Hi

I have started doing some trials for the new league season. I am beginning to wonder how accurate\reliable my testing proceedure is. Let me give an example.

I had 40 horses I wanted to trial over 2m fences, so I just selected the first 12 horses in the list and raced them over 10 trial races. One horse trailled better than the rest, but there were another 4 horses that were all about equal second best. I kept these 5 horses and selected the next 7 horses on the list and trialled them 10 times again. The same horse again trialled the best again, with 2 of the others that were second best showing up well.

I kept these 3 horses plus 2 horses from the new batch and imported 7 new horses, tralling them again 10 times. The strange thing was, the horse that had done so well before fell 6 times out of 10. This was strange and a little disappointing as I thought I had found a great candidate for the league.

Anyway, I had more trialling to do, so I kept the best 5 horses plus the horse that had just failed and imported 6 more horses and trailled again for 10 races. The horse that had just failed so spectacularly was again back to its winning ways, winning 3 races and placing highly in another 4 races.


This makes me wonder if there were other horses that were rejected just because the CK was doing strange things.


How much do green bars count when trialling as the horse in question had 100% consistancy green bar. The same as just about all the horses I was trialling.

I have thought about this many times I do think the CK in NH Trialing is bit hit or miss and I think it comes down to obstacles and slow jumps in the Flat CK its the draw or getting room that can throw up different results I also believe you can trial a batch one day and you wont get the exact results again although you would know which is your best horse through consistency.


Gray

You are correct about results varying from day to day. This morning I had a spare half hour hour before going to work so ran 6 trial races. When I came home from work and resumed trialling with exactly the same horses I achieved a totally different set of results.

I usually only give a horse 10 - 12 races to prove some kind of form, but when I trial say 15 horses over about 25 races, amost every horse shows some kind of form in 3 or 4 races.

Personally, I would like to see some more consistancy when trialling. Quite often after I have trialled horses, there are as many as five horses that have shown up equally as well and it is very subjective as to which horse is actually the best.

I haven't trialled as much as you guys but from my short experience in the CK - my good in game horses tend to be my best horses when trialling.

Small amount of trialling (flat only) I have done showed my best horse to be one that only ever won 3 G1's in my save, whereas the 35 G1 monster I bred consistently came 7th in a variety of courses and goings. Then I raced both 1v1 on 20 different courses and the 35G1 horse won 17 of those, and most by 6-7 lengths. That's when I stopped trialing... it just wasn't making any sense to me at all.

Great post!

Actually, it might make sense. Did you pay attention to the pace of the races in the game vs the CK? A horse that needs a slow pace to win might clean up in the game, but against horses that set a faster pace in the CK it might blow its stam bar and fade to early. Compare the early and mid fractions of the leaders in those. Also, a closer is less hampered by this, assuming it has the accel & spd to close gap before end, and it had instructions to hang back far enough.

My latest game tossed me a bunch of front runners, so while I don't use the trailing stuff yet, I'm running into it. I could check more on my own ... if I tried riding them. Hopeless at controls (they are posted but I have a combo of a migraine and a tropical storm - Hello Matthew! right now), so not going to try it and verify it is the stam bars not matching pace in my races yet.

Interested in hearing your results.
I think riding them only gives you their preferred racing position - besides that it still comes down to judging the pace of the race and your tactics - not getting caught flat footed when the pace comes on or getting to far back etc.

try running 12 horse trials no pace maker i run 3 at ascot 3 at nmkt 3 on dirt put 1st 3 through (poss dirt runner will show)to a semi/quarter final do this with your whole string (you can make it easier by choosing horses that run within 2f of esch other) till you get down to 12/16 horses then run your finals

There are a stack of variables to consider in my experience, numbers of horses in the trial, type of horse running styles, race pace etc etc, there is no exact science far as I can tell anymore than there is in actual racing and as you cannot control what you run against in the league I would not worry too much about it. I just run a stack of races over predetermined distances and mark any horse finishing 1st to 3rd each race. Usually say 30+ trials per group/distance, any horse that gets 2 or more marks stays in the export list to try their hand against the next lot. I'll have to whittle it down more for my final league team, but it is how I approach to to keep it manageable.

In my tests there were some quick and slow races, variety of conditions too. Went and did another 5 races now to check and it seems the higher rated horse wins easily 1on1 but when in a larger field it underperforms... not even being blocked or anything. It's interesting but not sure what to really make of it.

I would also say I have seen little correlation between in game excellence and ck excellence. That's not to say total nags magically come good, but I have had loads of multi g1 winning horses beaten in ck by those they owned in game. And plenty who based on the horse stats I was sure were going to be the next great thing turn out to be duds. I am not even playing the game right now in an effort to churn through the breeding years to improve my league showing.