Sunday, 6 September 2015

Welcome to the Anipal GeeGees Cup!

HOW TO PLAY

Playing Star Stable is pretty easy.  You start with a budget of $1 million and you pick ten horses to race throughout the competition.  Star Stable starts October 3 with Epsom Handicap day at Randwick in Sydney & continues until Emirates Stakes Day at Flemington in Melbourne on November 7.  A full list of meetings and races included in the competition can be found here or on the Star Stable home page.  Altogether there are two racedays from Sydney (both at Randwick) and nine racedays from Melbourne (Flemington, Caulfield, and Moonee Valley).

SELECTING YOUR STABLE

An initial list of horses can be found here but please note that this list is not comprehensive and newly-added horses can be found on the "Select Your Horses" page when you register.  The vast number of horses to choose from seems overwhelming at first but a good strategy is to concentrate on horses that are targeting big races like the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, and the Cox Plate.

Full horse form can be found at Racing.com (includes Victorian/Melbourne replays), Racing NSW (New South Wales/Sydney replays) and Racing And Sports (international replays).

STABLE CHAMPION

Every meeting you have to choose a horse to be your stable champion.  This horse will earn you double points, similar to selecting a captain in Fantasy AFL.  You choose your stable champion by selecting the 'C' button and the horse's box will light up a gold colour.

JOCKEY & TRAINER

Each meeting you also have to choose a jockey and a trainer as part of your stable.  A trainer earns 10% of the prizemoney his or her horses earn, while a jockey gets 5%.  You will receive the prizemoney earned by your jockey and trainer regardless of whether you have their horse in your stable or not.

The leading trainers in Melbourne last season were Darren Weir, Peter Moody, David Hayes, Robert Smerdon and Mick Price.  The leading Melbourne jockeys were Damien Oliver, Craig Williams, Dwayne Dunn, Patrick Moloney and Brad Rawiller.

The leading Sydney trainers were Chris Waller, John O'Shea, Gai Waterhouse, Kris Lees and Paul Perry, while the jockeys were Hugh Bowman, James McDonald, Blake Shinn, Tommy Berry and Brenton Avdulla.

These names are good starting points for your jockey and trainer selections, and so are the jockeys and trainers who have strong chances in the big races at each meeting.

TRADES

During the competition you will have seven opportunities to make trades.  During each trade period you are able trade two horses, as well as your jockey and trainer.  You also have two wildcard trades where you can trade a third horse.  When you use your wildcard trades is entirely up to you, but I strongly suggesting saving one of your wildcards for Melbourne Cup day.

You have unlimited trades until the first lockout period and you can change your stable as many times as you wish.

SCORING

You earn virtual prizemoney every time one of your Star Stable horses earns prizemoney.  You get $1 of virtual prizemoney for every $1 your horses win.  Your stable champion will double that and get you $2 for every $1 he or she wins.  Your trainer will get 10% of prizemoney their horse earns, and a jockey 5%.

Every race is worth different prizemoney and sometimes a horse placing in a major race can earn you more money than a horse winning a minor race.

So let's take the Cox Plate as an example.  The prizemoney for this race is 1st $1,800,000, 2nd $440,000, 3rd $220,000, 4th $130,000, 5th $110,000, 6th $100,000, 7th $100,000, 8th $100,000.  Your trainer wins the race ($1,800,000 x 10% = $180,000), your jockey rides the second placegetter ($440,000 x 5% = $22,000), one of your horses finishes third ($220,000), while your stable champion is fourth ($130,000 x 2 = $260,000).  The total amount of prizemoney you would win in this example would be $682,000.

VALUE CHANGES

The price of each horse changes with how it performs during the competition.  Values only go up, they never go down.  How much the price of a horse goes up depends upon the class of the race.  The highest class of race in Australia is a Group 1 race, followed by a Group 2, then a Group 3, then a listed race.  The following table shows how much a horse will go up by with their performance in each particular class of event.



The class of each race is included under the "status" column in the list of races that I linked to earlier.

Jockeys and trainers are always free so they never go up in value.

So that is about it for now.  If you have any questions or suggestions for other topics you would like me to cover on this blog, please feel free to contact me on Twitter (@LeroyBlackCat).

1 comment:

  1. Oh boy, how eggciting! We is taking notes, fanks so much Leroy *high paws*

    ReplyDelete