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Track King Rules & Help

 
01. Introduction
Tue 10th Jan 12
All the fun of owning a stable of thoroughbreds - without the mess!

Track King is a free online horse racing stable management game in which you compete against stables managed by other users all over the world.

As a Track King, you take on the role of Stable Manager - or maybe even a Stable Owner! (See Owners Club). You buy, sell and breed horses, manage jockeys and invest the stable's money in training and veterinary facilities and stud breeding programs. You select Cup and League race entrants from the horses and jockeys in your stable that best suit the conditions and are in top form, plan your tactics before the next race, decide on what training is needed and much, much more.

You can keep yourself continuously updated on the state of your stable by logging on to the Track King website, looking at your race results (or watching the races!) and checking out the latest horses on the transfer market. You can also give your jockeys orders for upcoming races and tell the trainers how the horses will train during the week. Track King has been designed to be as simple - or as difficult - as you want it to be. Just entering a couple of races a week using the invitations on your Stables homepage, and setting a simple training routine for your horses will take less than 15 minutes a week. But if you really want to explore, there's all sorts of stats that you can look into to try and get that extra performance from your steeds.

The best thing about Track King is that there's no 'Game Over'. If your stable goes bankrupt, it's possible to reset (See Finances/Liquidation). And there's also no right or wrong way to play. Just keep trying, experimenting with different parts of the game, and sooner or later you'll hit a good streak of wins in races, or breed a magnificent foal, or train a superb apprentice jockey...each of which will carry you further along the path to being a successful Track King!

Quickstart Guides

The Track King Community have made many tools and guides to help people learn the game.

GOOD LUCK!!!

02. Starting a stable
Fri 20th Jan 12
* Start your own Stable for FREE! And be sure to tell friends to mention your username when they join!
* Have a read of the Common Questions FAQ
* Expand your stable carefully, and make sure your expenses don't get too big.

To register to become a Track King, use one of the "Start your own stable" links on the Track King logon page. Remember, you can only manage one stable! Opening multiple stables in Track King is not acceptable.

Firstly, you will need to provide some basic details about yourself, and where you live. It is important to tell you that your details will not be given to anyone else - they're just to help confirm your identity to the staff of Track King. The more information you supply, the faster we can get you started, and the more chance we have of preventing cheats or false applications. If you don't provide much personal information, it is likely that you will be contacted by Track King staff to help confirm that you are a genuine applicant.

Next, you will need to choose a Username and password for the game. Your Username is the name that you (as a Manager) will be known by in the game. You can change your username and password at any time when you are registered, but remember - usernames are unique! Once someone has been given a username, nobody else can have it. Regarding passwords, it is good to use passwords that have letters and numbers in them to make it harder for anyone to hack into your account... but make sure it is a password you can remember!

Finally, after giving your personal and logon details, you will be asked to choose a name for the Stable you will manage. Just like with Usernames, the name of your stable can be changed at a later date, but it must be unique. Your Stable Nationality is where you can show national pride, by choosing the country that you want to represent. The flag of this country will be added to your stable, and every horse that is born in your stable will carry this flag. You will also be asked to provide details of the Continent that your stable is currently based in. This will determine the 'physical' location of your stable, and the time of the day that racing starts. Your Continent does not have to be the same as your Nationality - for example, it is quite fine to be an Australian stable racing in Europe. (See Continents)

After you have lodged your registration, most players will get an automated email with a link to register your stable and start playing. If your email was incorrect, or if there are some other complications, then you can expect a reply email within 1-48 hours to let you know that your stable has been registered for you! It's your time to shine!!

After being accepted into the world of Track King, your account will remain open as long as you login at least once every 50 days, or if you are currently a member of the Owners Club. After approximately 3-4 weeks of inactivity, you'll receive an automated Email reminding you that you'll need to return to your stable sometime in order to keep it active. After 50 days of inactivity your stable will be reset completely. Of course, you'll be able to return to Track King in the future, but you'll have to register again.

