After reading these forums for a few weeks I thought I may as well join up, thanks for having me and look forward to chatting with you all.

I first bought John McCrirrick's from Morrison's years ago for about a fiver and the game got plenty of stick, I've now moved onto the latest version and pleased to find the game has lost none of its playability (addictiveness!)

I'm in my 3rd season on the flat, have a 6/7f Gp1 winner in my stables as well as a couple of Gp II & III's too, best of all my homebred 2yo has just won a GpII at in his 4th start so next season looks to be a good one already.

Hello for now hope we can get to chat later.

Welcome to the forum Four Legs Good

Love the name by the way

Cheers for the welcome PJR, I have enjoyed reading many of your posts.

I enjoy thinking up the names for the 2YOs although, to be fair, the names is often better than the horse is

Quick question while I am here;

How many horses do players find actually perfom at the ave breeding indicator as displayed? i know it is only an indicator - but has anyone had a horse that performs best at a distance wildly different form the suggested one?

Yes especially as you breed more horses and especially if you breed 5fx14f.

An indication that the game recommendation is wrong is a stamina bar at odds with the distance. The variation could be as much as +/- 3 furlong in my experience

Ta akhc, I have some horses that perform well for 80% of a race then fade badly or get outpaced - I will experiment with these over a trip and see how they get on.

I need to whittle my stables down to about 30 runners, I have almost 50 at the minute, majority of them no better than class 3 or 4 but I can't bring myself to get rid in case they improve. (I'm sure we've all been there!)

Are those horses that perform 80% of the race front runners i.e. early pace/race handy. In that case try giving the jockey specific instructions e.g. even pace/slight hold up. In my experience horses that are early pace that don't get the whole race distance do that even in shorter distances. I should I know.. I have a whole bunch of them to act as pacemakers in my CK trials! If they aren't competitive with even pace/slight hold up then they might be good for breeding but they won't even win you races.

As a rule I let the jockey choose the pace, unless there is a horse in the race that I know will run at a specific pace and I will try to counter them with a contrasting style.

When booking races I try to match as best I can the conditions to the horse in the following order.

1. grade
2. distance
3. going
4. Track suitability (sharp, flat, undulating etc)

Although it doesn't happen often that all 4 criteria match, I will be happy to race with 3 out of 4 matches.

There'll come a time when it won't matter as you get breeding as your horses will surpass anything the game has to offer.

From a breeding viewpoint, the good ones to breed are the ones which win regardless of any of the variables (distance excepted to an extent).

I hope that day is some time off yet! I'm enjoying the challenge. I am thinking of retiring my G1 5yo this season and breeding him with one of the game horses, I have a yearling this year bred from Obe One from the game pool, she has 20-odd Gp1 wins, I will use them two lines to further my stables.

Good Evening All , I'm also a regular player of the game , But there is one thing that I would like to me which is bugging me! , How do you ride your own horses in races? - I have done it once but don't know how I did it , if anyone could help me out It would be greatly appreciated , thanks very much

Frankelstien

Hiya Frankelstein

When you start SO5 up click on the start menu and at the bottom of the page you will see a 'Show Options' menu, click on it and the option is there for 'arcade Jockey controls', click that load your file and you should be good to go.

The instructions for jockey controls are in the manual.

Welcome to the community to both 4-legs and Frankelstein.

welcome all, look forward to seeing your horses

I will put up some of my horses later once I work how, I always get a blank screen when I paste into paint.

My 2 YO homebred will run in his first maiden tonight, he's a quality looking beast and I called him 'Mailman' cos I hope he delivers!!

you might need fraps

i had that issue with last laptop
always got black screen
so i got fraps which has the ability to take screenshots