The long version

Every runner gets a performance figure in pounds, and the highest number wins. Nothing is a replay and nothing is scripted. The figure is built, in this order, from: the horse’s true ability (hidden, and never shown to you); a penalty if the trip is short of or beyond its range; a penalty for ground it does not handle; its jockey; its feed; its tack; what your yard’s facilities and staff add; a penalty if it is over-raced or short of a run; whatever the journey took out of it; and finally a random draw whose width is set by the horse’s consistency. A genuine, consistent horse runs close to its true figure most days. A moody one is a lottery. That random draw is why the best horse does not always win, and why it should not.

Each horse carries a hidden reserve. It starts full, drops every time the horse runs, and comes back with rest days. Nothing ticks in the background: the game stores only the value the horse walked off the track with, and works out the recovery from the date. What a race costs depends on what it asked: distance, a chase, Group company and a hard-ridden finish all cost more; being tailed off and never asked costs less. The crucial number is that recovery is slower than an ordinary race costs. Recover slower than you spend, and campaigning a horse hard grinds it down. Six runs in five weeks leaves a horse jaded; the same six runs a month apart leave it thriving. Below the top of its reserve a horse gives away lengths, and when it is truly over the top it gives away around nine pounds and is markedly likelier to break down. There is also a sweet spot: a horse wants a run or two under its belt, and about a fortnight to a month after a race it is at its very best.

Send a horse out with the string and your rider comes back 30 minutes later. Whatever tack is fitted when it leaves the yard is what gets tested, and the report names it. Here is the important part: the verdict on that tack is the rider’s eye, not a stopwatch. The game works out exactly what the tack is worth to that horse, then adds a random error of about 1.7 lb before your rider puts it into words. So on a hood genuinely worth three pounds, he will usually say it helped — and occasionally he will swear it hurt. He is a good judge who is sometimes wrong. This is deliberate. If the gallops told you the truth you would never need to run the horse, and the racecourse would stop mattering. The same piece of work always reads the same, so you cannot refresh the page until you like the answer. A horse that runs today cannot be worked.

The handicapper rates your horse on what it does on a racecourse — never on its hidden ability. Win well and the mark goes up; get beaten and it drifts down. A rise does not bite immediately: it takes effect 6 days after the race. Until then the horse runs off its old mark. That is the real-world angle of turning a winner out again quickly to beat the assessor, and it is in the game on purpose. Win again inside the window and you are reassessed upward again, and the clock resets.

When the jockey market shuts at 10am, every race that day gets its card and an overnight-style tissue. The prices are built from public information only: official marks, the class of the race, and the booked jockey. The market cannot see a horse’s hidden ability, its freshness, or what your rider saw on the gallops. So a well-handicapped improver is over-priced, and so is a dark one. The tissue is a genuine guide and a fallible one — which is exactly what a real tissue is. The book is set to an overround, so the percentages add to more than 100.

Tack helps an ungenuine horse most: a hood or blinkers sharpen a horse that does not try, and do very little for one that already does. Breathing aids matter over a trip. Boots cut injury risk. Feed shifts a horse’s performance and its temperament, and a calming feed narrows the random spread on a moody one. Facilities add a steady edge — better gallops, a solarium, schooling ground, starting stalls — each aimed at something specific. Staff wages are the biggest bill you pay, and a short-handed yard cannot have its horses spot on.

Your stable jockey rides for nothing and partners anything you do not book over. On race-day morning the market opens between 3am and 10am and bookings are first come, first served: once a rival has a rider, he is gone. A better jockey is worth roughly a sixth of a pound per rating point above average, and he also narrows the random spread — a good rider gets a horse closer to its true figure, not just faster.

Every stable and every owner has its own colours, and they are not cosmetic: your silks are the accent colour of your whole yard, so the whole interface wears your colours rather than the game’s. Because of that the body colour is always a real hue — a grey or white shirt would leave nothing to tint the buttons with, so the designer will not hand you one. The game says them out loud in the trade’s own grammar: body first, then the sleeves but only if they differ from it, then the cap — “Emerald green, gold hoops, white cap”. A plain cap the same colour as the body goes unsaid, which is why the most famous silks in the world are registered as simply “Royal blue”. Colours are named the way racing names them, so ‘royal’ is royal blue and ‘navy’ is dark blue. Generated silks are kept to two colours and one idea on purpose — a real silk is something you could shout across a parade ring, not a patchwork.

Every runner travels from your yard to the course, and the miles come out of the horse. A better horsebox costs less per mile and leaves them fresher; a travelling head lad settles them on the road. Where you are based is therefore a real strategic choice, not decoration — and it is why moving yard is gated behind earning your stripes.

Every run carries a chance the horse comes back sore. The danger is jumps on fast ground, and it climbs with age, with a tired horse, and falls with boots and the right facilities. Horses can go in the wind and need an operation; they need vaccinations kept in date; a scope tells you what their breathing is really doing. Colic and knocks in home work happen. None of it is punishment — it is the cost of having runners.

Every result carries the beaten distance between each horse and a note on how the race was run. This is not decoration. “Eased down” seven lengths clear means a horse the handicapper has not caught up with, and it will very likely go in again if you can get it out inside the penalty window. “All out, just got up” means a horse that emptied itself and will feel it. “Stays the trip really well” means step it up in distance. Read the remarks and you will place your horses better than the market does.

Two things are deliberately kept from you, and always will be. A horse’s true ability: you infer it from what it does on a racecourse, exactly as a real trainer does, which is what makes an unraced horse a genuine gamble and a good judge of a sales ring worth something. And its freshness: you are told how it strikes you in the box and what your rider says, never a percentage. Both hidden for the same reason — a number you can see is a number you optimise. Everything else about how this world works is on this page. The dice are not loaded, and now you know exactly how they roll.

Fancy a go?

Take a yard, fill the boxes, and find out whether you can read a horse better than the handicapper can.