ha ha, 'tis no fluke that my horses aren't doing too badly in both codes. I can't be bothered with all the saving games and restarting them and transferring them to breed more than once with the same game mare. I am also very lazy with my trialling because I find it so dull. But I would say that, although I don't have hundreds of seasons completed on the game, my horses are pretty well bred and have shown that that they are able to compete in some pretty good races.

I think if you breed for hundreds of seasons your chances of getting top class horses is much higher. But the farthest I have got in game is to 2036 (24 seasons in?) and that is where all my NH horses have come from. My flat horses are from a game in which I think I am at 2022 or 2024 and they are doing pretty well. I'm still plugging away at it, so I may well enter some more in week 5.

Based on the theories about max potential my horses should be finishing nearer last than first.

I have hardly any max potential horses they all between 80 and 95%. I have only played 2 games Nh and flat. So have gone against everything mentioned here.

I use inbreeding 3X4 and 4X4 a lot. Works for me. I trial every season and base on my breeding on these results

I'll wager most trainers are similar to you and haven't bothered maxing out potential so not surprised you're not last .

The question is if everyone were doing this how you would fare. Not everyone will of course but it's a guide and a starting point for those who wish to try it to do so.

You spend your cash and play it however you want to of course .

Mine will be even better next season. I still haven't reached the point where my horses become really good. Still need to play another 10-15 seasons to be up to where I want to be

Here is an example unbeaten in the NH league. With regards to this full potential bar I'm not too concerned as I have noticed that when I transfer a horse from my flat game to my NH game the horses potential bar becomes full. However the horses performance in the ck is exactly the same. So it seems that there are some hidden variables in the game that don't fully reflect a horses ability

Here is an example of what I mean




and the transfered horse




The above horse is unbeaten in the NH league and has yet to run over her best distance of 3m2. She has won over 2m6 and 2m7. I'm expecting her to win a graded race

Based on the above you would assume that the 5 year old is the better horse. This is not the case however and she is much better as a 6 year old. There are too many hidden variables to make accurate judgements solely on potential rating. Trialling is still the best way in my opinion

The 6 year old flat becomes a 5 year old in NH?

other way around. I transfered her to the flat at 4 but kept her in the NH game

hmm.. I know for flat the potential rating rises again at 4 and 5. For NH does that rise appears to be later? I've run 3 year olds on to 4 and 5 on the flat and seen small increases in max potential (i.e. for those who are at 95% of max instead of 100%). For NH though I have transferred those same 3 year olds into the NH game and not seen any increase in max potential at 4 or 5 (didn't run them past 5). It may be that the rise in potential kicks in later for the NH side. You'd be better placed to tell me about that .

god help us all if you bring your leftovers to the NHC next season

I wouldn't do that. I thought of doing that this season but I really don't know anything about the NH side. To be honest next season I don't even expect to have a full flat team. I expect lots of trainers to be much better anyway and the flip side is if I can't do something reasonably well I probably won't do it . What I will have is some interesting horses I've bred purely for fun since Jan and I'll be looking to push the boundaries of distances over which a horse can win.

I think you should consider retirement?

Semi . Can't let you young uns have it all your way

It was worth a try. Thanks for the young uns comment

Here's an old document I found at sopl.info (normally bookmarked but on my phone I used a different browser and actually did a google search instead of putting it into the address bar and this is one of the links that came up).

http://www.sopl.info/documents/soplbt.pdf

It's a document about breeding and it's an interesting read. I figure it's from a version of SO that did not allow horses to be transferred in and out. Leon or one of the old timers could probably tell us which version this guide was written for,

Here are some thoughts of mine about the document (I'm cutting and pasting the bits I found especially interesting). Sorry about the formatting.

Dave Fuller on breeding.

Second part is your crossbreeding. When you look at gamebreds most have the same characteristics in their stat bars for specific distances. However to improve the quality you need to crossbreed. Basically what you need to do is transfer your sprinters with 100% speed and 90% acceleration right through your bloodlines. This is a long and gradual process but very effective over the long term. Can take around 40 seasons to get the stat bars to maximum for each specific distance. I find the gradual for sprinters to classics and accelerated method for turfs to irons the best methods. What you need here is printers that have 100% speed and very high acceleration (90%). They mainly happen in 5f sprinters but the occasional 6f will have it.

