Create a race

The window that creates a race, and that serves to change it too. It is long because a race has a great many settings, but the essential comes down to three questions: for which horses?, when?, and what does it cost me?

The values offered when it opens make up a viable race. You can save without touching anything other than the name.

The class, first of all

It is the first choice and the most decisive one: it decides what the other fields will allow you. And it is no longer changeable once the race is created.

Regulated: the game's normal race. The frame is imposed — ages by categories, earnings by bands, winnings within a scale — and in exchange its results count in full: it is the only class that feeds the extended earnings and the competition score. It is the one the owners are looking for.
Free: you do as you please, with practically no constraint. The drawback is twofold: the earnings of a free race are counted separately and do not have the same value (see Statistics), and it hands out no Kdo points. It is the class of friendly races, challenges and unusual formulas.
For my clan: a free race automatically reserved for your clan. The choice appears only if you are in a clan.
Competition: reserved for the managers appointed to organise the game's competitions. The choice does not appear for the others — and if the value were to arrive there by some other path, it would be brought back to Regulated. It alone gives access to the punter's jackpot, to an adjustable entry deadline and to the right to refuse an entry: see the racecourse manager's trade.

Beside the class, Using a model appears if you have calendars set to On demand (model). Choosing a model fills the whole window in one go. It is the right way to play a proven formula again without typing it in afresh: see My calendar.

Description of the race

Name of the race: twenty characters, compulsory. It is what the owners will see in the lists — a telling name gets noticed, a nondescript one gets lost.

Speciality: flat, hurdles or trotting. Only horses of that speciality will be able to enter.

Track and length: the list of tracks shows in brackets the maximum distance of each, and the length is chosen in steps of 100 metres within that limit. If you have drawn no track, your races are run on the default track. See My race track.

Postponements: None, Maximum one time or Maximum two times. It is your safety net against short fields: rather than cancelling, the race is pushed back 24 hours keeping its entrants. Two postponements are almost always better than none — a postponement costs nothing, a cancellation costs 500 sulkies.

Race start: a day among the next thirty-one, and a one-hour time slot. You do not choose the minute: the game assigns it, taking the first free one, so that two races of the same class never start on the same minute. And the start cannot be placed less than four hours from now: if you ask for earlier, it is pushed back.

Entry deadline: set at fifteen minutes before the start, and that is not adjustable. Only competitions allow it to be brought forward, up to six hours, to leave the participants time to prepare their horses.

The starting positions, which are not cosmetic

This field decides the allocation of the numbers, and the number decides the place on the line: number 1 starts nearest the rail, and the rail gains ground in the bends. It is not a sentence — a jockey can change line during the race — but it is a real advantage at the start.

By extended earnings: the least rich gets number 1. It is the fair choice, the one that helps small horses.
Randomly: drawn by lot.
The judge's feeling: the most obedient in front. Flattering for well-schooled horses, and rather unpredictable.

The field disappears if you set a handicap: it is then the handicap that arranges the field.

The handicap

A handicap brings the forces closer together at the start. How it works depends on the speciality.

In trotting, it sets the richest horses back. You give a setback of 5 to 25 metres and the earnings threshold from which it applies; the horses concerned start from a second line. In a regulated race, the game works out those two values itself from the race's earnings band: 5 metres for the small bands, then 10, 15, 20, and 25 for the open band, the threshold being placed in the middle of the band.

On the flat and over hurdles, the handicap is worked out on the times and has no parameter to set. The slowest start in front, and the gap in balanced time between two successive horses widens the handicap, by capped steps. Two consequences to know about: a horse with no reference time, or whose last time is more than thirty days old, automatically takes the maximum handicap. A handicap race is therefore not good ground for an untried horse.

Criteria: who can enter

Everything here is a filter: the more of them you set, the fewer horses will be able to come. It is the number one cause of cancelled races.

Age and earnings are presented differently according to the class. In a regulated race, the age is taken from a list of categories — the years one by one, plus the groupings 6 - 9 and 10 - 16 — and the earnings from a predefined band. In the other classes, you freely enter a minimum and a maximum for each.

Min score and Max score add a filter on the horse's score, from 0 to 99,999.

Sex: all, or only the mares, the stallions, the geldings, or Stallion or mare — that is to say everything but geldings.

Three boxes for particular races:

Claiming race: only horses currently up for auction can enter. It is the classic claiming race: run and change owner on the same day.
Small stable: reserved for owners holding at most 100 horses. A simple way of creating events the big players do not come to.
Racing accessories: ticked, accessories are allowed; unticked, the race is run without them, and the mention Without accessory appears in its criteria.

Max. per owner and Max. per jockey limit the number of entries from one same person: up to 4 in a regulated race, up to 8 elsewhere. Those limits are what stops one stable from monopolising a race. Worth knowing: in the last hour before the entry deadline, they are raised by one, to give incomplete races a chance to fill.

Reserved for does not exist in a regulated race — it is open to all on principle. Elsewhere, you can reserve the race for a list of horses, of owners, of clans, or for your clan. The list is built by searching, or typed straight in as codes separated by commas. As soon as you save, those concerned receive an invitation by internal message, with a link to enter: a reserved race does not fill by itself, the invitation is what makes it live.

Finances

Min entries: below that number, the race is postponed or cancelled. From 2 to 9 in a regulated race and in a competition, from 2 to 6 for the other classes. Setting it high protects the sporting quality and increases the risk of cancellation; setting it to 2 all but guarantees that the race will take place.

Entry cost: between 100 and 99,999 sulkies in a regulated race, free elsewhere. It is your takings, and it is also what sorts the entrants — a high cost discourages cautious owners.

Break-even threshold: the heart of the calculation. Three possibilities.

Automatic: you put up nothing, the game works out the winnings at closing from the real number of starters, and leaves you about 10 %. Nothing is deducted at creation, and you cannot lose.
A figure from 6 to 15: the game shares out over five places a total worth exactly that many times the entry cost. Threshold 8, and you need 8 entrants to break even.
Nonstandard: you enter the seven winnings by hand, including the 6th and 7th places that the scales never reward. This option does not exist in a regulated race.

The two fields work both ways: change the threshold and the winnings are recalculated; type in your winnings and the threshold is recalculated — or switches to Nonstandard if the ratio falls outside the scale.

Winnings: the prizes from 1st to 7th. In Automatic mode they display Auto and cannot be filled in.

Punter's jackpot, in a competition only: a sum you add to the bets. It adds to your costs just as the winnings do.

One last thing about money: on saving, the game checks that you have enough to pay the winnings. On a change, it only checks the difference — lowering the winnings gives you the difference back, raising them takes it from you.

Saving, copying, locking

At the bottom of the form, Save and Copy saves the race then immediately reopens the window on a copy, ready to be placed on another date. It is the tool for putting together a meeting of six similar races in a few minutes. On a race already created, Create a copy does the same thing without saving anything.

Finally the lock: as soon as one horse is entered, the race is no longer changeable. The window opens read-only, with the mention This race can't be changed anymore. The same goes if the race is no longer in registration, or if, on a regulated one, there are less than three hours before the entry deadline — that is three hours and fifteen minutes before the start, that deadline always falling a quarter of an hour before it. So read your settings over before saving: after the first entry, all that is left is deletion, and that has to be paid for.

For the rest of the trade, see the racecourse manager's trade and My races.