Getting Help, and Mentors

The Track King Community have created some great tools and guides to help you. Or you can ask for a Mentor to guide you as you learn the game

There is a stable-load of information to learn about Track King! But the basics are quite simple, and you should be able to explore your stable and your horses and enter some races, within no time!

For a quick-fire introduction, check out the FAQ Section of the Rules, and also the Hints and Tips. Have a look around your Stable, and then maybe check out some of the External Sites. Of course, the best place to get detailed information is this Help Guide.... but there's a lot to read!

If you'd like a person to give you some hints and tips and guide you as you find your way, then use the "Get Help" link in the right-hand menu, and a player will be appointed as your personal Mentor, to help you get to grips with things. Alternatively, have a read through the Forums - there is a special forum dedicated to getting helpful advice.

Whichever way you choose, there are plenty of helpful resources to get you started in the world of Track King

03. Finding what you need
Tue 10th Jan 12
There's an easy-to-use menu system, and links within each page to help you explore almost everything!

There are quite a few different ways to move around in the Track King web site.

There is a 'Main Menu', which appears at the top of the page, just below the Logo.....you know, the menu that you used to get to this page! This menu gives you quick access to:

  • Home, where you can see the latest announcements, and racing information in your Continent;
  • Stables, which is a shortcut back to your own Stable page;
  • Races, a Racing 'homepage' showing all your coming/recent races (See Tracks and Weather);
  • Auctions, where you can bid on horses for sale (See Auctions), or purchase stud rights to a stallion (See Breeding);
  • Forums, where you can chat with other Track Kings in the online community, and maybe ask for tips or advice (See User Forums);
  • Shop, to purchase Owners Club membership and other Track King goodies (See Owners Club); and
  • Help, which you used to get here!

When you arrive at a page, you'll (hopefully!) notice that the menus on the right hand side of your page have changed to give you a whole load of choices about the page you are currently viewing. These choices are broken down into a couple of different mini menus:

  • Page Menu, which offers you things you might like to see or do related to the page you are viewing;
  • Horses, which will show you the horses that belong to the stable you are viewing. Of course, by default these will be your horses (See Horses);
  • Jockeys, showing the jockeys currently under contract to the stable in view (See Jockeys);
  • Races, showing the race fixtures for the Class league being viewed (See Race Classes) and/or the individual races on a particular day (See The Race!);
  • Forums, showing all the different forums you have access to (See User Forums);
  • Owners Club features like Guestbooks, Horse and Jockey summaries, and quick race navigations (See Owners Club);

Also, within each page, every horse, jockey, stable, or other name is a link to get more information about that object. Click away!

Objects are also colour coded in Track King, with all Races in Red, all Horses in green, Stables and Jockeys in blue, and Actions and Ratings in yellow/brown. So just waving your mouse over a link or using the 'Tab' key to select it, will hopefully give you a little more information about what sort of object you are looking at.

04. Stable diary
Tue 10th Jan 12
* Your Stable keeps a diary which records all the events that take place in your stable every day.
* No other players can see your Stable Diary.

Your stable diary can be accessed from within the Stables Menu. It shows a running record of all the actions and events that go on in your stable each day.

This provides a valuable tool to catch up on what has happened since you last visited Track King. The diary shows the latest 50 events by default, but you can use the link at the bottom of the list to view older events (if any exist!). The diary also keeps a record of your activity in the Auctions over the past fortnight, showing you all the bids that you placed or received, and also any times that you were outbid. A canny Track King will use this tool to ensure they stay on top of the latest action!

Your Stable diary is only visible to you - so no other Track Kings can see your secrets of success! It displays the date and time that an event took place, gives you a description of the event, and in some cases provides you a link to the event. Where no link is provided, you might be able to guess what caused the event by looking at the date and time.

Some of the things that might appear in your Stable diary are:

05. Finances
Tue 10th Jan 12
There are two types of finances in Track King - your Stable finances and your Personal finances

Stable finances

* Your stable needs money to do almost anything, from training through to entering races.
* Expand your stable slowly and make sure your expenses don't get too big.

