Horse card

Everywhere a horse's name appears, it is clickable: in your lists, in a finish, in a sale advertisement, in a message. This card is therefore the most visited screen in the game.

What you see on it depends on the link you have with the horse. Its owner, its trainer and its jockey find buttons and information there that a mere onlooker does not have.

The identity

Name — editable if the horse is yours. Each name is unique in the game; if you struggle to find one, set a breeding suffix in My account: you will then only need to be unique within your own breeding operation.

Speciality — flat, hurdle or trot. There are no breeds in Sulkyland, and you only breed between horses of the same speciality.

Sex — for a male, a Neuter button makes a gelding of him. He gains obedience from it and, on Almina and Bezir, a biorhythm that never goes below zero: no more bad days. The operation costs 10,000 sulkies and it is final — a gelding no longer breeds. See Neuter.

Age — a horse is born at one year old and gains one more each real month.

Retirement — its date is set from birth and is particular to each horse: the card gives it to you. You can bring it forward when you see fit with Retire; and if that was a mistake, the same place offers to cancel it.

Quota, for a stallion: the number of matings he has left.

The genetics

This is what defines the horse's abilities. The card shows two versions of them: the current genetics, today's, and the birth genetics, which say where it started from. The gap between the two is the work accomplished.

Speed: the pace at which it runs without tiring. The main characteristic.
Resistance: its ability to run faster than its base speed, and to hold it. It is what makes its stamina and its riding points.
Suppleness: its adaptation to the turf, its ease in changing pace — and, over hurdles, less risk of falling.
Obedience: its faithfulness to the jockey's instructions. An obedient horse is regular; in trot, it breaks stride less often.
Constitution, on Chorus only: how quickly it progresses in training.

On Almina and Bezir, speed, resistance and suppleness progress through training, and obedience through tests. On Chorus, everything progresses through training.

Each bar is read in two places: the horse's current value, and on the right the maximum reached by horses of its age. You thus place yours at a glance, without having to compare in your head. The colour and the symbol say the rest — still far from its maximum, close to it, or arrived at it.

The Display line decides who sees these genetics: everybody, the members of your clan, or only the team that manages the horse. It is up to you to judge between discretion and showing off when you sell.

The biorhythm

It is the form of the moment, and it does not behave the same way everywhere.

On Almina and Bezir, one single biorhythm is displayed, the one for resistance. It follows a regular curve, hour by hour, and it is periodic — but the period depends on the horse and can go up to a fortnight. By noting its values down for one or two weeks, you will be able to foresee the periods when it will be at its best. Beware, though: an intensive training course draws a new curve and makes the record obsolete. See Biorhythm.

On Chorus, two biorhythms are displayed, and they follow no curve: they react to what you do. Each point on the graph is a training session, a race or a test. A ride that uses the horse well makes it rise; pushing too hard, or not hard enough, makes it fall. It is explained in detail in Jockey — My races.

The biorhythm of a horse that is not yet born is not known.

The performances

Free earnings and Extended earnings: two earnings totals, fed by different races. The name is misleading — “extended” does not include “free”, they are two separate categories.

Regulated races feed the extended earnings.
Free races, cups and races with random genetics feed the free earnings.
Competitions feed the extended earnings when they are organised by a competition manager, appointed by the game's team; the others feed the free earnings.

It is also the total on which a race admits you. A free race, a cup or a random-genetics race looks at your free earnings; a regulated race or a competition looks at your extended earnings. Hence entry refusals that are sometimes puzzling: when a race answers that your horse has not got the earnings required, it may be the other total it has read, the one you were not looking at.

You do not have to remember this table: a race's card always tells you which total it will add its earnings to, on its “Earnings” line. Look at it before entering if your horse's record matters to you.

Why two totals? Because not all events are worth the same. A race arranged between players who have an understanding can inflate a record; by keeping those earnings apart, the game keeps a figure that can be relied on.

Basis score and Score with handicap: its sporting value, calculated on its results in regulated races — the first on races without a handicap, the second on those with one. It rises by winning, and above all by beating stronger horses than itself.

Balanced time: its reference time. The time achieved is brought back to the kilometre, then corrected for the distance, the weather and the speciality, so as to remain comparable from one race to another. The game keeps the best one for thirty days, then calculates a new one.

Next race finally, with what you need to prepare, to withdraw the entry, or to enter the horse if it is free.

The team

Owner, trainer, jockey, breeder and breeding operation. The first three are changed from here; a contract offered but not yet accepted is displayed underneath, under the heading Next.

The Owners button opens the horse's ownership history: everybody it has belonged to, with the date each received it, from the most recent to the oldest. A clan appears there like a player. It is the horse's past: useful before buying, and often instructive on a champion.

Your own landmarks

Folders: free labels, which you define in My account and place on your horses — one per role, since the same horse may concern you as owner, trainer, jockey or breeder. They then serve to filter your lists, and they are the best tool when the stable grows.

Notepad: free text, with three possible readerships — you alone, the team that manages the horse, or everybody. Handy for noting what worked, or warning the jockey of a peculiarity.

The buttons at the top

Genealogy: its parents and its descendants, at a glance.
Training and Test: the two ways of making it progress, for whoever has the right.
Races: all its history, and a summary by age — races run, wins, places.
Medals: those it has won in competition.
Change the picture: eighteen pictures are provided, and you can upload one of your own. Out of consideration for other players, prefer a picture of a real horse — it does not matter that its coat does not match the one in the game.

Selling or giving

The For sale line sums up the state of the sale and lets you change it. Three forms are possible:

fixed price: the first to accept the price takes it;
reserved: only the player you designate can buy;
auction: to the highest bidder at the deadline.

You can also give the horse, but that always goes through a clan — there is no direct gift from one player to another:

Give to the clan: if you are the horse's owner and a member of a clan, you pass it on to the clan;
Give to a member: if the horse belongs to the clan, its owner can hand it on to one of the members, by entering their username.

If you are in no clan, those two links do not appear. To pass a horse on to somebody in particular, a reserved sale is then the right way: you designate the buyer and set the price.

A horse in final retirement

Its card is reduced to the essentials: name, owner, breeder, sex, earnings and scores, with the genealogy, the races and the medals. Its career is closed, but its record and its descendants remain readable by all.