What do you think the best field size for your 2 yo trials? 10, 15 etc.?

I have 15 to 20. But I start bigger and remove the ones at the back. I just use space bar for the initial trials ( although you have to remember this favours hold up horses so be careful about removing front runners until you do a race with tab which works well enough for me )

What is a good neutral (no effect) draw UK track for turf and dirt?


Newmarket is a good course for up to 10f as it's a straight and the form seems to travel well to all other courses
Newcastle has a straight mile dirt course so again your remove the draw bias
In general try trial on courses with no draw bias Longchamp for 12f etc


When do you export your horses for online racing purposes? July, Aug etc. Please give me a month as I use US racing schedule and don't know the UK dates for races.

Late July early August, all horses ( flat and NH). But I play combined this may differ for flat only and NH only games. I have tried other times of the year but the horses haven't performed as well with the possible exception of late maturing 2 and 3yos which I have exported in late October / November

And lastly for now: and you can answer this privately, or not at all if it is protected info - do you set jockey preference for the exports for online league racing? I know you said you don't for trials.

No never export with instructions except challenge early for some that need that to get a shorter distance

@leonvr
Thank you! x 100
I wanted to stat my trials this morning for the new season and I am glad I got this first.

this was all helpful info!

What do you think the best field size for your 2 yo trials? 10, 15 etc.?
At least 16 no more than 20


What is a good neutral (no effect) draw UK track for turf and dirt?
I trial all 2YO's at Ascot in UK I trail at Louisville on the dirt in USA Obviously


When do you export your horses for online racing purposes? July, Aug etc.
Please give me a month as I use US racing schedule and don't know the UK dates for races.
4 Weeks after Royal Ascot so July

And lastly for now: and you can answer this privately, or not at all if it is protected info -
do you set jockey preference for the exports for online league racing? I know you said you don't for trials.
I Never give Jockey Instructions at all

Thanks mate!
very helpful indeed!

Remember I told you I got rid of a couple of really good looking horses based on your trials method? Well one of them just beat me in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes so my horse finished 2nd.
It is ok. I think you are right and focus on the online CK part. My horse still won the Preakness, so it wasn't a total wash out.

My 2nd year of trials and I had 3 horses beat my yardstick consistently (best horse from first trials), so making progress.
My best CK horses are lagging behind the showboating non CK fillies in my offline league races, which I guess is to be expected at this point.

One more question while I have you: is there anyway I can change the schedule I am using, or install a mod like startit, without having to restart my offline league? I am having a hard time with getting sprinters and long distance horses races in the North America schedule.
Anyone who knows the answer to this can chime in.
Thanks again!

You cannot change a schedule mid save as far as I know.

Certain games seem to be better at certain distances though a US save should be fine to get sprinters longer distances horses are harder to find but they do still exist it is just without a schedule that offers these races they tend to to do much in game and then skip the breeding barn. The main problem I find in the US is they all love dirt, true in Australian saves also but to a lesser extent.

U.K. combined tend to be the one that offers everything, my U.K. game is jumps only my combined is now in Ireland but I dislike the combined games so it’s a struggle to play. But everything you need is available in these games flat only can be harder to find or access all the core components.

I stopped caring if the AI trainers beat me in big races and started to sell them my seconds. That is the horses that are close in my 2yo ck trials but not quite good enough for my stable, mainly the colts as the fillies go to the breeding barn. I find they sometimes are monsters in game and maybe they improved enough to be league class, I don't know. But it's good because it means the AI is now using my cast offs to breed and I will use them also in a few generations if they have something to offer. Basically I'm hoping to make my game a true league game where the AI are helping me to breed better league horses. Probably pissing on stars and getting a wet face but I like to be different.

Thank you gentlemen!

If anyone has any info on the jumping NH side of the game and can point me to the right guides or thread I would appreciate it. Totally lost on that part so far.

I will still use my US online league for sprinters and up to 1m2f racers for now, and try to use the UK combined with Startit for long distance and NH / jumps. For now.
I don't know if there is a bias towards UK for CK in game or Startit, or I am just a much better player now, but the UK horses are already competing with my US horses in CK, despite being about 8 seasons behind them in breeding.

Thanks again, and happy racing!

Sending your cast offs to the AI trainers is a good thing to do. Most of my established games have stacks of my horses breeding to the AI. I sent one out and the AI won 40 G1’s with it, indeed the hall of fame is full of cast offs. It does matter one iota, league breeding is all.

