I guess my main question is how do people use the Race Builder (for the game, not the league - I may do the league someday but not for now).

What I would like to do is breed 25-50 horses every season, run them once or twice (not entirely sure if this actually helps or not - does it??) to get the greenness/dust off of them, export them all, run them in the Race Builder and pare my 25-50 horses down to the best 5-10 to run as 3 yo's.

But do the better 2 yo's become the better 3 yo's? Is there ever an average 2 yo that becomes a great 3yo? Or vice versa?

Would this system work? Would I lose any great horses doing this?

Right now, I haven't been using Race Builder and have just run them. But I tend to keep the number of horses down to about 10-15 each season (so I can manage them). Run them 5-7 times as 2 yo's. The ones that are good, I keep, the ones that aren't, go.

Any opinions?

All l can say mate is l have very good 2yo in my folders that at 3yo dont get in my trials, this also works the other way too. The one thing l do find is a must is trial everything, the amount of times l have retired from game all the duck egg horses then go to RB and find they beat everything. I myself run 2 yo 3 times max and make there last run end may/ beggining of july and export mid august

What you're describing is a good system to employ and if you're interested in getting involved with the league then you'll have a good idea of which horses are your best.

Some people will run them once or twice and some people never run them. I like to export them as soon as they're fit at the beginning of the season and again near the end of the season after most of them have run to see how they have progressed. Personally I think exporting them with a run gives you a better idea of what you're dealing with.

You can't really tell if they'll be better at 3 until they get there. Some you can tell from the breeding but that can take a while to decipher. You have to take a leap of faith and either keep them and hope they won't progress or sell them.

This would definitely work. You probably will lose at least one good horse, probably more. Which is gutting, but then so long as a male isn't gelded you will be able to use them for breeding when they retire.

Make sure you trial them on lots of different courses and grounds because you might sell something that is last at Ascot on firm which might beat everything out of sight at Sandown on heavy. Or vice versa.

I usually give fillies/mares extra chances because I've found that an ok mare paired with a really good stallion can make a decent horse so I tend to give them more time.

Also if you have stayers I'd leave trialling until they are near the end of their 3yo season and give them a bit longer. The amount of times I've got rid of these and then they've gone on to be great when they're older because I've been too impatient. Hope this helps a bit.

Everyone has their own strategy and mine is to trial everything. Some people don't bother. I trial everything because:

1) I hate having to run 80-100 horses per season when I know only a few of them are gonna be good. So I want to trim as many of them as possible.

2) Even if you have a good horse, you can't tell how good it is compared to your other great horses unless you run them against each other. I've had triple crown winners in the game that are average in the race builder and gets beaten by my other horses. So this means that even though it won so many G1's, it won against subpar competition.

But if you are just starting out, then I think you have to be more lenient and delete less horses especially fillies until you have enough in your breeding barn.

What I mean is, as an example, if you trial 10 1 milers (8 colts, 2 fillies), and the 2 fillies finish last, you should still keep them since you need them for breeding. Even if they are not that great, you can breed them with some good game-breds and get something decent. So early on, I am more lenient on fillies and very picky on my stallions. Because early on most of the good stallions are game-breds and yours wont be as good. And technically, your stallion can breed 8-12 times per year depending on luck. . So if you have 40 fillies/mares then you only need 4-5 stallions plus the game-breds but that's up to you.

As you get better and better fillies/mares then you can delete the nags. And eventually you will become more picky on you fillies/mare too.

As to trialling 2yo's, like everyone, I've had 2yo's which I thought would be monsters when they turn 3 and when they do turn 3, wonder what the hell happened lol. I've had horses that are average at 2 and become great at 3. I've tested 3yo's in early March that are average and become great later in the year and vise versa.

Thanks for the replies!

mwesty1: So it sounds like what I propose really wouldn't work then. Right? If I can't predict which horses will be good as 3yo and 4yo when they are 2yo, is there any reason to use RB?

So, how many horses do you breed a season? Do you keep them all as 3yo?

SuperCat: If people don't run them at all (and I think I read that in some other post), does that basically mean that running them in races really doesn't do anything? ("Anything" in the sense of improving it, getting it "ready")

Sounds like you are saying the same thing as mwest where it is almost a crapshoot, that there isn't a predictive ability running them as 3yo. Right? Or is it just right 90% of thetime and I will just miss every now and then?

What do you mean by deciphering the breeding? In my experience (somewhat limited), I've had horses that I thought would be great based on breeding and they can't win a race. And vice versa. I've had horses that are world beaters but their lineage... is just ok.

I've started keeping an Excel spreadsheet for my horses... what do you do to keep track of them? How many times do you run them in RB? Over every surface, going? A few? I've experimented a bit running them at different distances and such, but it seems running them at every distance, surface, going and track will be a monumental task.

I have noticed that about stayers. I will almost always keep a horse like that a lot longer than one whose best distance is 7f or something.

Thunderspark: How many horses do you trim a season?

I have noticed that I have alot more fillies than colts that are any good. I guess your explanation explains that.

Hmm... it seems like you are saying the same thing as the other two. That I'm just basically rolling the dice on which 2 yo to keep and which to get rid of. How much predictive ability is there in the RB? It seems like it might be a waste of time to run 50 horses in it and... get results that don't mean much.

To be honest mate your talking about using this for the game only, l would say dont bother with RB. I have had horses that are rubbish in RB but have over 20 G1 wins in the game. Unless you are going for league mate in my opinion race builder is not needed

So I assume everyone agrees with mwest?