Statistics

This screen does not measure your results. It measures the market: for each category of race, how many races have taken place these last thirty days, and how many horses could run in them.

It is the only tool in the game that compares a supply with a demand, and that is what separates a manager who creates at random from one whose races fill. If you are to consult only one screen before creating a race, it is this one.

What the figures contain

Three restrictions, which have to be kept in mind so as not to be mistaken about what one is reading:

Regulated races only. Free races, clan races and competitions do not appear there. That is consistent: only regulated races have a frame comparable from one manager to another.
The last thirty days, and one speciality at a time. Those two settings are not open to discussion: the speciality filter cannot be removed.
The races of every manager, not only yours. Including those of the game itself, the Prix du webmaster, and they are numerous — we come back to them below, because they are the key to reading the screen.

The three views

The first filter chooses what the lines represent, and it cannot be removed either:

View by age: one line per age, from 1 to 16 years.
View by earnings: one line per earnings band.
View by distance: one line every 100 metres, from 100 to 7,100.

The two criteria that do not serve as lines stay available as filters. In the view by age, you therefore filter on a distance and an earnings band; in the view by distance, on an age and a band. It is logical but it has to be borne in mind: a line is never a general total, it is always a crossing with the filters set beside it.

The five columns

Runs: the number of races actually contested.
Cancelled: those that did not gather enough entrants. It is the column that says “this category does not fill”.
Participations: the total of the entrants of the races run. Divided by Runs, it gives the average size of the fields — the figure that says whether the category is alive.
Potential: the number of horses that could run there. It is the most interesting column, and the most delicate: see below.
In registration: the races currently open in that category, that is to say the immediate competition.

Zeros are displayed in white rather than as a figure. The table therefore reads like a relief: what is full leaps to the eye, and so does what is empty.

What the Potential really counts

A horse enters the Potential if it meets all these conditions: it is of the chosen speciality, it is born, it is not retired, it does not belong to the game's own account, and — this is the important point — its owner has logged in within the last seven days.

That last filter is what makes the whole value of the column. It is not a census of existing horses, it is an estimate of the horses liable to be entered by somebody. A thousand horses sleeping in abandoned stables will bring you no entry, and will not be counted.

The method

Set your speciality, your view, and your two filters. Then look for the lines where a high Potential goes together with few Runs and few races in registration. That is where there are horses without a race.

Three typical readings:

Potential strong, Runs low, Cancelled low: the category is simply under-served. That is the opportunity.
Potential strong, Cancelled strong: managers have tried and have not filled. Beware — either the conditions were bad, or those horses do not run, and your race will meet the same fate for 500 sulkies.
Runs strong, Participations strong: the category works, but the competition is established there. You can go in, provided you are more attractive: a lower threshold, or a better-suited entry cost.

Three traps in reading it

They all come from the same thing: the lines are exact values, whereas the races sometimes cover several values.

Grouped age categories are counted on their lower bound. A regulated race open to the 10 - 16 year-olds is counted on line 10, and on that line alone. Lines 11 to 16 will therefore show a real Potential and zero races run — whereas those horses do have a race to go to. It is systematic, because the game itself creates only 10 - 16 races for made horses. The same goes for the 6 - 9 category, which is counted on line 6.

The earnings bands overlap, so the Potential is counted several times. The bands are made to encroach on one another — that is what lets an owner choose between the top of one band and the bottom of the next. A horse with 6,000 sulkies of earnings therefore appears both in the 2,500 - 9,999 band and in the 5,000 - 19,999 band. Never add up the Potential column in the view by earnings.

In the view by distance, the Potential is the same on every line. And that is normal: distance is not a characteristic of the horse. The repeated figure is the whole population matching your age and earnings filters. What varies from one line to the next is the first three columns — and that is where to look.

The competition from the game itself

Here is the key to reading it announced above, and it changes everything.

The game automatically creates regulated races called Prix du webmaster, in such a way that no usual combination is left without a race. It sweeps through all the earnings bands, the three specialities, the ages from 1 to 9 plus the 10 - 16 category, four distances — 1,000, 1,600, 2,400 and 3,000 metres — with and without a handicap. It even adjusts its pace: a race that had gathered ten entrants comes back sooner, a cancelled race comes back later.

Three very concrete consequences for you:

A good part of the Runs and In registration columns is not the players' doing. A category that looks served may be served by the game alone.
The game creates a race only if none is already open in that combination. Your race therefore does not add to its own: it takes its place. As long as you hold a race open there, the Prix du webmaster does not come.
Distances other than those four are not covered. Sixty-seven of the seventy-one possible distances are left to the players. It is the freest ground on the screen, and the view by distance is made to see it.

One last marker, useful when you hesitate over your winnings: the Prix du webmaster are endowed on a break-even threshold of 10, at the reference entry cost of their band. That is the standard to beat — offering a lower threshold in the same category makes your race more attractive than the game's. See the racecourse manager's trade for what that costs you.

One absence to know about

Races deleted by their manager are counted in no column: neither in Runs, nor in Cancelled. Only cancellations for want of starters appear. The screen therefore measures what happened on the track, not the withdrawals.

To create the race you will have spotted, see Create a race, and to set it up for the long term My calendar.