Being an owner

Owner is the pivotal trade in Sulkyland. It is the one that owns the horses, that pays, that collects, and that decides everything irreversible.

Everybody practises it: you cannot play without horses. The other roles — trainer, jockey, breeder, racecourse manager, trader, punter — are grafted onto it and can be practised for others. That one cannot.

What you decide, and nobody else

Buying, selling, giving a horse.
Naming it, and choosing its picture.
Gelding it — 10,000 sulkies, and it is final.
Retiring it.
Appointing its trainer and its jockey, or keeping those roles.
Entering it in a race — you, or its jockey.

The trainer and the jockey, for their part, act only within what you have allowed. A trainer cannot enter your horse in a race; a jockey cannot sell it.

The four hats

A horse has four people involved: owner, trainer, jockey, breeder. To begin with, you are all four — a horse created, bought or born at your place comes to you with every role in your hands.

You are free to keep them or to hand them over. That is the first judgement call of the trade, and it has a price in figures.

How a prize is shared

When your horse wins money in a race, you collect the whole prize, then the game immediately pays out:

Share	For
7%	the horse's trainer
11%	its jockey
2%	its breeder
10%	of costs, which go to nobody
70%	what is left for you

But those 30% are not all lost to you. The trainer's and jockey's shares go to whoever holds the role — and if that is you, they come back to you. On a prize of 10,000 sulkies:

a horse handed over to a trainer and a jockey: you are left with 7,000;
a horse you train and ride yourself: you are left with 8,800 — only the breeder's 2% and the 10% of costs go out;
and if you bred it yourself, 9,000.

Delegating therefore costs 18% of your race earnings. That is the price of work done by somebody more competent or more diligent than you, and it is often a good deal — a badly trained and badly ridden horse brings in far less than 82% of what it could. But it is a choice to make with your eyes open.

Two points of detail. The breeder's 2% follow the horse for life, even after ten changes of hands: it is a charge that comes with it, not an anomaly. And the shares are fixed at the moment of entry: the trainer and jockey who get paid are those who held the role when the horse was entered.

The exception of cup finals: there, the game pays the four shares on top, and nothing is deducted from your prize. A win in a final brings 300,000 sulkies to the owner, 120,000 to the trainer, 120,000 to the jockey and 60,000 to the breeder. It is the only race where everybody gains without anybody paying.

What a stable costs

The entries. Each entry in a race costs the price set by the racecourse manager, and it is debited to the horse's owner — even if it was the jockey who entered it.

The upkeep, every day. This is the expense people forget, and it is the one that ruins stables. It is nil as long as you have ten horses or fewer — that floor never moves. Beyond it, you pay for each horse above your allowance, and a subscription raises that allowance to 30, 100, 250 or 500 horses depending on the formula. That is its main interest for a large owner.

The rate per horse is not fixed: it rises in bands, and the band is chosen by the excess, not by the size of the stable.

Horses above the allowance	Cost per horse and per day
up to 10	100
from 11 to 30	200
from 31 to 100	400
from 101 to 250	600
from 251 to 500	800
from 501 to 1,000	1,000

An example, because the calculation comes as a surprise: 45 horses without a subscription. The excess is 35, which places you in the 400 band — so you pay 35 × 400 = 14,000 sulkies a day, that is more than 400,000 a month. The same 45 horses with a Mini Team: an excess of 15, the 200 band, so 3,000 a day. The subscription pays for itself many times over.

Beyond a thousand horses of excess, the rate goes on climbing by itself: it becomes the number of horses in excess. That is dissuasive, and it is meant to be.

The account statement names that line Owner-Care costs, and it falls every day. A stable that grows without the earnings following empties very fast.

The holidays. The game does not make you pay the upkeep while you are away, within a certain limit: you earn one day of holiday every five logins, and each day you do not come uses one up instead of being charged. Once the credit is exhausted, the deductions resume, present or not.

Worth remembering if you are going away: coming regularly pays for your holidays. A player who logs in every day builds up enough to be away for a week without paying anything; an irregular player has no cushion.

The extras. An intensive training course costs 20,000 sulkies — triggered by the trainer, but paid by you. A gelding, 10,000. And of course the purchases of horses and matings.

The red line: a negative balance

An owner's account can go negative, and the game then brings it back to zero by seizing your horses, the oldest first, for 5,000 sulkies each. Each horse seized is put back up for sale at 5,000 sulkies, reserved for you for seven days: you can buy it back, but it has to be done within the week.

That is why you should look at your statement before entering all your horses on the same day.

Choosing your entries: that is where the trade lies

In a regulated race, the game funds the first five places only, and the winner gets something like three to five times the cost of entry depending on the number of entrants. What is collected is redistributed to the tune of about 90%, the racecourse manager keeping the rest.

Two very concrete consequences:

Finishing sixth brings in nothing. Entering a horse that has no place in the first five is a dead loss. A more modest race you can win is worth more than a handsome event where you will be making up the numbers.
Large fields pay better — more entrants, more entry fees collected, so higher prizes. But the competition rises with them.

To judge the level of a field, handicap races are precious: there the game itself estimates the value of each horse and displays it to you. It is a free opinion on yours.

Finally, a racecourse manager sets a quota per owner and a quota per jockey: you cannot fill a race with your stable alone. That quota rises by one in the last hour before entries close — enough to slip in one more horse if the race is not full.

The end of a career

A horse races from 1 to 16 years old and retires at 17, that is sixteen months after its birth. That deadline is not negotiable: it is what sets the value of a horse, far more than its past earnings.

You can also retire it before its time. Careful, the decision can only be cancelled for a short while: at the next night pass, the game deletes its genetic information and the retirement becomes final. See The horses.

Going further

The screens of the trade: My horses, The races, My contracts, Statistics. The two roles that get delegated: training and riding. And to breed your horses rather than buy them, breeding.