Being a racecourse manager
Racecourse manager is the only trade that does not look after a horse. You manufacture the supply of races: the other players enter their horses in them, and it is on their entry fees that you live.
One consequence to set down at once, because it governs all the rest: you get nothing from the prizes, you pay them. The trainer, the jockey and the breeder take a percentage of what a horse wins; the racecourse manager, for his part, advances the money and recovers it from the entries. This page explains that mechanism. The detail of the screens is elsewhere.
The journey of the money, in order
- When the race is created, the game immediately takes from you the total of the prizes announced, plus the punter's jackpot if there is one. Not enough balance, no race: the creation is refused.
- While entries are open, the Takings column rises with each entry, and falls back if somebody withdraws. It is a counter: the money has not been paid to you yet.
- When entries close, the game pays you the entry cost multiplied by the number of runners kept. And if the race brings together 12 runners or more, a filling bonus of 1,000 sulkies is added to it.
- At the start, the prizes go off to the owners — but they are paid from step 1. The result of the race changes nothing more in your account.
In other words: your profit is known when entries close, not at the finish. Who wins the race is, financially, a matter of indifference to you.
The break-even threshold
This is the central figure of the trade, and it is displayed everywhere: on your races, on your calendars, and even on the card the owners consult.
The threshold is the number of entries from which the race starts to pay you. Below it, you lose the difference; above it, you pocket it. The scales the game offers are built exactly for that: a threshold of 8 spreads over five places a total of prizes worth eight times the entry cost. Eight entered and you break even.
A low threshold makes the race attractive — a big prize for a modest stake — and makes you run a risk. A high threshold protects you and attracts fewer people. The whole trade lies in that trade-off.
The “Auto” mode, or how to risk nothing
You can let the game set the prizes. In that case nothing is taken at creation, and the scale is calculated at closing, from the real number of runners. It is built to leave you, whatever that number, about 10% of the entries.
The number of places paid follows the size of the field:
| Runners | Places paid |
|---|---|
| 2 or 3 | the winner alone |
| 4 or 5 | two places |
| 6 or 7 | three places |
| 8 or 9 | four places |
| 10 and over | five places |
An example to fix ideas. Entry cost 1,000 sulkies, ten runners: the game funds 2,790, 2,250, 1,800, 1,440 and 720, that is 9,000 of prizes for 10,000 of takings. You keep 1,000. With twenty runners, 18,000 of prizes for 20,000 of takings, plus the filling bonus: 3,000.
Auto is the sensible choice to begin with, and it remains a good one afterwards: it calls for no calculation, it cannot ruin you, and it adapts by itself to the turnout. Its drawback is that it attracts nobody in particular: an auto race does not stand out from the others.
A small display curiosity: as long as the race is open, its threshold shows Auto; once entries are closed, it shows the number of runners, since that is what served as the scale.
The two ways of losing money
The race does not have enough entries. Depending on the Postponements setting you chose, it is put back 24 hours once or twice, then cancelled. On cancellation, the owners are refunded and you get your prizes back, less 500 sulkies of penalty. A cancelled race therefore costs 500 sulkies, no more — but a series of cancelled races costs a series of 500s.
You delete the race yourself. That is much more expensive, and it is meant to be: you refund the entries and pay on top an indemnity to each owner entered. The detail is in Delete a race. Deleting an empty race costs nothing; deleting a well-filled one costs a lot. The game refuses the operation if you have not got the means to pay.
Three rules that come as a surprise
A regulated race in which every entry belongs to the same owner is treated as under-subscribed, even if the minimum number of entries is reached. A regulated race is a sporting event: it must bring at least two stables up against each other. There is no point, then, in hoping to make your horses race one another in a regulated race — go through a free race.
In the last hour before the entry deadline, the quotas open up. The maximum number of horses per owner and per jockey is raised by one. That is the mechanism that saves lightly entered races: do not judge the filling too early, the last places are often taken at the end.
Twenty runners at most. If more horses are entered, the last to arrive are withdrawn at closing — their horses become available again at once. Only cups escape the limit: they are cut into heats.
What the trade really calls for
Technically, creating a race is a two-minute business. The difficulty is elsewhere: a race only exists if horses can and want to enter it.
A race for 2-year-olds over 4,000 metres over hurdles, in a high earnings band, will interest nobody — not because it is badly made, but because the horses that would be eligible for it do not exist. It is the most frequent beginner's mistake, and it costs 500 sulkies every time.
The Statistics screen is made for that, and it is the only tool in the game that measures a demand: how many horses could race in a given category, and how many races have actually taken place in it. A manager who looks at it before creating does not create the same races as a manager who does not.
The competition manager status
Some managers receive a particular status, granted by hand by the webmaster. It opens up three things the others do not have:
- the Competition class, with its entry deadline adjustable up to six hours before the start and its punter's jackpot;
- the My medallists screen, to award medals;
- the right to refuse an entry.
That last point deserves detail, because it is the only place in the game where one player acts on another's entry. Open your race's card, then the Start button: each entry there carries a delete button. The conditions are strict, and all four are required — the race must be a competition, must still be in the Registration state, the entry deadline must not have passed, and the horse must not have received its number.
The owner is then refunded in full, his horse becomes available again at once, and he receives an internal message telling him that his entry has been refused. You gain nothing from it and you lose some takings: it is a tool of sporting judgement, not a financial one.
A word of usage, therefore: the message the player receives is terse, it only says that his entry is refused. If you organise a competition with rules, announce them in advance and explain your refusal of your own accord. An entry set aside without explanation is felt as an injustice, and legitimately so.
The tools of the trade
- My races: creating, modifying and following your races one by one.
- My calendar: having them created automatically, every day, every week or every month. It is the tool of established managers — you set it once, the race comes back by itself.
- My race track: drawing your racetrack and giving it a name. Optional: without a track of your own, your races are run on the default track.
- Statistics: the state of the market.
And to place your results among those of the other managers, see the corresponding ranking in Players: it compares the entry money collected with the prizes paid out, which is exactly the measure of this trade.