Hi,

I know League form and Game form are two different things. But for the life of me, my horses can't win them in the game. Will go and win Belmont and Irish Derby/Oaks later in the season. They seem to trial ok at Epsom in the CK.

Does this carry forward to League? Anyone had experiences like this, including other races.

Is this in the breeding? Have looked at past winners when they come up for sale and their stats are fairly average I refuse to bred with them.

Means nothing for the Leaguse but it annoys me

Hi Ash,

I can't comment on any League experiences as this will be my first season but as far as my game save went it took me ages when I first started playing getting a Derby/Oaks winner, and like you I looked at past winners, I even looked at past winners and the races they ran in as 2yo's so I could run mine in the same, but for a while nothing. Then all of a sudden it clicked and now it's the race I have most success with.

I wouldn't say I had a secret recipe or formula, obviously best to breed from a Sire and Dam who ran well over a mile and a half, I even paired 2 milers to 1 milers in the hope of stumbling across something.

I think it just came down to the more seasons I had under my belt, the better the horses slowly got until one was good enough to break through. My first Derby winner was actually bred as a miler and won the 2000 Guineas, then his stamina shot up after his Guineas win and he comfortably won the Derby. I entered him in the St Leger in a bid for the Triple Crown but he only managed 7th. The Triple Crown still eludes me, although one season I did have a stable Triple Crown winning the three classics with three different horses.

What I find now is if you have the following stats at birth then it will go a long way to giving you a good classics horse;
Potential 80+
Speed of 100 on the horse's summary page
Cruising 60+
Extra Speed 75+
Throw in 100 Finish and Consistency and you have yourself a good horse.

But as is often the case with this great game, what works for me, may not work for you!

Cheers,
Paul

The U.K. version of the classics are harder to win than other races, the track at Epsom accounts for this in my view, as it does specifically seem to favour one horse over another…..you can’t see track preferences but they are there and they carry through. Do too much early breeding with horses from Dubai for example you will potentially carry a Dubai preference, potentially for generations. So if you struggle at Epsom run an experimental line with one of those poor game breds and try and fix them. It may take many generations to bring them to your level, but worth a shot if you want to target the race and consistently fail in game or trial.

I would add don’t expect the bred horse to be any good at trial out of the box, those poor stats are still poor stats.

And yes it carries forward to the league. Hence I only trial at Cheltenham for the NH as they are the only races I really want to win, and my flat trials are always track focussed. Look at ‘The Shepard’’s two seasons last and the one before to see a Cheltenham specialist horse.

He has never confirmed it but I am sure league trainer Dan Hughes did a lot of foreign horse breeding in his early game. He is usually very successful at Dubai and a number of other venues that are not playable in game. Vinny who I know does this in his early games, similarly so.

I think the one country that is good for the league is the US game because to win in the league u need handy types and to win races in game u need handy types . I think it's that way because the US courses are smaller and sharper. The only downside of playing a stock US game is that u can't breed 1m6 plus horses unless u make a totally new game like I did with 5 furlong ( bullring) courses and put in long distance races.

US games for me tend to me more geared up for sprints up to tweeners. It’s hard after that, you also tend to find better potential from a younger age. Hard to have much idea what anything over 1.2m is good at as there are not many races; but you can still breed for longer. I still do far better on US tracks than anywhere else.

This is true of a lot of my horses too. My hold up line comes from my early trials all coming from big fields at Newmarket. I've changed it now, but tough to get rid of once it's in there. Especially my sprinters over 6f, because I always trialled 5f horses with them too, so there was always loads of pace. The structure of your trials, the pace, and the track used are all a huge part of success in the league

Play a UK one, and breed with every US stallion until season 30. You'll get the best of both worlds. This is what I wish I'd tried. It is similar in that I used most foreign stallions in the early game, but I didn't trial to help them come through, and early on, I didn't breed specifically for them, I just bred with them, then put them in trials that didn't suit.

If you start properly on the UK game, you can get enough handy runners doing that for me, along with other Country's horses. It's all about how you trial them then, an have different breeding lines going early. It also gives you some good stayers too then

Not sure I agree with the stuff about handy types of horses.

I used to have Handy, Hold-up and Even paced horses in my main flat save. I have bred the Handy & Hold-up horses out of my save. Every flat horse I uploaded this season is an Even paced horse and is exported with instructions to run at an Even pace.

I always run my league trials with two Handy horses as pace makers. As long as there is one horse in a league race willing to set the pace, my Even paced horses should do very well.



When it comes to Breeding Lines, I have a breeding line specificlly for each classic race where the horses in that line must trial exceedingly well over the classic track\distance. This often means these horses are poor performers at other tracks.

Just need to wait on the results to see if this approach is successfull.

Jim

All my horses are/were handy types, happy to sit in 3 or 4 in fast pace races or go to the front in slow run races, I would never give horses instructions because u trying to change the way horses run. I would never run my dirt horses over dubai/ chuch downs/santa anita because they are generally poor race courses. I only run my flat horses over 2 courses , my dirt course I made and Newmarket. The only other course I would use is ascot at 2m4.

I’d agree here, 2 seasons ago I don’t think there was much between our horses, but Johns got such a head start in their runs against mine coming from way back. Later in the season in America, Australia etc, it’s a massive advantage to sit handy

I think people know my run style preference, but good is still good in my view.

I don’t change from Cheltenham for NH aside for using Aintree for my 4m horses.

Flat I do all over the place, but I use Newmarket initially to filter down to the main 15. Then I go based on target races so each block of 15 will tackle multiple tracks. Less expansive for 3yo. The 4yo trials cover a lot of different tracks.

And I agree with John on giving instructions. I have messed with it in the past, saw no noticeable difference and eventually concluded you could do as much harm as good.

I think Challenge early would be the only thing I’d use instructions wise. But if you use that on everything I have no idea what would happen

From what I saw, and this was something I did try, they don’t challenge earlier for the most part and when they do they run out of puff, but that can happen without instructions too. We all have our little things though, gelding for me as an example, no idea if it makes any difference at all, but I still do it.