You need money to run your stable and to house and train your horses. Each week there is a financial update where the monies owed to you are collected and the monies that you are due to pay debited from your account - all transactions that take place during the week are added to the income/expense account shown and the balance figure is updated accordingly.(See Daily/weekly timetable). So when you look at your stables' finances, the 'Carryover balance' is the amount you started the week with, and all income/expenses listed are then the transactions that will be totalled to create the 'carryover balance' for the next week.

The income you receive comes from:

  • Purses: Purses are the money that you win from doing well in racing. You receive a fixed purse amount for Class races. On top of that, your share of the race purse depends on your finishing position in the race, the higher the better.
  • Sponsorship: Perform well and keep good relations with your sponsors and it will earn you a higher income.
  • Facilities: Some of the unused horse agistment and training facilities can be leased out for public use, earning you income each week. (See Stable Agistment, Administrative staff and Training)
  • Horse sales: The total income received from any horse sales (less 8% Auction House fees) during the week.
  • Stud fees: By selling your stallions' services as part of a breeding program, you can earn additional income, again less 8% fees (See Breeding)
  • Interest received: You can earn interest each week if your bank balance is above zero, the rate of which is determined by your Administration. (See Administrative staff)

The expenses you may have to pay are split into:

  • Manager wages: As stable manager, you'll receive a weekly wage - with it, you can bet on races to gain prestige for your stable and notoriety for yourself! (See Betting)
  • Jockey contracts: Good jockeys come at a price, you'll need to pay the wages negotiated in their contract at the time of signing them, and then again at the start of each and every week they are racing for you. If you hire an apprentice to race, you will pay a one-off fee for jockey services after the race. (See Jockeys)
  • Facilities: This includes the setting up and the maintenance of the stables' training and veterinary facilities, as well as administrative staff costs and specialist facilities. (See Stable Agistment, Administrative staff, Vet services and Training)
  • Auctions/studs: Total fees payable for any horse and yearling purchases and any stud breeding undertaken during the week.
  • Transport: It costs money to safely transport your jockeys and horses from A to B depending on whether they travelled to another track, region or continent. (See Travelling)
  • Race fees : This amount includes any race entry stakes payable as well as race establishment costs if you create a Stakes race. (See Owners Club features)
  • Interest payable: You have to pay overdraft interest each week if your bank balance is below zero. Admin staff can help negotiate a lower interest rate. (See Administrative staff)

Going broke / Liquidating your stable

If your bank balance is below -$250,000 for two weeks in a row, you may be able to reset your stable - but hopefully it doesn't get that bad!

There's nothing to keep you from spending your stable's money even if your balance is zero. As stable manager you have access to a line of credit at the bank, but you're going to have to pay some heavy interest on this borrowed money. The bank is prepared to allow you free reign on spending until you reach $250,000 debit - but after that things start to get tight. You'll still be allowed entry into league races, and to hire unlisted apprentice jockeys, and to auction your horses, but that's about the extent of it. You won't be able to resize your stable facilities, or purchase any new horses, and signing a new jockey contract is right out! Also, and most importantly, your bank will put a stop on any staff drawing a wage from your stables' funds once a 'closing balance' of -$250k has been registered. This means that your vets and trainers will be unpaid! They're prepared to ride it out for a week due to sheer loyalty to you, but at the start of the second week without pay they will all walk out, leaving you with zero training and vet capacity. Note that while Trainers are working for free, you cannot sell any Training to the public, so you might as well use it while you can! The bank will then continue to finance your stable, even if the debt continues to grow, but you'll be without those valuable stable hands.

Should you grow tired of being broke, your Stable Finances page will offer a "Liquidate stable" link for anyone who has closed the week at -$250k. This process is not reversable! If you enter liquidation, your stable will effectively be reset to a 'new' stable, with 4 completely novice horses and minimum sized agistment. You will still be in the same Class as you were before, but you might find it hard to remain competitive!