Methods here are:

Gradual method

With the gradual method you gently slide this acceleration up a few furlongs at a time. Get you 5f or 6f sprinter and bred it with a 9f or 10f horse. Your goal here is to breed a 7f or 8f horse with 100% speed, 35% stamina and 90% acceleration. This is your miler with his bars at optimum level. A lot of trial and error involved here but keep doing this until you have around 3-4 unique pairings with these stats. Once you have your milers like this, any colt with these stats can be bred with other milers until over time all your milers will spawn with 100%spd, 35%stam, 90%acc. With the miler breed it with the classic (9f-10f horses). What you are after here are horses, which spawn with 100%spd, 70%sta, and 90%acc. You can reach these levels easily with 15 seasons.

Accelerated method
You probably wonder what would happen if I breed a 5f sprinter with a 19f horse. Well basically anything can happen. You can get the worst most aborted horse you have seen or you can fluke a 12f horse that spawns with 70%spd, 100%stam, and
90%acc and stays 20 furlongs. It’s completely random and you can breed something awesome or something completely rubbish. Rather than being gradual and taking 20-25 seasons to push the speed and acceleration into the turf and leger horses (12-14f) you try and get it done in one hit. Maybe 1 in 30 of these work well but when they do you will have a horse able to add enormous amounts of speed and acceleration into your turf and higher horses. Took me roughly 35 seasons before all my Iron Horses of 19f had acceleration the same level as a 5f sprinter. They spawn at the maximum possible of 50%spd, 100%sta, and 90%acc all the time now.

The more things change the more they stay the same .





I hadn't read that document till yesterday and I was amazed to say the least when I read it. All my horses up till 1m2f look the same for the above stat bars. call it coincidence if you will. The thing is I didn't even set out to do that. I simply bred horses and mixed lines and somewhere round about 8 generations ago they all started to look like this for up till 1m. For 1m2f it's only being the last few generations that looks similar and there is still some variability in the bars. Mainly speed not been 100%.

I'll post more about some of the other sections later (a lot of which I agree with some which I disagree with) but this has been a fascinating read and contains quite a bit of information that will help with breeding.

How to stop lines going stale.

This crops up quite a fair bit. Seems to be that every so often trainers find that your breeding doesn't produce anything better.

I have to say I have only run into this once (at 12f when I couldn't come close to Matt/Joe's horses at this distance and I've covered this in a post above).

How do you know that your lines are truly stale? You'll know because your horses look the same. If you don't understand that statement (and don't ask me to clarify) then they aren't stale. Anyone who has had horses that look the same will know what I mean almost instantly.

So your lines aren't stale but you're not getting any faster. What do you do?

Here are two ideas.

1). Find your best 3 colt/stallion. What's best? Without being immodest find 3 that are closest to the CK times I've posted here

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=7951

Preferably at 3 different distances but if you only have horses that are good at one distance then 2/3 of the best at that distance are fine.

Test all your fillies/mares in CK. Find the best 5 at any distance (again the ones that come closest to the CK times above).

Start a new game transfer one stallion and the 5 fillies/mares in. Breed. Next season transfer a second stallion in and breed to same fillies/mares. Third season do the same with 3rd stallion.

If your horses aren't all the same then this should mix your existing lines up enough to continue.

2). I've posted before that breeding is about finding a method that works.

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=7941&p=78646#p78646

I'll quote the relevant part

"In all the time you have put in, have you formulated any ideas/hypothesis as to what might make your horses better. Have you then tested those ideas and checked to see if it works? Any good idea should cut .3s off your best times in CK within 4/5 generations IMO. If it doesn't then try something else. Don't be afraid to restart breeding from game horses."

How did you get to where you are today in terms of your horse? Which horses did you breed? Did you find a particularly good stallion/mare? Sometimes introducing new blood isn't about improving your current horses. It's about going back a few generations and breeding those new horses you find and improving that previous generation and creating an alternative bloodline and then improving that line and eventually bringing the two together to go faster. The key really is finding a method that works for you and then using that to create different and completely new bloodlines that eventually rival your current lines.