I'm new to the forum and farily new to SO4. I'm really enjoying the game but i only seem to be able to win claiming races.

Any advice on how to pick/buy a better horse?

Try and win money by betting big in claimers or in handicaps. Buy horses in the end of season auction that are over 350,000. Purchase the breeding barn. Run your horses a few times to see if there any good. Retire the ones that are somewhat decent and breed them. The best horses in the game will be the ones you breed. It will take maybe 8 seasons or so to find a great horse via breeding that will win multiple group races.

I think for the first couple of years its really important to look at the daily sales especially any 2 year olds which have already run and not won.

It's likely that it's a miler plus running over 5 furlongs which hasn't much of a chance and can either be bought cheaply and sold expensively when run at it's correct distance and it's handicap rating has shot up.

My whole game at the moment is based around one such purchase in early year 1 when i bought a 2 year old called Klynch whose preferred distance was 1mile 2 furlongs. He was up in the daily auction for finishing 2nd in a 5 furlong maiden in 61 seconds and the form guide had him running green and he would be improved for the run.

Needless to say i bought him.

He won 17 group 1 races and 2 group 2 races by the time i retired him to stud at 4 years old.

As you can imagine he's an unreal sire.

This is a picture of his data screen in the breeders barn.

He's sired a multitude of Group 1 winners including his 2013 and 2014 crop who are all in the breeding barn with him.

Actually he's sired the current middle distance star of my game "Secret Smile" who has 5 Group 1 wins to her name but somehow i stupidly sold her as a 2 year old because i had faster horses in trial.

Thats a nice find I've never actually found a game horse I've bought to win anything worth while maybe the odd weak group 2 as a 2 year old.
As they say it really is all about the breeding. Keep going to the auctions and find horses that have won or laced in the big handicaps/group races send them to stud and start breeding from them. Your produce some donkeys but will start breeding good horses in time and start breeding from the horses you have bred and so on, come 10+ seasons your be starting to breed group horses like and finally when you've played a lot and in the 20+ season your find that every season you have 20+ new 2 year olds coming thorugh every year all which are group class and your destroying every single group race you enter

If this becomes the case then the enjoyment of achieving things will have surely gone right out the window. What is the point in entering races where the result is a foregone conclusion?

[quote="jupiterjimmy"]Try and win money by betting big in claimers or in handicaps. Buy horses in the end of season auction that are over 350,000. Purchase the breeding barn.[/quote]

This would assume i am good at the betting!

£350000 The most i have ever had is £200000 in the bank. I have a long way to go i think.

Pull a Barney Curley. Get a few horses you think are somewhat decent. Stop them 3 or 4 times then enter them in a selling race or a 0-70 handicap. Put all your money on them.

All your money? I always get the "Maximum Bet" notice whenever i try to put more than £20000 bet on.

You can just keep on placing bets though, it will limit the amounts, but no limit on the number of times you can back the same horse in a race, just keep making a new bet, odds will change that's all.

Genius!!!!

Or me just slightly thick!