League Bonuses

You earn money at the end of the season if you can finish in the top 5 places of your Class League

At the end of every season the sponsors hand out a bonus if your stable has done well enough. Trophies and money are handed out to the top 5 places in each racing Class. How much depends on your place and how high up you are in the league system:

Class1st2nd3rd4th5th
1$1,200,000$1,020,000$840,000$660,000$480,000
2$1,000,000$850,000$700,000$550,000$400,000
3$800,000$680,000$560,000$440,000$320,000
4$600,000$510,000$420,000$330,000$240,000
5$400,000$340,000$280,000$220,000$160,000
6$200,000$170,000$140,000$110,000$80,000

70% of the League Bonus is paid at the end of the season, and the other 30% is paid on accepting promotion to a higher league. As an additional bonus all stables that promote will be given a FREE week of Owners Club!!

Personal finances

* Your stable pays you a weekly wage because you're the Manager!
* You can use this money for Instant Racing and also for betting on other races

Your personal finances are totally separate to your Stable Finances. This money is your personal money, as a manager of a Stable, to use however you see fit.

As you don't have a team of Administrative assistants looking after this money, you won't earn any interest on it - so you may as well spend it! And what better way to spend it than at the track, betting on the horses that you know best?! (See Betting)

During the off-season, each Owner will have the opportunity to donate up to 10% of their Personal Finances - to a maximum of $500k - to their Stable. Of course, a stable that accepts charity like this would no doubt have to expect a loss of prestige...but it does provide another way to utilise your Personal Finances if your stable struggles. These donations can only be made once a season, during the Promotion/Relegation window.

06. Horses
Sat 20th Sep 14

Clearly horses are your stables main asset! You must have a minimum of 4 horses in your stable at all times.
Each horse has attributes and skills that determine their overall racing ability, while there are also some additional factors that will affect their performance in different race situations. The horses also have an 'Overall Rating' which is a quick way to compare horses, as well as having experience at different Distances and Track Conditions.

Horse Stats and Abilities

Every horse can run any distance on any track condition - but the horses attributes will make them perform better/worse in certain situations.

It's your job to consider the strengths and weaknesses of your horse, and decide which horse is best for each event. Each attribute of the horse will affect it in different ways - as will the balance between each attribute.

  • Spirit - A horses spirit is an important factor in determining how well the horse and jockey 'read each other' during a race. A horse with less spirit is able to be controlled easier and relate better to a jockey than a high-spirited thoroughbred. Spirit also determines how easily your horse gives in to adversity.
  • Height - The height of a horse largely determines its stride length and physical presence on the racetrack.
  • Weight - Some horses weigh more than others, which can affect the performance of the horse on race day. It's probably a bad idea to put a fat jockey on an underweight horse!
  • Gender - Mares and geldings are a little more predictable than stallions, which may outperform sometimes but at others might just cause nightmares for an untalented jockey! Horses in foal (pregnant) are not eligible to race.
  • Stride - The physical length of the horses stride is an important factor when competing against other horses, particularly in races over distance, after all, the longer the stride the less steps a horse will need to take to get to the finish. A shorter stride has advantages too though.
  • Medical condition - The medical condition of the horse affects its overall abilities to race competitively, and also affects how quickly a horse can recover its Physical condition. So make sure your vets get your horse properly prepared for the race, otherwise your horse will certainly underperform! Also, bear in mind that horses that are worked too heavily are at an increased risk of injury - keep an eye on results of training and also on the Trainer comments after a race for information to help decide when your horse needs a spell.
  • Physical condition - A horse must be in good physical condition to hold up to the vigours of thoroughbred racing. A horse in poor physical condition probably won't be in winning form, and is more likely to pick up an injury from racing. Physical condition is improved marginally by the vet and more so by some training types, and is reduced by racing, training workouts, and of course racing!
  • Vet Assessment - The Vet Assessment is visible for all of your horses and all horses in the Auctions. It shows a quick and simple assessment of how ready your horse is to race at full potential. Vet Assessment takes into account Medical and Physical condition, and also an estimate of how prone to injury the horse is at the moment. (See 'Injuries & Improvements' below for more information)
  • Gate speed - Gate speed determines a horses ability to get a quick jump out of the gate and subsequently make quick decisions and change direction during the race.
  • Acceleration - The acceleration of the horse describes how well it can accelerate! Simple as that! Good reactions need good physical skills to complement them.
  • Muscle tone - One of the most important characteristics, muscle tone helps determine the horses staying power in a race. A horse with poor muscle tone is likely to tire more quickly.
  • Stamina - A horse with bad stamina may not be able to maintain its speed and abilities over the length of the race. Stamina becomes more important over longer race distances and on tracks with heavier conditions.
  • Heart - A fit and healthy horse needs a fit and healthy heart - heart and stamina help determine how long a horse can keep going. Heart also has a 'mystical' quality for some, with suggestions that it provides an extra ability to beat the odds.
  • Racing styles are a somewhat rare specialty skill determined at birth, sometimes inherited from a parent, or sometimes a quirk of nature. The racing style of a horse sometimes affects its performance during a race:
    • Early Sprinter - Slightly faster over the first quarter, but these horses tend to tire more quickly in bad track conditions, unless they have extensive experience.
    • Fast Finisher - Slightly faster over the final quarter, but a tendency to tire quickly in bad track conditions.
    • Mud-lark - Loves to run on a wet track - the wetter the better! Dry tracks are a turn-off though, and the horse may underperform.
    • Natural Champion - Sometimes called a 'Stayer', this horse is born to run the long race.
    • Stalker - Prefers to come from a few places back during the final quarter, rather than leading the pack.
    • Breakaway - Prefers to be among the first few runners in the second half of the race, rather than being caught back in the pack.
    • Unpredictable - This horse can have good or bad patches over the course of a race...it's hard to know what will happen next.
    • Competitive - Loves close-in racing, this horse doesn't mind tight races and competitive finishes.
    • Needs Space - Doesn't like to be boxed in or racing in tight packs. Prefers the open spaces to run in.
(See The Race!)

