This is part 4 of our comprehensive beginners guide to Photo Finish Live. If you haven’t read Part 1 you can jump back to the start and read that here.
If you’re up to date you would have just learned how important a horses bloodline is and know how to analyse it’s attributes. You also would’ve learned of the HUGE mistake i made when i bought my first horse, The Mechanic.
If you haven’t created an account, now is the time to do it here (use code: HIDDEN)
Let’s jump into Part 4!
We’ll continue off from where we left off and unpack what we do next.
MY FIRST HORSE: A CASE STUDY
The Mechanic is inbred. His ability will be negatively impacted by this. What the heck do I do now?
Well hope is not lost. Whilst the genes and attributes of the horse have been negatively affected and, despite not knowing exactly how or the extent of the damage, the damage is done. The Mechanic is still able to be raced, it just makes it a lot harder to win higher grade races and breeding might be out of the question.
But The Mechanic is only 2 years old, and can race up until he turns 9! So there’s plenty of time to earn back his cost by racing him & learn the game in the process.
We’ll get to racing him very soon, but first we need to talk about overall stable strategy & archetypes.
ARCHETYPES & STABLE STRATEGY
Now I know you’re probably just starting out and maybe, like I was, you’re only looking to buy 1 horse to learn the game. But I need to share this with you so you can have the best chance of building a successful stable.
We know, from the previous parts, about star preferences & this is also what we mean by archetypes.
Each horse has a preference in the following core factors:
Direction (Left/Right)
Surface (Dirt / Turf)
Condition (Firm / Soft)
So in total there is 8 possible archetypes a horse can have. And they will only fit into one of these archetypes. They are:
It’s often written that beginners without big budgets should avoid RD surfaces and there’s a reason for that. It’s because the biggest races (eg. Kentucky Derby) are on this direction and surface, which means it’s ultra competitive.
There are many possible strategies to building your stable, and i’m not going to cover them all. But one of the most popular is to pick one of the above archetype niches and to only focus on buying horses that fit within that niche. This is with a view to create in-house synergies within your stable for potential breeding purposes. This is because, in the game, you’re able to internally breed with your mares & your stallions. Some of the biggest stables don’t even offer their stallions on the open market and prefer to keep there bloodlines 100% in house. Breeding will need a whole article for itself so we won’t go into it. However, we can keep a view that if we were to breed in the future we’d want to buy horses within the same archetype and also with a diverse bloodline (or no cross-over).
ACTIVITY: Answer this question. Why would we want to build a diverse blood-line?
ANSWER: To avoid future in-breeding.
Thanks to The Mechanic for teaching us this valuable lesson. Now The Mechanic is an RTS archetype, but despite not having a view to breed with him in the future, I could pick this as my archetype niche.
If you would like to learn more about archetypes, Click Here to read a comprehensive breakdown by YSM Racing.
We’re nearly ready to enter The Mechanic into a race, but first we need to understand the different race types.
RACE TYPES
Up to now, we’ve already covered a couple of key factors of the games races. These are the distance (arguably the most important) and condition (Firm, Good, Yielding, Soft, Sloppy). What we need to learn next is the various types of races a horse can be run in. If you are into horse racing, Photo Finish Live follows a similar structure.
Let’s breakdown the different race types, starting from the bottom and working our way up to the more prestigious types.
MAIDEN: A maiden can only be entered by horses who have NEVER won a race and can be a great starting point in your horses racing career. Given a season is 4 weeks long, what you tend to find is early in the season the good horses enter these races and win them easily before “moving up the grades” as physical racing talk goes. So the further into the season the more chance you may have of winning this if your horse is average. However there are less of these races as the season goes on. These races will effect your overall Fleet Form Benchmark rating.
HANDICAP: These races can be entered by any horse of any class (no matter the letter grade) but it aims to create a level playing field. So better horses carry more weight, and worse horses carry less weight. The overall aim is to have as even of a field as possible. These races are usually cheaper to enter and have lower prize money. They also don’t effect your Fleet Form Benchmark rating. They are great to test out a specific distance without it impacting your benchmark rating, if you have time between your desired race, or if you are low on the in-game currency, DERBY.
ALLOWANCES: This is a specific condition race which gives a benefit to those who haven’t won a race in a while but they are usually restricted by grade, benchmark rating or another condition. If you’re horse fits the criteria you can enter these and there may be some benefit to your horse given (like weight reduction).
GRADE RESTRICTED: Races that only allow a certain grade of horses (letter rating). Especially good for lower rated horses (B’s & A’s)
JUVENILE: Races that are restricted to 2 year old horses only. Other aged horses can’t compete.
The majority of horses will race in the above categories at first. And some of the races in Photo Finish Live may have different restrictions based on the multiple classes of races mentioned above. More on that soon.
If you have a good horse, you may try the next class of race.
STAKES RACE: This in physical horse racing talk is black-type racing and you’re starting to get into those better grade horses. There is a chance that the horse you buy just isn’t up to this class of racing, which is ok. It just means, in order to be profitable, you may need to stay in the other races above. So you should consider this class as bigger step-up for your horse.
