Building New Race Card

[Administrator]

I'll be on tonight working on a new race card w/ some help from Brian. If there are any great race ideas out there please share or if you want to see something in general just reply below

[Lone Star Stables]

Looks really good Toc . Glad to see your doing such a good job with site . I wish you and the site continue success .

[Nut Brown Racing]

I think you are on the right track. Some requests I've made in the past haven't been too popular, but I'll try again. I'm trying to get races to fill up and have bigger purses. Here goes:

* Reduce the number of claiming levels. Maybe low claimers are $5k, mediums are $10 and $15, highs are $20 and $30. Right now you can buy allowance horses for $20-$30 in many cases, so there isn't really a need for higher levels at the moment. If that changes, they can be added.

* At each level offer sprint, mid, route, and marathon distance, but don't overlap. So often in the past I've seen a $5k 6f on dirt with 2 entries, and a $6k 5 furlong on dirt with 2 entries on top of each other. It is my personal opinion that if someone wants a custom made condition that is absolutely optimal for their horse, they should have to wait for it. Otherwise, they can be like most of the rest of us and enter where things may not be 100% perfect for their beast. This should make the card much, much smaller overall, much easier to maintain, and add another element of training strategy. It also makes winning a championship a bit more of an accomplishment by reducing the number of cheap races overall.

* Make sure there are sufficient non-claiming options available so that people aren't forced to retire potential bloodstock early to avoid risking them in claiming races. Optional claiming and Sunday Seniors are good examples. In RL we have some conditions where a horse must be entered for the claiming price if he meets certain criteria. This works like a combination of our current division races and the optional claimers. So "non-winners of 2 this year or non-winners of 50k lifetime or claiming price $15k". In this case the claiming price is lower to be a deterrent to trying to steal the race with an allowance quality horse. Again, probably not super hard to code since the elements are all there, and it adds more strategy too.

* RL condition books can be read via the link below, and should give you good ideas. I would look at tracks in isolated areas (WA, CA, AZ, CO) because back East it is easier to ship to another track, whereas the isolated tracks are more like our closed environment here. http://www.equibase.com/static/horse...CB.html?SAP=TN

[Midwest Racing]

I'd decide if you want division racing or traditional racing but there's not enough of a population , yet anyway , to have both . you could make D division nw2L C division nw3L etc....

I'd also really like to see condition claimers. 10,000 claimer nw 3L ...like that .

a claiming series would be really cool. Horses claimed this season for 3000 or less for example . you can go deeper too and add horses claimed for 3000 or less that are nw 20000 Life. be creative. a 3 or 4 leg series with the top 10 making a lucrative final . Claims allowed leg 1.

[Administrator]

I think you are on the right track. Some requests I've made in the past haven't been too popular, but I'll try again. I'm trying to get races to fill up and have bigger purses. Here goes:

* Reduce the number of claiming levels. Maybe low claimers are $5k, mediums are $10 and $15, highs are $20 and $30. Right now you can buy allowance horses for $20-$30 in many cases, so there isn't really a need for higher levels at the moment. If that changes, they can be added.

* At each level offer sprint, mid, route, and marathon distance, but don't overlap. So often in the past I've seen a $5k 6f on dirt with 2 entries, and a $6k 5 furlong on dirt with 2 entries on top of each other. It is my personal opinion that if someone wants a custom made condition that is absolutely optimal for their horse, they should have to wait for it. Otherwise, they can be like most of the rest of us and enter where things may not be 100% perfect for their beast. This should make the card much, much smaller overall, much easier to maintain, and add another element of training strategy. It also makes winning a championship a bit more of an accomplishment by reducing the number of cheap races overall.

* Make sure there are sufficient non-claiming options available so that people aren't forced to retire potential bloodstock early to avoid risking them in claiming races. Optional claiming and Sunday Seniors are good examples. In RL we have some conditions where a horse must be entered for the claiming price if he meets certain criteria. This works like a combination of our current division races and the optional claimers. So "non-winners of 2 this year or non-winners of 50k lifetime or claiming price $15k". In this case the claiming price is lower to be a deterrent to trying to steal the race with an allowance quality horse. Again, probably not super hard to code since the elements are all there, and it adds more strategy too.

* RL condition books can be read via the link below, and should give you good ideas. I would look at tracks in isolated areas (WA, CA, AZ, CO) because back East it is easier to ship to another track, whereas the isolated tracks are more like our closed environment here. http://www.equibase.com/static/horse...CB.html?SAP=TN

Very valuable response and much appreciated. Right now with a clean sheet I have 4 race groups by time of day - midnight, morning, lunch and evening with clear tiers (quality) of racing between them. Each race will be built with a purse already assigned. I've noticed the overlapping and started to clear that up and started laying the rotation out on an excel doc. I have identified many race types to incorporate. Thats where I am...I will now take information like ur post and infuse into the layout. Thanks for the link!

[Administrator]

I'd decide if you want division racing or traditional racing but there's not enough of a population , yet anyway , to have both . you could make D division nw2L C division nw3L etc....

I'd also really like to see condition claimers. 10,000 claimer nw 3L ...like that .

a claiming series would be really cool. Horses claimed this season for 3000 or less for example . you can go deeper too and add horses claimed for 3000 or less that are nw 20000 Life. be creative. a 3 or 4 leg series with the top 10 making a lucrative final . Claims allowed leg 1.

Thank you! The divisional racing was indeed an improvement over previous race set ups but after a couple years of it I can realize that divisions aren't the answer. They are basically straight up allowance races and I would prefer to start following RL race types etc.

Conditional claimers are already being included in the layout...much needed!

Claiming series is a good idea! I need to think this through a bit on how to make this fair and balanced without it being manipulated. I think Brian can help out with this and probably have something in place soon.

Thank you!

[Cold Dog Soup]

Claiming series does sound good. We could do qualifiers as starter allowance but the weight assignments might fall into the fairness remark Bob referred to. As far as I know we can only limit to claims in the current season or entire career. Something like a sa3000d30 being horses races for 3000 claimed in the past 30 days would be great.
adding more strategy maybe if it's a 3k starter allowance series make the final a 12k claiming race

[Administrator]

Spoke with Brian and I think we have a proper layout for the claiming series. Brian will post it and we can work out kinks on the fly. Probably next week

[Cold Dog Soup]

Will post detais tomorrow. Just want to get this futurity going so not so much going on at times. If you want to plan ahead be looking for potential 5k claimers that's where the series will start.