As for me the game starts to bore me from the moment on i am able to buy a good horse for breeding, (since the game becomes too easy with a working breeding barn) i try to challenge myself with some "House rules". I try to "work" my way up.
It's just for my personal enjoyment, but i do know from some posts here, that there are other players, who also prefer the slow paced game

My "house rules":
-no exploits, no cheating, no betting
-Hard difficulty
-no transferring
-sometimes Breeding Barn limits (Don't have a house rule yet that satisfies me), also selling bread horses is an too easy way of making money
-sometimes i manually train

First off, do you set yourself some houserules to make the game more challenging and/or realistic, and if so, which ones?



Strategies:
With my set of house rules, especially the start is a hit or miss, what would you recommend to do first off?
I once made it, but only because one starting horse was pretty good and won races and i was able to sell it with a huge profit.
But what to do if both starting horses are rubbish? If i sell them for few bucks and i try to buy a horse in an auction with the money i have left (usually around 80-100 k), i'm doomed if the horse turns out to be crappy

I've read some posts that there are players trying to start the game with -selling races-, what is the best strategy there? (without unrealistic exploits of course )

Also other tips/strategies/house rules for an enhanced realistic and/or challenging gameplay are welcomed

You could always delete the Skill bars of the horse so you do not know what the horse is potentially capable of by just looking at the bars. Would have to use Gallops and Races to assess how good a horse is then.

Cool, thank you!! how can i do that?

That could help make it a little more interesting. How's it possible?

i would assume by deleting all image files that relate to the bars.