We now move onto the higher grade races with significant entry fees and big prize purses to be won. Usually this class of race is reserved for S-grade horses and higher.
GRADE III: Level above stakes race.
GRADE II: Level above Grade III
GRADE I: Top Grade
There is one other form of race, it’s called a Claiming Race.
Claiming Races: Claiming races are where other owners can claim your horse for a specific price. If you enter a horse in this race and he is “claimed” you lose the horse but you receive the amount the claiming race was for. Eg. 10,000 DERBY if it’s a 10K claiming race. If you enter these races you need to be prepared to lose your horse. There is an in-depth explanation of claiming races here.
RACE TYPE ACITVITY
We’re going to use my horse, The Mechanic, and assess whether he would be eligible to run in some of the race types we just learned about. We’re going to ignore distance for now.
Race 1: Can we enter The Mechanic into this race?
Answer: No. Whilst The Mechanic is A grade and fits that criteria, he is currently 3 years old and therefore not a Juvenile. So he would be ineligible to compete in this race. 60% chance of rain is good as we know he has a small preference to soft tracks. But the race is a RD (Right Dirt) race which is against his archetype so we wouldn’t even enter it if we could.
Race 2: Can we enter The Mechanic into this race? Note: The last time The Mechanic won a race was 10 races ago.
Answer: Yes, but we wouldn’t. Firstly, it’s a yes because The Mechanic has a benchmark rating of 58 which is less than or equal to 65 and he hasn’t won in 3 races. It also is 80%+ rain which is good. But it’s a no for the following reasons. Firstly, it’s against preference (it’s a RD race) and in terms of Benchmark rating there are a lot better horses than The Mechanic that can enter (up to 65 benchmark)! The last 5 benchmark allowance means there is some weight relief for The Mechanic – by hovering over it, we see that because he has only ever won 1 race he would get -2LBS for this weight, which is a positive for us.
Ok, last one.
RACE 3: Can we enter The Mechanic into this race?
Answer: Yes. This is the perfect race for The Mechanic to enter. Let’s unpack why. Firstly, it is to his archetype or star preference RT (Right Turf). Now this is after the race has finished, which is why we can see the condition. But when entering this would have had a rain chance of 60%+ which has lead to a soft track. There is a benchmark restriction on the race of less than or equal to 59. The Mechanic is rated at the upper end as he is 58 rated. Perfect. There is also an allowance the same as Race 2 we looked at so The Mechanic received -2lbs from his weightt.
Furthermore, we did in fact enter The Mechanic into this race and he came 3rd! Whilst not a win, we profited on the race.
Let’s break it down.
The race cost 1,600 DERBY to enter ($20 USD).
We came third and won 1,612.80 DERBY as prize money ($20.16)
So we are in profit 16 cents. Not the biggest amount at all!
But, everyone also got a $CROWN gift for racing. The total $CROWN allocated for the race was 50.99 $CROWN. There was 7 runners, so each runner got 7.28 $CROWN on top of any DERBY prize money. At today’s price (1st May 24, 1 $CROWN = $0.83 USD) that equals $6.04.
So our total race profit is $6.20.
Now, the winner for example would have earned 4,748 DERBY ($59 USD) for coming 1st + 7.28 in CROWN ($6.04 USD) for a net profit of $45 USD!
It may not sound like much, but a horse can race every 24 hours or so and it quickly adds up!
Ok, so we’ve started to learn the fundamentals of racing a horse for in-game prize money. Picking a race is a skill and the more you race a horse the more you learn about it and can refine which races you target. I have a pretty good grasp of The Mechanic now and what races I have a higher chance of profiting on now, after racing him for over a year of his life.
But it wasn’t always the case, in the early days, I struck out as i was learning the best distance for him. Hopefully with some of the tips you’ve learned already you can avoid the mistakes I made and start profiting from racing a lot quicker than I did.
Are you ready to buy your first horse?
If you feel like you know enough and would like to buy one, you can. Be mindful of your budget and make sure you have enough DERBY for at least 5 or 6 races in case it takes a while to work out your horses optimum racing distance. It might also be a good time now to re-read the guide to buying your first horse.
You will need to create a Photo Finish Live account here (use code HIDDEN)and you can browse the marketplace here. I would also encourage you to jump into the Photo Finish Live discord and use the beginner chat. Maybe share two horses you are looking at and ask for some help. This is something i didn’t do (but should have) as it would’ve helped me avoid buying an in-bread horse! Ahh, the beauty of hindsight.
Click here for Part 5, we’re we break down those barriers of feeling like you’re entering the game too late and arm you with the tools to start your stable off on the right foot! We’re going to help you find a racing monster in disguise – a wolf in sheep’s skin.
If you’re not yet ready to buy your first horse, hopefully you will after the next part.
P.S If you’d like to learn more about Photo Finish Live and other Web3 items be sure to follow me on X here.