Injuries and improvements

You can set Training and Vet attention on the Training and Facilities page.

Aside from racing your horses, you'll also need to take care of their training needs and their veterinary care to make sure you always get the most out of them. (See Vet services, and also Training). After racing and training you'll notice the physical condition of the horse will decrease. Medical condition decreasing is often a sign that your horse has picked up an injury - in races, this is reported in the Form Guide after the race.

If your horse is getting repeatedly injured, or if your horse has a lower 'Vet Assessment' than you would expect, then maybe you might consider giving your horse a spell (rest) to allow the horse time to heal naturally? This can be a very effective tool to continue to get the best from your horses.

Injury Profiling, commonly referred to as IP, is a measure of how likely your horse is to sustain an injury next time it races or trains. There is no direct display of this stat, but you can estimate this by looking at the Vet Assessment. If it seems much lower than the average of Medical/Physical condition, then the horse is at a high risk of injury from being too active recently, or because of a recent injury that might be made worse. The best way to help your horse recover if it has a poor Vet Assessment is to give it a spell, or in other words, a short rest from racing. A spell of 3-4 weeks is enough for any horse to recover, but your horse might not need that much of a rest? It's your decision!

Some General Guidelines for Injury Profiling

  • A horse should be able to be involved in some sort of activity (training and/or racing) for the majority of the season.
  • A spell of 2-4 weeks should totally recover Injury Profile from even the worst position. Of course a lesser level of IP doesn't need as much of a spell.
  • Different training types have different intensities, which can be measured by looking at how productive they are, and how long the training session is.
  • Training and racing in the same week is possible, but of course your horse will need a lighter training schedule or more regular spells.
  • A horse that does not train at all can sustain weekly racing for a longer period
  • The strain on a horse from Racing depends on a few factors, including the horses physique/characteristics, the competitiveness of the race, how hard the horse is raced, and the race conditions. There are optimal conditions for each horse physique
  • Injury Profile does affect a horse within a race and also slightly limits the effectiveness of training

Schedule

You can keep track of your horses activities in their schedule

As you'll notice, a horses week can get very busy! Be sure to keep an eye on the Upcoming Schedule for each of your horses, to make sure that they don't have any conflicts. Where there is a conflict in schedule, the horse will simply take the earliest thing that you have told it to do and go with it - even if that means missing out on training or missing out on a race, or even missing travel arrangements to another track. Of course, if a horse misses its travel, it might not make the next race or get home in time for training etc.....so it can have quite a big flow-on effect. Any Schedule conflicts are highlighted in the horses' Upcoming Schedule, so they shouldn't be hard to notice! If you see any, you can remove the conflicting item/s by going into the "Schedule & Transport" page for that horse, and cancelling them directly from the schedule.

