New, less than 1 day in, and reading the info available the general advice seeems to be take it carefully and slowly to start. Most items I have tried to check/use require that your location be specified in my profile. Query is — with no knowledge of the Northern American geography in detail - is there a location anybody would suggest.
I am starting with 2 unraced horses, a 3 and 4 year old, so assuming somewhere with good facility for Maiden Races to start.
Any help welcome!!
Somewhere in New York would be best. As a newbie with a limited budget, you want to focus on keeping your shipping costs to a minimum. If you are in New York, you have three tracks which, between them, have racing all year round and it only costs $100 to ship from Aqueduct to Belmont, $400 to ship from Saratoga to the other two NY Tracks. The NY tracks are also fairly close to other tracks like Woodbine, Arlington, Pimlico and Churchill Downs. I made the mistake when I started to locate my Stables near Churchill Downs. There are few race meetings every year there and to ship my horses home every so often for a rest and to recharge their batteries costs around a minimum of $1,000 each time. You definitely don’t want to be in England (which only races about 6 months every year) and Australia, while there is racing there ten months of the year, is limited and costs $20K+ to ship your horses from there to the US.
Just because your horses have never run before, don’t think you have to stick to Maiden Races until they start winning. Maiden Races tend to have lots of runners, so the chances of getting purse money are less. You obviously don’t want to be thinking about Stakes Races yet so stick to the Allowance (especially the NW1, NW2, NW3) Races. Quite often these races only have the minimum 6 runners so all your horse has to do is beat one of the other runners to earn prize money.
Another pointer is to keep your eye on your Stable Taxes, especially as we’re getting close to year end, and make sure that you keep enough money in your budget to pay them (on Dec 31st).
A good way to earn extra money is to try handicapping. This is where you pick who you think will be the first three home in each race, in order. You “win” money based on how accurate your picks are:- if your top pick wins, you get $250; if your second pick finishes 2nd, you get $100; if your third pick finishes 3rd, you get $50; (if your second or third pick wins or your third pick finishes 2nd, you don’t get anything); if your top two picks finish 1-2 in order of selection, you get $500; and, if all three finish 1-2-3 in order of selection you get $1,000. If doesn’t cost you anything (but time) to enter and you just have to remember to post your selections in the appropriate thread before midnight EST on Tuesdays (for Wednesday’s races) and before midnight EST on Fridays (for Saturday’s races). It used to take me quite a while to make my picks every race meeting but I came up with a kind of formula so now I copy the “race card” into in Excel spreadsheet, it automatically rates all the horses in each race based on certain criteria and presents my picks in such a way that I only need to copy/paste them straight into the Forum. It now takes less than half an hour to do and I have been averaging about $6K every race day. I know other people win more than that and don’t know how they make their picks, but I’m content with how I’m doing.
This is a fun game and while it has it’s bugs, I, for one, enjoy playing it and really appreciate all the time and effort and money that Shanthi has put into it and continues to put into it.
Hope some of this is helpful. Good luck and welcome to the game.
Thank you so much for all the time and effort; what an answer. Have printed the info out and will use it to get set up.
Looks a very interesting game but will take a little sorting out to get started.
Again Many thanks to you Starfish