As for NH breeding what do you need to know? Game wise it needs to be U.K. or Ireland, NH only is easier but there are some limitations as nothing much comes good until they are 7yo+. Combined is maybe more rounded but also you have to get to grips with how they behave as a 5yo, I am only just working on combined now and I don’t like it much, the way they age makes no sense in my view. The play like a flat game until they are 4yo, the realised potential drops at 5yo, then increases again along with the unrealised potential if you jump race them from 5 thru 7. Some also come back to flat racing at the older ages, others completely shut down for no particular reason. Hemz and Leon are much more experienced on combined than I am, and would be better placed to help.

As far as sending castoff to AI, I have been thinking on that.
I wonder if some of the complaints you hear from players saying they need to start a new game regularly because of "in breeding" or the AI pool isn't competitive any more etc is from casting off horses that are defective, like low confidence, no cruising speed etc.
In the beginning you need to sell off all of those as 2 year old's just to make some $$$, but I think from now on I will simply retire those and only auction the good horses who just don't make the CK cut.

I sold all my horses to start the game and my first batch of foals just turned 4. Up until now there hasn't been any jumping races for them, but I figured that was a function of age. Also the season ends like in May or something?
The few jump horses I have have pretty low bars in jumping and I don't know if that is the norm or if it is like flat horses with speed, and they should be up at least to 70% in jumping to be any good.
I guess I will learn a few things this season as I they can now run the jump races.

What are your thoughts of fillies who fail the CK trials test and are destined for breeding barn. I figured it would help to develop them, so I give them the 5 races they need as 2 and 3 yo's, but as your stable swells, that takes up more and more time and management to do that.
Does it matter if they develop at all? Does the game go by their current ratings when passing on genes or just their potential?

Hopefully Hemz and Lean can chime in at some point on jumpers, or point me to a thread where it was already covered.

Thanks mate.

I think how you manage your AI stock is important, and yes once I have solved the money situation which can be done in only a few seasons, retiring the utter rubbish is the way to go for me. The horses I tend to auction either have a likeable stat the game pool does not seem to have, like full potential or are just below my top tier at trials. My current league horse ‘Wayfinder’ is breeding in game, as is last years league horse ‘Kingdom of Blood’ along with many others who are in my top 15 or so, usually once I think I have better I ship them out for the game to work with them and then watch for what they breed and try to buy them back.

For a very long time I was not doing this in my Australian flat game and think this game now is at a place it cannot recover from my best are not good enough even if I am now sending them out and the game after 86 seasons does not throw up anything decent. My 2yo auctions tend to have no more than 20 horses in them. So management of your AI matters.

As for jumping the one easy pointer I can give you is on the stat enthusiasm, it’s not as black and white as this but for me now where my standard is if a horse is not 60%+ on enthusiasm, since this is directly linked to jumping speed, I don’t bother with them regardless of what the rest of the stats look like, least on my NH game, in combined they maybe flat horses still.

Many of my best league jumpers have dreadful stats on cruising burst and speed, I am talking 30-40% cruise and 50-60% speed, these are also entirely relevant to race style, I never expect my front runners for example to be blessed with raw speed, finish and consistency are also terrible throughout my best stock, which was surprising to me when they were reintroduced. Now the bars are visible it is something I am changing but this could and has come at the expense of CK performance, I hope just in the short term, and I am already seeing a step change from the early breeds.

As for fillies I am really very forgiving, many trainers think fillies are the key, but I don’t, fillies get you one horse per season, colts for me are the key as they can cover so much more, so my colts are all ck stars, or have something specific I am looking to engineer into a line. Any filly can produce a good horse if the colt is good enough, I have around 300 in my NH game.

Also remember jumpers are generally no good until they are at least 6yo or 8yo depending on the game variant. And jumping stats progress over time. I am one of the few manual trainers in the league and I don’t care what jumping stats look like when they are young, I know I can train them up to a point. But I assume they also develop in auto training games too.

As to the final point no it does not really matter how the horse develops through racing in respect of breeding, least I have never found it does, just as age does not matter and 20yo who was good and now looks terrible will still breed the good. So if you know the horse is not one you want to keep but do want to breed it, just dump it in the barn as a 2yo.

Thats what im doing in my game , im using AI to try to improve my horses and the game horses. I think it works because im sure after 40 seasons the horses look better. I almost gave up trying to breed 2m plus horses on the flat but i think a decent horse has come into the computer barn. The stats are average looking but he looked good on track and looking at his pedigree he's been breed to some of my horses in the past.