HGG Community Forums

You can't really tell much about how a foal will end up as a show prospect. They don't train, so their scores stay the same (within the bounds of their degree of consistency). Even more important, when there are only 2 horses in a show, the results are almost 100% the luck of the draw that places two horses in the same class. Some people show foals about 4 times just to see where their starting score is likely to be, making it easier to estimate how they will progress with training as they age.

Success in showing is now based not so much on winning classes and profits from the cash prizes gathered as it is on having horses showing in big enough classes that they will gather the points awarded to all but the horse that comes in last. These points are retained throughout a horse's life span and continue to accumulate every time it is shown (unless it's last consistently). Every week when you get your weekly pay you will also receive a weekly showing bonus which is currently 75% of the total points your horses have gathered. That doesn't seem like much when you don't have many horses and they don't have a lot of points, but, as your stable grows and you continue to show horses that are getting older and showing in larger classes, you will eventually reach the point where your showing bonus more than compensates for any profit losses from individual show payouts.

The best time to stop showing a horse is when it has leveled off and is no longer increasing its show score with training AND it is coming in dead last time after time in its classes. Then take it out of the show string and decide if it has enough points that it is adding to your showing bonus just by being in your barn.

Take a look at this horse of mine.


http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=121898

He is 16 years old and ranks number 20 (out of 2043) in my herd for total lifetime points with 787 at this moment. That means that he will contribute at least 590 hbs to next Sunday's showing bonus. He is currently placing somewhere in the middle of Level 4W. He's in the plus column for profits, but not by much, since his lifetime profits are only 28 hbs. If I only looked at profits, I would wonder if he is worth keeping, but by looking at the whole picture, I know that he is. I'm sure that at one time his profits were definitely in the negative, but he outgrew that eventually and is now earning his oats. *G*

This is really educational! I , like a lot of the newbies, am struggling to pocket enough hbs to increase my string of horses at the moment. This will help me make decisions about some of the stallions I don't want to breed from and about the neutered horses I already have in my show string. I love the complexity of this game! Balancing the need to earn some hbs with my desire to breed for certain colors and my overwhelming curiosity about some of the herd helpers means this game will keep me interested for a long time to come!