The races

The whole of Sulkyland turns around one object: the race. Owners enter horses in them, trainers and jockeys prepare for them, racecourse managers organise them, punters play them, breeders live off them indirectly.

This page describes no screen. It explains what a race is, how it unfolds, and what is won in it. It is the page to read once, and to read again the day a result surprises you.

The four types of race

The type decides what the race is worth to your record. It is the most important piece of information on a race card, and the most often overlooked.

Regulated: the game's ordinary race, organised by managers within an imposed framework — ages by category, earnings by band, a scale of prizes. It is the only class that feeds extended earnings and the score, so the only one that builds a real career.
Free: the manager does as he likes. Its prizes count as free earnings, which do not have the same value, and it hands out no kdo points. It is the class of challenges, clan races and unusual formulas.
Competition: organised by volunteer players appointed for the purpose. The most prestigious in the game, with their own rankings and their medals. To organise one, write to the compétition-master account.
Cup: created every day by the game itself, free of charge, open to all, and with a final that is the biggest sum a horse can win. Detail further down.

There is a fifth case, apart from these: races with random genetics, created only by the program. Horses run in them with values drawn at random and not their own. The result therefore does not enter the record, does not touch the records and changes nothing in the horse's career — it is an entertainment, and should be taken as such.

The three disciplines

Flat, hurdle and trot. A horse belongs to one discipline and never changes; you only cross horses of the same one.

And each has its own kind of mishap, which does not exist in the other two:

on the flat, none. The race is played out entirely on speed and placing.
over hurdles, a horse can fall. It then does not finish the race and does not appear at the finish.
in trot, it can break into a gallop — that is what is called a stride break. If it is brief, it loses ground and takes up its trot again, with no penalty beyond the lengths given away. If it lasts, the horse is disqualified: it leaves the track and does not appear at the finish. The risk of breaking into a gallop depends on the horse, but also on what its jockey asks of it.

A favourite that falls or breaks into a gallop is not a bug: it is the risk of the discipline, and it is also what makes races interesting to watch. The viewer signals these incidents as they happen.

The format

Distance: from 100 to 7,100 metres, in steps of 100. The distance is chosen by the manager, within the limit of the track he uses.
Runners: from 2 to 20. Beyond that, the last entries are withdrawn at closing — except in a cup, where the field is cut into heats.
Prizes: the first seven places can be funded, no further.

From entry to start

Entries open when the manager creates the race, or when his calendar creates it for him — sometimes several days in advance.
They close at the entry deadline, generally fifteen minutes before the start — one hour for the races the game creates itself, up to six hours for a competition. After that moment, nothing moves any more.
At closing, everything happens at once: the numbers are allotted, the handicaps calculated, the surplus horses set aside, and the manager paid.
The quarter of an hour that follows is the preparation window: that is where, and only where, the jockey sets his riding tactic, knowing at last his opponents and his number.
The start takes place at the stated time, to the minute.

If the race has not gathered the minimum number of entries required, it is put back 24 hours keeping its entries — once or twice depending on the manager's setting — then cancelled, the entry fees being refunded.

One point that often escapes notice: in the last hour before the entry deadline, the maximum number of horses per owner and per jockey is raised by one. Lightly entered races therefore often fill up at the end. Do not give up too early.

The number is not decorative

The number determines the place on the starting line: number 1 starts closest to the rail. And in a bend, a horse away from the rail covers more ground — so it advances more slowly. On the straight, everybody is equal.

A good number is therefore a real advantage, all the greater the more bends the track has. The layout can be consulted before the race: see a race's track.

Outside handicaps, it is the manager who chooses how the numbers are allotted:

By extended earnings: the least rich gets number 1. The fair choice.
At random.
By the judge's feeling: the most obedient on the rail.

Handicaps

A handicap brings the strengths closer together. It works differently depending on the discipline, and it is the only rule in the game that varies in this way.

In trot, the handicap is a setback: the horses whose earnings exceed a threshold set by the manager start 5 to 25 metres behind the line, on a second line.

On the flat and over hurdles, the handicap is a weight, calculated on times. It counts 0.5 kg per 1.5 seconds of difference in balanced time, starting from the slowest horse, and the weight goes from 55 to 60 kg at most. The slowest carries the minimum, the fastest the maximum.

Two consequences absolutely to be known:

a horse with no reference time — one that has never run — automatically takes the maximum handicap, and starts on the outside;
a balanced time more than thirty days old is ignored, and the horse is treated as one that has never run.

In other words, a handicap race is poor ground for a new horse or for a horse coming back from a long absence. Run it in a race without a handicap first: it will gain a reference time there.

