Race card

Everything there is to know about a race: who organises it, whom it is open to, what it pays, and who runs in it.

You get here by clicking a race's name, from any list. It is the reference page before entering a horse, before betting, and after the race to see its result.

The three buttons at the top

  • Watch the race: the viewer, which replays how it unfolded. Available as soon as the race has been run, and that is where to start if you want to keep the suspense — see watching the race.
  • Bet: the seven betting formulas.
  • Track: the layout of the circuit, which is not decorative — the bends there penalise horses away from the rail. See a race's track.

Registration is added when the race is open and you can enter a horse in it. If you cannot, the button gives way to the reason, in one word: Full, Small, Cup, Already done or Reserved. Read it, it is what tells you what to do — see Enrol a horse.

The most important line on the page

It is Earnings, and it is in plain words: The rewards of this race are counted in the horses' extended earnings, or in free earnings.

That distinction decides the sporting value of the race. Extended earnings build a horse's career, govern the bands it will be able to enter afterwards and count in the rankings; free earnings do neither. A well-funded free race can therefore bring in a lot of money without advancing a horse an inch. See The races.

Do not rely on the class alone to guess it: a competition counts in extended earnings only if its organiser has the status that allows it. The Earnings line, for its part, is never wrong.

The race's identity

  • The code, with the share button to send the race to somebody.
  • The name, the racetrack and the manager.
  • The class.
  • The entry deadline, then the date of the race. A race that has been deleted or cancelled shows that here in bold, in place of the date.
  • The postponements left: how many more times the race can be put back 24 hours for want of entries. Zero means it will be cancelled if the minimum is not reached.

Description: whom the race is open to

The speciality, the length, the minimum number of entries, then the two lines that have to be read properly:

Max. per owner and Max. per jockey display the limit, followed in brackets by the raised value and the time from which it applies — that is, one hour before closing. It is the game giving you an appointment: if the race is incomplete and your quota is reached, come back at that time, you will be able to enter one more horse.

Criteria sums up all the rest: ages, earnings, score, sex, and the particular mentions — claiming race, small stable, without accessory, reserved.

If the race is reserved, the list of the horses, owners or clans invited is displayed, each name leading to its card. So you will know whether you are among them.

The turf only appears in the last hour

The Turf line is only displayed within the hour before the start. Before that it is absent — and deliberately so: the state of the turf of a distant race must not be known in advance.

To look ahead, there remains the weather forecast in the header, which announces the next 48 hours. But those are forecasts, approximate and the further ahead you look the less reliable. The certain information arrives one hour before the start, on this card.

Finances

The entry cost, then the prizes from 1st to 7th. Two particular cases:

  • if the prizes show Auto, the manager has let the game calculate them: they will be set at closing, from the real number of runners. The more people there are, the larger the funding will be and the more places will be paid.
  • for a cup, the card refers you to the help rather than displaying a scale: the earnings of a cup final are fixed and much higher, and the full table is in The races.

The jackpot only appears if there is one: it is a sum added to the bets by the organiser of a competition.

Start: the runners, and the finish

The Start button, at the foot of the description, opens the list of entries: see Start.

And that is where, and nowhere else on this card, the result of a race that has been run appears — the places and the times. The card itself gives nothing away.

That is not an oversight, it is a service: you can open the card of a finished race, click Watch the race, and watch it without knowing who wins. Many players had asked for it.

Going further

The rules common to every race — types, handicaps, numbers, tiredness, cups — are in The races. To follow your entries, see My last races and Calendar.

In the same section