices were along the lines of Strat-o-Matic Football (which is still completely awesome), \u201cBe a Manager\u201d or \u201cWin, Place, and Show.\u201d <\/p>\n
Trotter<\/i> was frustrated by the lack of good horseracing games. As the Internet developed, he began to hope for a good fantasy racing game. One day as he was surfing the DRF site, he came across an ad for Simulated Sports. \u201cI quickly dismissed it as way too complicated an undertaking at the time,\u201d he adds ruefully. But a few months later he was again surfing the DRF and again came across the Simulated Sports ad. This time he was more patient and it seemed less complicated. \u201cEither that,\u201d he says with a grin, \u201cor I was no desperate for fantasy horse racing action. From that point on, I have never missed a week.\u201d <\/p>\n
When he first entered the game he joined Barndog\u2019s now-defunct GSR residency. He found it to be very helpful to new players with lots of active contests. But eventually he found himself focusing too hard on winning the trainers\u2019 contests, \u201crunning my horses (on two weeks\u2019 rest, dropping down to low claiming tags etc) to try and win a trainers\u2019 title. I didn\u2019t particularly like running my horses in that fashion, so training contests lost their appeal to me.\u201d He spent some time in Johnno\u2019s Minnesota residency but eventually \u201cbegged my way into the [CR Racers] rez, or at least that\u2019s what I am told.\u201d His time in all these residencies overlapped somewhat, but his involvement in CR Racers \u201cescalated to the day-to-day operations of the rez.\u201d When Mike started giving credits for residency support, Trotter<\/i> put all of his stables in support of CR Racers. He is very supportive of the residency\u2019s structure, which has no trainer contests, but the players all \u201cbuy races for each other to race in for bragging rights.\u201d He has \u201ctoyed with the idea of opening up a reaz for just state-bred horses,\u201d believing that \u201cthis would be a great opportunity to employ some of the game\u2019s underused sires.\u201d In fact, he would love to have a residency take over Upper New York and have residency members create a condition book for ten races per week at that track. This would be a creative combination of residency action and the state-bred program he hopes Mike will one day implement. <\/p>\n
In addition to his activities in the CR Racers residency, Trotter<\/i> has been quite active as a BTB writer. Everyone who reads the BTB has seen his pithy previews of the spring classics in the Bluegrass Derby Watch. He also spent time as New Hampshire beat writer Dexter Broadhurst. His emphasis is now on specialty articles such as the Derby Watch and Eclipse Award articles. <\/p>\n
With such a long tenure in the Sim, Trotter<\/i> has seen a lot of changes. \u201cMy all time favorite change is NO MORE CLICK POINTS.\u201d Like many of us, Trotter<\/i> would log in many times a day to maximize his chances of getting a good jockey. Other additions during Trotter<\/i>\u2019s tenure have been the ability to breed retired mares, RODOTS, and RaFi, which \u201cmakes entry life easy.\u201d He is also a fan of the new Stakes Finder. <\/p>\n
When asked about his goals in the game, Trotter<\/i> goes for the honest route. \u201cThe fact is; I want to win. I strive to be the best player in the game. I hate to lose.\u201d He thinks his childhood training in reading the form has imprinted on him the importance of conditions, saying \u201cI rarely, if ever, race a horse of of conditions unless I am setting a horse up for a particular race.\u201d He has a harder time using jockey instructions effectively. He says that \u201cthere is a lot of trial and error involved and that usually translates into losing races until you get it right.\u201d <\/p>\n
This year Trotter<\/i> has had some of his best horses ever. Folks who frequent the chatroom have had an earful about WAKI NOTION<\/b> (67386), a superb six-year-old daughter of Miswaki who has won three of her last four graded races. Another high point was when MORPH THE CAT<\/b> received an Eclipse nomination and made it into the 2007 Bluegrass Derby field. The Derby itself wasn\u2019t such a high point, since the Cat Thief colt finished last. But Trotter<\/i> says, \u201cI tend to look ahead rather than dwell in the past.\u201d <\/p>\n
Those who know Trotter<\/i> are well aware that his favorite sire is Miswaki. But \u201cI have also always been partial to breeding along the Fappiano x In Reality nick. More recently he has been using Medaglia d\u2019Oro a fair amount. His favorite obscure sire is Mr. Sinatra, who has given him a couple of good runners. \u201cHe was a New York based horse, so I got to watch him race quite a bit during his racing career. I was always impressed by how hard he tried in all his 62 races.\u201d <\/p>\n
When asked for advice for new players, Trotter<\/i> has one word to offer: \u201cPatience.\u201d Expanding on that notion, he says \u201cit takes time to develop your stables and for your horses to develop into stakes runners. This game wouldn\u2019t be the great game that it is if winning a stakes race, or any race for that matter, came easy. Start off playing the claiming game and earn as many breeding points as possible. Resist the breeding bug until you get a good feel for the game and have saved enough breeding points to breed to some top sires. <\/p>\n
I asked Trotter<\/i> if he had any stories from the game he\u2019d like to share, and indeed he did. I can\u2019t improve on it at all with editing or reworking, so I\u2019ll just leave you with it in its entirety:<\/p>\n
It was a couple of year\u2019s back, during the Saratoga meet, that on a whim, Irish<\/i> and myself did a road trip to Saratoga. We had never met before other than chat room conversations, but there was Irish<\/i> in front of my house at 5 AM on a Sunday morning. Irish<\/i> is one of the great storytellers of all times, so this trip turned out to be the shortest three hour drives I ever experienced. Now Irish<\/i> is a horse trainer\/owner, one time jockey, grew up on a horse farm, slept with Native Dancer, the whole bit; so to say he knew his way around a stable area is an understatement, but as for me, I\u2019m a city boy who\u2019s closest encounter with a horse outside of a racetrack is the one that stands outside of the supermarket that you motivate by dropping a quarter in the slot. After a hearty breakfast Irish<\/i> decides to take me on a tour of the stable area of Saratoga, me in my sandals and shorts. He proceeds to tell me, the poster boy for a city slicker, to just look like I belong there. I don\u2019t know if you are familiar with Saratoga after a day of heavy downpours, but for over an hour he had me walking through, hopping over, and stepping through puddles, mud, and things I can\u2019t begin to describe associated with stables. I know he had a good laugh. Prior to our excursion, we had contacted Kingab<\/i> via email, who was up there at the same time, and arranged to meet with him while we were there. Upon our arrival, after leaving a few messages on his cell phone, at least we thought it was his cell phone, but I have a sneaking suspicion Larry was smart enough not to give us his real number, we went about our business of betting horses, drinking beer, and enjoying the scenery if you know what I mean. We must have seen 20 people that looked like Kingab<\/i> that day, you know, that touch of grey in the hair and beard, but I swear that last look alike Irish<\/i> pointed out was a woman, I don\u2019t care how many whiskers she had. Anyway, none of the 20 was Larry, and after surviving 9 races, 100 degree heat, and a ghastly picture, we collected enough empty bottles and cans to fill the gas tank and head back to Long Island. We did receive a call from Kingab<\/i> somewhere over the Tappan Zee Bridge inquiring where we were\u2026he said he saw about 20 guys that looked just like us\u2026hmm. I\u2019m sure Irish<\/i>\u2019s version of this story would be much different; he has a knack of seeing things from a whole other perspective. The point is, the friendships made in this game far surpass any game achievements, and it\u2019s that sense of community and friendship that\u2019s the driving force behind the success of this game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Behind the Scenes with a Sim Player<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}