Being a jockey

The jockey rides the horse in the race. It is the role that takes the biggest share of a prize — 11% — and the only one whose work is played out in the race itself.

It is also the role that is easiest to perform badly, because you can hold it without doing anything, and doing nothing has a very precise cost.

The ride is decided race by race

Here is the point many players are unaware of, and it is the most important one on this page: the jockey of a race is whoever prepared that race.

The jockey “of the horse”, the one its card displays, is only a default setting. When you prepare an event, if you are not yet the jockey for that entry, you become it — for that race only. The game warns you of it quite clearly, in fact.

Three consequences:

• the 11% go to whoever prepared, not to whoever appears on the card;
• an owner can take back the ride on one of his horses for a given race, by preparing it himself — he then replaces the jockey's preparation, and the jockey is warned of it when he reopens it;
• and the race's jockey quota applies: you cannot take the ride on more horses than the racecourse manager allows per jockey.

A jockey's contract therefore does not give you a ride: it gives you the right to take it. It is the preparation that confirms it.

Preparing is the whole trade

Nothing is steered during the race. Everything the horse does, it will do according to what you saved before the start: how hard you push it, section by section, and where you place it on the track.

Your room for manoeuvre is a budget of riding points, which follows from the horse's resistance. Pushing costs points; letting it go at its own pace costs none. And the rule that decides everything: a horse at the end of its reserves that is still being asked for effort does not slow down a little, it collapses.

The whole art consists in taking it as close as possible to that limit without crossing it, and in spending the effort where it pays. The detail of the screen is in Prepare a race.

Not preparing is not neutral

An unprepared race is not a race run at a gentle trot. The game builds a ride automatically: it takes the horse's budget of points and spends it entirely, spread at random over the course, the position on the track following mechanically from the pace asked for.

The horse therefore gives exactly as much energy as with a good jockey — but anywhere. It accelerates in a bend, holds back on the straight, and the result has more of the lottery about it than of racing.

That is why an owner who leaves the automatic jockey on a horse does not merely lose a piece of fine work: he entrusts his entries to chance. See My contracts.

Testing: the second act of the trade

A test makes the horse run alone, over the distance of your choice, with the preparation of your choice, and shows you the result straight away. One test a day and per horse.

It is the only way to try out an idea without risking a race, and on Almina and Bezir it is far more than that.

On Almina and Bezir, a well-run test makes the horse progress — in obedience, the one characteristic training does not touch at all. So it is the jockey, and the jockey alone, who makes it rise.

The game judges your test on what the horse has left as it crosses the line:

• it finishes just at the end of its reserves: an excellent test, +100 obedience points;
• it finishes with a little margin: a very good test, +50;
• you have exhausted it before the finish: nothing;
• you have not pushed it enough: nothing either.

It is an exercise in precision, and it is the reason the jockey's trade exists on those two worlds. On Chorus, on the other hand, a test brings in no points: obedience progresses there through training like the other characteristics, and the test is only a measuring instrument. See Test a horse.

The lad jockey, and what it costs you

On Almina and Bezir only, there is an automatic test, which the game calls the lad jockey. It tests the horse every day in your place and gives it +50 obedience points, without asking you anything, until obedience reaches its maximum — after which it switches itself off.

It is switched on by default on every foal still to be born. A player who does nothing is therefore already getting those +50 a day, which is a good thing and explains why many horses progress without anybody looking after them.

But that is precisely where the gap between a jockey and a lad is played out:

• the lad gives +50 a day, guaranteed;
• a jockey who tests well gives +100, that is twice as fast;
• a jockey who tests badly gives zero — worse than the lad.

And one detail that counts: only the first test of the day earns points. If the lad has been through before you, your own test will bring in nothing. To take over, you therefore have to remove the automatic test and test yourself.

The right reflex is therefore clear. As long as you are not looking after a horse, leave the lad jockey: it works for free. As soon as you decide to look after it, switch the lad off and test yourself — but then it has to be done every day, otherwise the horse gains nothing at all any more.

Not to be confused: the two automatisms

The words look alike and the two things are opposites.

• The lad jockey is a daily automatic test: it is useful, and it is the default setting.
• The automatic jockey — the webmaster appointed as a horse's jockey — prepares nothing and tests nothing. It is only a stopgap.

What else a jockey can do

He can enter the horse in a race, like the owner — it is the only other role that can. But remember that the entry is debited to the owner: entering somebody else's horse spends their money. Agree between you on what you are aiming at.

He can also save reusable preparation templates, which saves a considerable amount of time when you ride a great deal: see My tactics.

Going further

The screens of the trade: My races, My contracts, My tactics, The races, Statistics. And for what makes a race be won, horse racing. The role that entrusts you with the rides is described in ownership.