Re-naming and Aging

Horses age on the first day of each 3-month season

It's also possible to rename your 2yo horses, any 3yo's that were bought within the past 3 weeks, or any horses with career earnings of less than $1,000,000. It costs 1 'Game Credit' for each time you want to rename a horse. The number of Game Credits you have is displayed on the 'Home' page, and Game Credits can be bought through the Shop, or are provided free with purchases of Owners Club (See Owners Club). To rename a horse, simply select the colt/filly that you want to rename, and then select the Rename a Horse link from the Page Menu. A member of staff from Track King will approve or reject the renaming as appropriate within 24-48 hours at most!

And finally, the great circle of life! Each season, on the first day of January/April/July/October, horses will be considered as one year older - regardless of their actual date of birth. As a general rule, horses may only race from the age of 2yo (3yo for league races) up to and including 10yo. After 10yo, stallions may continue to be used for Stud until (and including) the age of 12yo. After age 12yo (or age 10yo for geldings or mares), there isn't really anything useful for your horses to do around your stable, although a mare will still give birth to a foal as an 11yo provided she was serviced before her 11th birthday. It might break your heart to part with these virtual champions, but in the interest of your stable it should probably be done. You can either organise to give them away, or if you are an Owners Club member you can retire them into the Hall of Fame, so that we can all look back at their stats and achievements. (See Owners Club)

07. Jockeys
Fri 24th Jan 14
* You'll need to find a jockey to ride your horses.
* You can get a cheap apprentice one-off for each race, or contract an apprentice or professional jockey to ride for your stable

Jockeys are the ones responsible for getting the best out of your horse in race. Track King features a form of Artificial Intelligence for the jockeys, allowing them to actually make decisions about how to respond to different situations that they might find themselves in during a race. (See The Race!) It's fair to say that the horses are just the engine, and the jockeys are the drivers.

As you might expect, there are good jockeys and not-as-good jockeys. All of them make decisions to the best of their ability, and sometimes those decisions might be ideal for the horse and race situation. As a general rule, the higher a jockeys' base salary, the higher his potential to make good choices. It's up to you, as an astute Stable Manager, to research the jockeys and find out a bit about them. You can check their career stats to get an idea of what type of track and distance they are most experienced at. Also keep an eye out for their riding style, which shows the things that are most important to that jockey. Watching some of their old races to see how they handled different race situations is often handy to see whether you think they might be suitable for your horses. (See Owners Club)

When jockeys use their Artificial Intelligence to make decisions, they consider the following things - although each jockey has their own ideas about which are most important (as shown in their Racing Style).

  • Their current width on the track (ie how far from the inside rail);
  • Their immediate traffic, both ahead and behind;
  • The horses they can see just ahead of them;
  • Their current placing;
  • Their current speed
  • The distance of the race that has elapsed;
  • Their ability to handle/direct the horse;
  • The amount of energy they think the horse has left;
  • Their own personality - aggressive or passive
  • Their morale, and their personal assessment of the horse.

Of course, in a race, they jockey does also consider your wishes. You have the opportunity to enter Race Instructions for each of your horses, which will be followed (to a degree!) by every jockey that rides the horse - even apprentices.

