Selecting the right races for your horses

One of the most popular topics amongst new players and smaller stables is where and when to race their horses. You can't make a bad horse a good horse, but you can enter it into races that it at least has some chance of winning. Too many horses are given up on too early, and too many are persevered with for too long.

There are two main factors to consider when racing your horses. First, what is the optimal distance for your horse. We have dealt with this previously, but there are some details to add to this process. Second, how competitive is the race, and how do I determine what level of racing my horse can compete at?

Finding the optimal distance

I don't want to cover old ground here, so please read this post if you haven't done so already, and the rest of this will make more sense! The simplest way to think about distance is you have four attributes; start, speed, stamina and finish. These attributes affect your horses' optimal distance. Heart and temper don't seem to change the optimal distance, so let's just ignore them for now. The problem is you don't know what your horse's grades are for these attributes. So you are going to have to use what clues we have available.

My horse, Shotgun Shack is a great example of a 4F specialist. Rubbish at every other distance, she nevertheless earned 50k at 4F.

5-7F sprinters still need good start, but now speed is more important, and will probably be their dominant attribute. From 5 to 7F the importance of start and stamina begin to switch places. These horses give you a bit more flexibility in finding races. If a horse races well at 5-6F but dislikes 7F, its probably a sign of poor to average stamina. Finish doesn't seem to be important.

Middle distance runners (7-9F) tend to have well balanced attributes across the four. Some start/finish horses are bad middle distance runners as the peaks cancel each other out. The best middle distance runners have high attributes in both speed and stamina.

Longer distance runners (9-11F) tend to have stamina as their dominant attribute. More finish definitely helps at the longer end and more speed at the shorter end.

Finally 12F specialists are the inverse of 4F ones, and everything said about them holds true if you swap start for finish, and speed for stamina. You can't be a dominant 12F specialist without strong finish. If you see a horse that you believe (you used the parent mid-point guide) is a 12F specialist and isn't being run there snatch it from the market or claimers and enter it there.

Don't over think it, horses can have strange rolls and differ from their parents. Test different distances, and compare performances under similar conditions. Check the relative times on the boxplots on your horse's profile and review the FF ratings. Neither are perfect but they will give you a steer.

Finding the right races

I see this question come up time and again, so I thought I would try to address the logic I use to select races. You may have different logic, and it is probably better than mine, but for the purposes of new owners coming into the game consider this a 101.

Entering your horses into races they most probably won't win is the fastest way to going broke in this game. Deciding not to enter a horse could be the most profitable thing you do. Knowing when to retire or give up on a racing age horse is also crucial to your profit. Just because you bred a horse, it doesn't take 20 races to figure out if it can win for you.

In the last post I shared a number of juvenile benchmarks. Use this data to assess whether your horse is capable of winning the first two types of race on what I call the "happy path" of progression in the game. After that you are on your own. These benchmarks will change over time as areas of the game mature - but for now they are a good ready reckoner of determining whether your horse can win.

I have created this foolproof (we shall see) process flow diagram to help guide your logic on which races to enter your horse. Use the benchmarks, use your understanding the optimal distance and together with this diagram you should somewhere on the journey to more profitable racing.

If I don't know anything about a horse and it's optimal distance, I look at the parents and figure out what the mid-points of their grades are. This gives me a starting point to determine whether I think they have rolled as a sprinter, mid-distance or long-distance runner. You can either eyeball the bloodline chart of the horse in question and do the math in your head, or look-up the estimates on photofinishedge (PFE). The image above is from PFE and is a horse I recently claimed. It's best attributes are start and speed equally, so I immediately think 5-6F.

To keep it simple let's say there are five distance types.

1. 4F specialists

2. 5-7F sprinters

3. 7-9F middle distance runners

4. 9-11F long distance runners

5. 12F specialists

4F specialists generally have start as their top attribute and its usually above their speed attribute, which is generally also high. Some are good at 5-6F too, some are just good at this one distance. You don't really know whether you have one of these horses unless you run them at 4F. They will probably be okay to good at 5-6F and terrible at anything longer.

A few things to note. Start with maidens. Unless you have some great insight this is where us mortals should begin. They are relatively cheap (for an S- horse its 700 Derby to enter), and you can keep entering until you win one.

If you win your first or second maiden with a good time (check the benchmarks) you want to head directly to Restricted Stakes racing. These are stakes races where only your grade of horse can enter. The price shoots up for an S- to 1,820 Derby, but good news, so does the rewards. This is not the place to explore your optimal distance. Figure that out in cheaper races. If you horse is good enough, this is the path to significant profit. The qualifiers for mini-majors is where you want to go. If you have a high end horse, this is just a stepping stone to Open Stakes, where there are no grade limits.

This class of racing is for the elite only, the fees go up and the purse goes up exponentially. If your horse can win regularly here, you will make a decent track profit and be setup well for post racing activities. Enter every applicable race to maximise your profits - your horse has a limited career.

