So, somehow, I've managed to stumble across SO5 having not played any horse racing related games ever... and I'm completely addicted. I've churned my way through about 20 seasons already (on a combined schedule) yet found I had questions that NEEDED answering. Therefore, I've come here to find the answers. Any help would be much appreciated

a) How on Earth do you know if you've got a good jumper? The "jump" stat bar seems completely irrelevant - so what do you need to judge whether or not a horse will be good over the fences? Furthermore, how do they get trained... or are they automatically a "jump" horse once they've been over the fences once?

b) How important are the initial stat bars (stam, speed, accel, start) in comparison to the more detailed stat bars (confidence, extra speed etc.)? I've had horses with full speed, decent stamina and good acceleration who can't win Group races! Always infuriates me, but I'm guessing these bars are simply a guide.

c) Therefore... which stat bars are most important for judging how good a horse will be?!

I'm looking forward to sharing my greatest horse screenshots at some point in time - maybe they'll actually stand up against some of the others on here

Firstly I'm glad someone else has come across the best horse racing game out there.

I would be wary of the combined schedule because there are still some ongoing issues which are proving hard to fix with it. I'd advise sticking to flat or jumps and transferring horses between the two.

a) Look on the training screen, the page where you can choose a group of horses to gallop together and see what the head lad has to say about the jumping ability. That's about all there is to go on as far as I know. I'll only transfer a horse who has 'good' jumping ability into my jumps game, I would consider an 'average' one if it had 'good' jumping in it's breeding and if it had a preference for soft ground.

b) Ignore all the stats bars except for the 'potential' one, the top one. The rest are meaningless really when it comes to group 1 winners. If you have a full potential bar but the rest are empty the horse will still more likely than not win lots of G1's. 75% or less and you might pick up a 2yo or early 3yo G1, maybe some fillies G1's, but you won't have something with form that will stand up against the older horses.

c) Same as above.

Also WOOHOO I beat PJ to posting in this thread!

not really that important mate
main 1 is obviously ability bars and consistency bar

dont play jumps game alot i think its trial and error

dam by 3mins

i had the topic open with no replays and was thinking of the answer to give typed in my reply and you were there b4 me Supercat

Cheers for the replies both

I thought the combined game would be good - mix it up between the flat and the fences. Either/or is probably better then?

It isn't about it being good or not. There are still some technical faults with the combined schedule meaning you run a very high risk of losing everything if you solely use that mode. I know some of them have been very hard to replicate and reproduce which is why they are still issues.

Losing everything even if the save file is there? That would be fairly painful after 20 odd seasons! May have to start up a pure jump game tonight... I want to go for the National

Yes files have been becoming corrupted for whatever reason and unless you back up, sometimes even if you do there is nothing you can do. Some people have got on fine with it, but just a word of warning because there are some issues which just haven't been fixed yet.

Ok, cool. I appreciate the word of warning .

Truly is a cracking game though - can't really believe how addictive it is!

Any other tips I should know about for producing the best of the best?