During the race, the jockey continually assesses their surroundings, making several "mini-decisions" using their 'riding styles' which all fall into the categories above.. Each one of those mini-decisions are then combined, to try and find which instruction they should give the horse that will satisfy as many of their 'styles' as possible. (See The Race for an example of how a Jockey assesses their surroundings)

Jockeys like to feel good about themselves, and their morale influences how well they will communicate with the horse during a race - and how much attention they pay when you give race instructions for your horse! To keep a jockey feeling good, it's important to allow them many opportunities to race. It's also important to give them a good chance at winning. If you keep putting them on the old gray mare that ain't what she used to be...well....the jockey isn't likely to stay happy long! Jockey morale will start at a higher level if you don't drive their wage down at the start of a contract - it costs more but it could well be worth it?

There are 3 different 'grades' of jockey in Track King:

  • Jockeys;
  • Stable Apprentices; and
  • Unlisted Apprentices

Professional / Contracted Jockeys

* You can negotiate a contract with a Professional Jockey to represent your stable for a period of time.
* Negotiate carefully - It's a bit more difficult to fire them or to extend their contracts

Contracted jockeys are the 'real deal' - the main sort of jockey you'll find in Track King. They have a name, and can be contracted to many different stables over their career, and will age by one year on the first day of January/April/July/October, just like the horses!

To contract a new jockey to your stable, follow the link named 'Hire a jockey' from the right-hand Page Menu of any 'Stable' page. You will then be able to search the pool of jockeys in Track King, and select from those that would be prepared to race for your Stable (based on the prestige of your stable!), and from there it's just a matter of picking the one you want and organising a contract. Bear in mind that you may only hire jockeys of your own Race Class, and within about 5-6 levels of Prestige to your stable. For example, a highly prestigious jockey is not going to want to negotiate with a 'lowly' stable with a lot lower prestige. The jockey may agree to negotiate with stables of slightly lower prestige, but you can be sure they won't accept much haggling! Negotiate carefully - you can only complete one set of jockey negotiations every 24 hours - whether you managed to successfully sign the jockey or not. Keep an eye on the status of negotiations with the jockey to get an idea how far you can drive their wage down! As a general rule, a jockey with more prestige than your stable are more likely to treat you harshly.

While a jockey is signed to your stable, they are not available to race for any other stable, and will draw a wage from you (in advance) once every week excepting the last week of their contract. On completion of their contract, they will go On Holiday for an indeterminate period - maybe a day, maybe a week....maybe longer?! When they leave your stable, if they're inclined to race with you again, they'll give you an idea of when they intend to return. The better their morale at the termination of the contract, the more likely that they'll make sure they are back on time!

If a jockey employed by your stable has less than 28 days remaining on their contract and you are a member of the Owners Club (See Owners Club), you can negotiate to end the contract early. The jockey will tell you the amount that they want to be paid to finish their contract early, and then it's all up to you! It's not a very prestigious thing to be firing jockeys though...

The Conference Room Specialist Facility will make it possible to attempt to negotiate to extend the jockeys' contract as it epproaches the final few weeks - although the jockey is likely to be asking for a wage increase!

Jockeys will retire from racing on their 33rd birthday, and will only compete in races of their own Class - which means that generally the jockeys available to the "Upper Classes" (sic!) are better than those of the lower. There will be some exceptions - can you find a bargain?!

Stable Apprentices

* Your stable can employ 2 Apprentice Jockeys.
* Once they're promoted to Professional Jockeys, they'll give you a weekly cut of their wages!

A Stable Apprentice is basically a jockey in training, and can be identified by the '(A)' to the right of their name. Each stable can have up to 2 Stable Apprentices in the stable at any time. To hire a stable apprentice, go to the "Hire a jockey" page, as described above with a real jockey. At the top of that page is the link to hire a Stable Apprentice.

Hiring a Stable Apprentice is done through an independent agency called the Jockey Recruitment Agency. When you visit, they'll ask how many candidates you would like to interview. You pay them a flat fee per candidate just to interview them, and can then choose which of the candidates you want to recruit. These candidates will be aged 19-22 years old, and have a few basic differences. It's up to you to pick which one looks the most likely prospect for your stable.

Once you recruit a Stable Apprentice, they must remain an apprentice in your stable for a minimum of 4 weeks, and up to a year (4 seasons) from the date they are recruited. It is totally your decision about when they should be granted their full jockey license.

