As an owner of real racehorses, I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019m not one to shy away from controversy and while some of the feedback in the forum isn\u2019t positive, but at least it gets tongues wagging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Plan: I don\u2019t 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\u2019m not sure he would run 12F. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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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\nSo, 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s etc<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019t have that big a drop off unless it got injured. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway If you have an opinion by all means post below, just keep it clean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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