can you please email me the racing schedule to andy.harman@virgin.net

many thanks....

It's now as ready as it's ever going to be, and I will e-mail it out to anyone that wants it from tomorrow morning. To be honest, trying to create a highly realistic jumps-only schedule for SO4 has probably been the most frustrating task I've attempted with any of the SO series, for a number of reasons, to the extent where I'm probably going to give up on the jumps side of the game until SO5 comes along - however, I will still send the schedule to anyone that wants to try it.

Please read below before using the schedule:

Dates, Races & Prize Money

All dates and prize money (where known) is correct for the 2010/11 season. The graded and listed races are all correct as per the Pattern & Listed Race Book for the 2010/11 season. As for other races, the details are correct for all races up until the end of December, and beyond that they're correct as per the end of last season (unless the 2011 info is already known).

Novices' Hurdles

This has been the most frustrating part. I've tried it with all combinations: just with juvenile hurdles, just with novices' hurdles, and with both, and my own personal preference is to drop the juvenile hurdles and just stick with the novices' hurdles (the juvenile hurdles are in my showcase file though, so can easily be added if you choose). The other issue, however, is the fact that in many seasons the game just plain refuses to enter any decent novices into the novices' hurdles (especially the Supreme) at the Cheltenham Festival, and I have no idea why this is. Quite often when the initial declarations are made for the Supreme Novices' Hurdle, it's a selection of unraced horses, horses that have only previously run in NH Flat races, or horses that are rated below 100 - this is despite the fact that during the season similar races (with much smaller fields) attract a better quality of horse. I've tried to combat this by adding some extra novice events in February, so that there are three direct prep races for each of the main novices' events at the Festival. Ideally, this should work by having some decent horses added to the fields, and having some of the lowly-rated ones removed, but quite often it's the higher-rated ones that are removed, which is incredibly frustrating.

Horses' Ratings

In the SO4 jumps-only game, horses' ratings often plummet very quickly after a poor run or two. So, with Grade 3 H'caps in the game attracting horses rated up to 160 (and sometimes more), this creates the issue that these races are often full of horses that should really only be entering Grade 1 or 2 races. I know that you sometimes get top class horses in these races (Denman in the Hennessy, Menorah in the Greatwood etc) in real life, but these should be rare occurrences, not the norm. It means that sometimes you will get horses going for the William Hill Trophy at Cheltenham, when they should really be going for the Ryanair or Gold Cup. There are other clashes during the season too. Please note though, I have made the Grand National a 0-180 race, as it's the best way to ensure it has 30 runners most seasons.

Irish Races

I've tried the schedule with various numbers of Irish races included, and ended up going with just the Grade 1s and some Grade 2s, however, I've not included any Irish novice races, as they just fill up with UK horses after a couple of seasons (most Irish horses in the game don't seem to go through a novice season, however, the novice races will be available in the showcase file for anyone that wants to add them).

Please note, I have also rewritten the Irish showcase file with just the races that I believe are relevant to UK racing, so there are fewer than in the default file. This also means that my Irish showcase file won't be compatible with any existing Irish games or schedules that you use.

Field Sizes

To keep it as realistic as possible, most graded races have small fields (usually between 6 and 12 horses). Obviously the field sizes in handicaps and at the Cheltenham Festival will be larger.

Hunter Chases

I've included the Hunter Chases at Cheltenham and Aintree as conditions races for horses that haven't won a Class 1 race.

Any other questions, just ask, and if you'd like to try the schedule, let me know your e-mail address and I'll send the files to you.