What makes a race be won

The detail of the calculation is the game's secret, and it will stay that way. But the list of what counts is in no way secret:

the horse's genetics — speed, resistance, suppleness, obedience, and constitution on Chorus;
its age: a horse has a peak, and it is neither at two nor at fifteen;
its biorhythm: good days and bad days exist;
the weather and the turf, which do not suit every horse;
tiredness: a horse that has just raced or been tested is not fresh;
the handicap and the number;
stride breaks and falls, which are chance — a chance whose probability depends on the horse;
and the jockey's tactic, which is no detail: two different rides on the same horse do not give the same result.

The practical consequence is that the best horse does not always win, and that is deliberate. A clearly superior horse will often win; it will not win everything.

The weather and the turf

The game has a climate. Each hour has a sky — sunny, clearing, cloudy, rainy, thundery — and a state of turf — dry, light, soft, sticky, heavy.

Two places to find out, and they must not be confused:

A race's card displays the turf of its start time, and that is the exact information — but it only appears within the hour before the start. Before that, the line is absent.
The weather forecast, reachable from the header, announces the coming 48 hours. These are genuine forecasts: approximate, and the further ahead you look the less reliable.

In other words: you plan on the forecasts, and you only know in the last hour. For a horse to which the turf matters a great deal, it is therefore better to aim at a race close at hand, whose real state you will see before entries close — which only happens if closing falls a quarter of an hour before the start, as is usual.

Tiredness

An effort — a race or a test — tires a horse, and the tiredness clears in about three hours. During the first hour and a half, the horse is considered tired and a test is refused it.

Three hours between two efforts is therefore the right rule. Entering a horse twice in the same hour is a good way of losing both races.

The two earnings totals

A horse carries two earnings counters, and the distinction governs its whole career:

extended earnings, fed by regulated races and by the competitions of an authorised manager. Those are the ones that count: they decide the bands the horse can enter, its ranking, and its value;
free earnings, fed by everything else — free races, clan races, cups, random genetics.

A horse can therefore show a large total of free earnings and remain eligible for the small bands of regulated races. It is not a loophole, it is the logic of the system: “earnings” implicitly means those that have a sporting value.

Kdo points

The first three in any race other than a free one gathering at least 5 runners bring 1 kdo point to their owner. Regulated races, competitions and cups therefore give them; free races and races with random genetics do not.

And since each round of a cup is a full race, a horse that goes far in a cup brings in one point per round where it finishes in the first three. As entry is free, it is the cheapest source of kdo points in the game.

The cups

This is the most accessible event in the game and the best funded. The game creates a new cup every day, and entry is free.

It runs as an elimination in rounds:

you enter in round 1, and in that one alone;
if there are too many entries, the round is cut into heats an hour apart;
the first ten in each race are automatically qualified for the next round — no need to enter again, the game does it;
the rounds follow one another in this way, and when a round is run over two races, their ten qualifiers each make up the field of twenty for the final.

The final funds the first ten, and the amounts have no equivalent anywhere else. The owner receives the main share and pays out the usual shares:

Place	Owner	Trainer	Jockey	Breeder
1st	300,000	120,000	120,000	60,000
2nd	200,000	80,000	80,000	40,000
3rd	150,000	60,000	60,000	30,000
4th	100,000	40,000	40,000	20,000
5th	75,000	30,000	30,000	15,000
6th	50,000	20,000	20,000	10,000
7th	40,000	16,000	16,000	8,000
8th	30,000	12,000	12,000	6,000
9th	20,000	8,000	8,000	4,000
10th	10,000	4,000	4,000	2,000

The first three in the final also receive a medal — gold, silver and bronze. They are the only medals the game awards itself, and they stay on the horse's record for ever. See Medals.

The rounds follow one another at the rate of one a day: a qualified horse races the next day, and so has plenty of time to recover. The heats of one round are an hour apart, but a horse only runs in one of them.

Three remarks for anyone who wants to go for it:

entry being free, a cup costs nothing to attempt. It is the first thing to do with a horse you do not know what to do with;
cup earnings count as free earnings, so they do not damage the horse's eligibility for regulated races;
on the other hand, a qualified horse is already entered for the next round, and a horse with a pending entry cannot take another. A horse that strings qualifications together is therefore unavailable for several days running for your regulated races. That is the only real cost of a cup, and it is not in sulkies.

You can give up, but you cannot come back. Nothing obliges you to run a round your horse has qualified for: you can withdraw it as from any race, as long as entries are not closed, and it becomes available again at once.

But it is final for that cup. You only enter a cup at round 1: a horse that has dropped out along the way cannot get back in, and will have to wait for the next day's cup. So think before taking a horse out of a semi-final to enter it in a regulated race — you are exchanging a place in a final for an ordinary race.

The competitions

They are organised by volunteer players, to whom the webmaster grants a particular status. Each runs his own competition forum, announces his rules there, and awards his medals.

They are the most closely followed events in the game, and they exist only because players take care of them. If you feel like it, write to the compétition-master account.

Going further

To enter a horse, see Calendar and Enrol a horse. To organise races, the racecourse manager's trade. To watch them, watching the race. And for the rankings they feed, Horses and Records.