Has anyone gotten a good game going simply by using the money you start with, selling and buying horses only. No betting or Cheats either.

I know it would multiply the difficulty and would imagine take a fair few season to get going.

I've tried it a few times never getting as far as breeding your own.

Selling the horses you start with gives you a fighting chance of doing this.

Didnt cheat to achieve my current game status but took a long while to establish my stable.

Im now 22 seasons in breeding several new horses every season and buying a few at 2yo Auction i currently have max stable capacity of 100 horses and current bank balance in game is approx £122m.

Yeah I usually do this at the start of any new game, always gives you a decent head start.

Wow, that's impressive!

And this was done with no cheating or placing any bets what so ever, just wheeling & dealing in the auctions ect. ?

Do you have any tips? I plan to start a new game playing this way.

Cheers.

Never cheat!!....buy cheap, sell on.....Lather/rinse/repeat. When you can breed, do so. Have fun with it, try variations(I often find that auction horses running over the wrong distances, have the greatest return value once raced correctly)...But above all dont succomb to amateur gaming levels!!

Ive got a game going like that now. Its not that hard to be honest.
First of all i start on hard diffeculty (2 horses, 50000) UK flat only. Then i check the jockeys fee and percentages. I dont know if its a bug or just me but sometimes when i start a game the top jockeys only want 100 per ride. Usually its 350 or something like that. Then i put feed, stable workers etc all on low.
I like to do my own training as well but thats another matter, so i wont bother going into that.
I usually hang on to my 2yo so that i can use it to take other horses out on to the gallops. Then sell it a little later. Hopefully your 3yo is a horse that likes 5F - 1M because there isnt that many claiming races over 1M. I try and buy cheap horses that are not excitable and are between 5F and 1M.
Put your horse in a claimer and put 0 for claim weight. It should be entered at 7 10 . Now find a jockey that you like at 7 10 or under and hire him for the ride. It can be hard at the start because there are horses that are too good to be in claimers but it soon sorts its self out. When you win a claimer your horse goes up for sale at 4000. Buy it back if you want, you only pay 8% (i think) of the price.
If your horse wins a claimer its rating goes up 2 points. If it wins a selling race it goes up 3. Its a little harder to win selling races because your horse carries about the same weight as the other runners.
Middle to late season start buying cheap 2yo. You can pick up a decent 1 or 2 then enter them into claimers and sellers the following season. Start the process all over again. When you get your horses to 70-80 rating the highest bid for them should be getting up to 50000-70000, sell them.
Like i say its not that hard, just a little time consuming. I think alot of people skip doing it this way to concentrate more on breeding.
If ive missed something or wrong about something please let me know.