If you struggle in maidens, you need to lower your ambitions. If you scrape through your maiden after several attempts or in a slow four horse race, you might not cut the step up to Graded Stakes. In that case consider Allowances or Handicaps. What is the difference? Well mid-grade horses (upper As and lower Ss) tend to win their fair share of allowances. Allowances give higher grade horses additional weight to carry at 2lbs per grade. These races are similar to Restricted Stakes, with the advantage levelled out across 3-4 grades, but the best horses are all entered into Restricted Stakes trying to win more money, so the level of competition tends to be lower, and therefore easier to win. Allowances are cheap (500 or 750 for an S-) so a much better place to figure out your optimal distance.

Handicaps are open to all grades and each horse is handicapped based on the line-up of that race. This type of racing is better suited to highly optimised (9 star) lower grade horses, who win fairly often. If your horse is at the lower end of A and into the Bs - handicaps will be your go-to race. At 455 Derby they are cheaper again. How handicaps are calculated is not as visible as Allowances. A popular tactic is to try to enter Allowances as the lowest allowed grade. In handicaps this isn't possible, so pick your poison on these two types of race.

If you can't cut it in Handicaps or Allowances, we are starting to question whether your horse can win at all. Benchmark races are like Open Stakes races with criteria that limit who can enter. The benchmark figure dictates who is allowed in, and there might be other criteria like the maximum number of wins. I think Benchmarks could be great in PFL, but at the moment I struggle to figure out their place in the hierachy. Whenever you find a BM that puts your horse in just under the maximum allowed, you generally find a number of other horses with higher grades and lower BMs ready to hammer you.

In season 20, we have seen a resurgence in Claimers. The cheapest form of racing (starting from less than 100 Derby). Horses that were previously put out to pasture, can now make you money running in the Claimers. Obviously you have to be happy losing the horse to a claim, but those horses you have on the marketplace could actually be making you money in claimers, and if they get claimed, well you achieved your goal of trying to sell the horse. If your horses can't win any other form of racing, try the Claimers. If your horse is half-way decent someone will probably claim it, so there is a risk.

If you can't win Claimers, stop flogging your horse. Save yourself the time, money and effort and move onto your next prospect. Maybe they will get an age boost and you can try again in future seasons.

I hope this diagram has helped you apply some logic to race selection, and in the process helped you to stop hemorrhaging your money on races you can't realistically win. Race selection is one factor in this game that is entirely under your command. So, try not to screw it up.

Footnote: there have been several great additions from various members of the community that I just want to tag onto this post, for those coming to it fresh:

• Some people skip Maidens, and go straight to Allowances- allowances are cheaper than Maidens for optimal distance discovery (some go straight to Restricted Stakes if they are confident). Courtesy of MJ from https://www.mjinformatics.com/

• It's important to check the purse versus the entry fee. Some races are juiced with additional money available and it makes sense to target races where the purse is higher for no extra effort (Velo Racing)

• Check on the number of runners in each type of race available. Field size can dictate how hard it is to win and the likelihood you can race profitably

Join the fun and put these insights into practice at PhotoFinish.Live and if you are considering starting your own stable please consider using my referral code: PADDOCK or just click on this link: https://signup.photofinish.live/?referralCode=PADDOCK

Please remember this is a web3 game where you spend your own money. Nothing I write about should be considered financial or investment advice.

Other blog posts:

• How good is your new juvenile: https://aipaddock.com/how-good-is-my-new-juvenile-horse

• Tips for breeding strategies: https://aipaddock.com/charting-the-uncharted-in-breeding-within-pfl

• Know your odds of breeding success: https://aipaddock.com/know-your-odds-before-you-roll-the-dice

• Further down the rabbit hole of ML: https://aipaddock.com/deeper-down-the-morning-line-rabbit-hole-we-go

• What can ML prices tell us: https://aipaddock.com/skill-luck-and-morning-lines

• Finding the optimal distance: https://aipaddock.com/understanding-optimal-distances

• Understanding breeding: https://aipaddock.com/understanding-the-most-successful-breeding-horses-in-pfl

• What are subgrades: https://aipaddock.com/what-are-subgrades-and-how-do-they-work

• Fastest horses: https://aipaddock.com/who-are-the-fastest-horses-in-the-game

• Racing profitability: https://aipaddock.com/how-much-profit-do-you-make-racing-horses

• Trueskill pvp ratings: https://aipaddock.com/which-horse-is-the-goat-in-pfl

• Breeding: https://aipaddock.com/trying-to-understand-breeding-in-pfl

• Evaluating horses: https://aipaddock.com/how-good-is-my-horse

• Understanding performance: https://aipaddock.com/understanding-the-true-performance-of-your-horse

• Do stars matter: https://aipaddock.com/how-much-do-preferences-matter

• FF Rating vs Finish Time: https://aipaddock.com/the-difference-between-ff-rating-and-finishing-time

• Are horses getting faster: https://aipaddock.com/are-pfl-horses-getting-faster