Race Results

General To Do List
1

I have just started and, while I am enjoying “owning racehorses” and trying to map out when and where to run them, I have a few comments about the results.  I had my first runner on Saturday and, looking at the charts of the race, there were a number of things I noticed that do not appear realistic:-

  1. According to the fractions, the winner was 89 3/4 lengths ahead of the second horse.  A horse length is approximately 2 yards (6 feet), which means it won by nearly 180 yards, just under a furlong.  The distance between second and third was 59 1/4 lengths (almost 120 yards-more than half a furlong).
  2. The race was 10.5 furlongs long and after 10 furlongs, the horse that was in front had a “-” for the distance ahead of the second horse, who in turn had “DNF” as the distance ahead of the third horse.  In racing, DNF means “Did Not Finish”.  How can a horse be second, but, at the same time be DNF?  In addition, according to the final placings, the horse that was “DNF” at the 10 furlong pole, finished 5th.
  3. The time of the race was 2:21 for 10.5 furlongs.  Average times for 10 furlongs range between 2:00 and 2:05, which would either mean that the horses in the race were real plodders or the winner took 15 to 20 seconds to run the last half furlong.  According to my horses record, it finished fourth, almost 1 1/2 furlongs behind the winner, in a time of 3:13.

I have looked at charts for other FF races and huge distances between the horses seems to be “normal” (out of about 8 races that I looked at, there was only one in which the winning distance was less than 10 lengths), as do inconsistent times, e.g. a race over 6 furlongs on a Slow track run in 1:08 (fast but not unreasonable) compared to a race over 6.5 furlongs run on a Fast track in 1:26 (the fractions after 6 furlongs was 1:20), also a race over 10.5 furlongs in 2:21 compared to a race over 9 furlongs in 2:24.

I’m sure that it must be a huge undertaking to organize something like this and don’t know if you could look into how these distances and times are generated and see if you could make them look more realistic, or at least more consistent.  Thanks.

2

As has been stated many times before, I know the margins are on crack.  (See the known bugs thread).  I spent over 1 1/2 years creating this new race code, and as of yet, have not had 1 1/2 years to figure out why it’s ignoring the part of the code that prevents 80+ length race margins.  Once I do, it’ll be fixed.  Until then, just use your imagination and assume that 10 lengths = 1 actual real length or something.