Each week that the Stable Apprentice remains in your stable they will earn 5 'training credits' (more if you have the Apprentice Classroom Specialist Facility), which you may spend on improving their skills and experience, which will in turn improve their prestige. Stable Apprentices will also earn some extra Training Credits for each race in which they can beat AT LEAST 4 other opponents. Of course, they'll also earn experience and have morale just like a normal jockey. You can apply any Training Credits that your apprentice has earned at any time, and see the results immediately.

When training an Apprentice using the Training Credits they have earned, think carefully. Imagine that the levels of each stat are an indication of "how carefully" the jockey should consider it. You should have a definite plan of what things you want this jockey to pay attention to most of all. If you simply add training credits to make all of the skills the maximum, then the jockey is very likely to get confused, because everything going on around them is important, and so they won't be able to think clearly and plan a strategy. If the jockey has only a couple of "main" skills, then at least they (and you!) will know what is most important and therefore have an idea of how they will react. (See The Race for more information on Riding Considerations and how they apply to a race)

While they are an apprentice, you cannot expect them to perform as well as if they were a fully licensed jockey - they're still learning. However once you grant them a full license, they'll suddenly improve and realise their hidden potential and go on to be the best they can be. And in thanks for your help and nurturing they will return 10-15% of their wages to you any time they are contracted by a stable! On top of that, you will also gain prestige for your stable based on the length & success of their apprenticeship.

  • Jockey Career Earnings less than $5million - pays you 10% of their wage
  • Career Earnings up to $20million - pays you 12.5% of their wage
  • Career Earnings over $20millin - pays you 15% of their wage

When you grant a Stable Apprentice their full jockey license (after at least 4 weeks, or automatically after a year), you can choose which Race Class of license you will give them, which they may improve on over their career. Of course, they will charge a higher weekly wage in the higher Classes, but maybe there will be a bigger demand for their services in the lower Classes? Gauge their prestige against the available jockeys of similar prestige in each racing class to decide where they are likely to be hired the most - therefore returning a more regularly wage to you!!

After you have promoted an Apprentice, they will make themselves available for you to hire at a greatly reduced rate - yet another benefit for your training them!

Professional and stable apprentice jockeys require at least an 11 minute break between races.

Unlisted Apprentices

These are the un-named jockeys that all the automated/computer stables use in the game. They're not very good!

Every track in the world of Track King has a swag of unknown Apprentice jockeys who are just dying to get a ride. They don't charge much comparatively....but then they don't have any experience, and only limited ability! If for any reason one of your contracted jockeys can't make it to a race, an apprentice will step in automatically to ride for you, and will charge you for his services at the end of the day.

Apprentices, being the dumbest of all jockeys, should probably be prevented from riding in any races that you really want to excel in! One day, maybe one of these youngsters will be a candidate for someone as a Stable Apprentice....who knows. Hardly likely though!

08. Stable agistment
Tue 10th Jan 12
Your horses need a place to live! You can build more stalls on the Facilities page, and lease spare stalls for extra money.

You pay agistment fees each week to house and feed your stable of horses, and pay one-off expenses to make room for more horses (or to remove a stall). Your stable can physically hold up to 30 stalls. Increasing or reducing the capacity of your stables enables you to house and feed more/less horses successfully. It is possible to crowd more horses into your stable than there are stalls, however this is almost certainly going to lead to a massive loss of your horses condition. After all, if you want a high-performance horse you'll need to provide for it in a professional manner!

The costs to maintain the stall and to increase/reduce capacity is determined by your stables racing class - the higher your class, the higher the cost to resize and maintain these facilities. Top class horses need top class care! No matter which class you are in, the first 4 stables will be provided free by the sponsors of your stable, with no ongoing cost to your Stable finances each week.

Some of the unused stalls in the stable (as determined at Financial updates on Sunday evening) will be leased to the public, earning you income. The amount of stalls you can lease to the public is determined by your stable's prestige level and the number of administrative assistants on your staff at the time. The better your prestige, the more demand there will be to agist with you. The more administrative assistants you have the better your staff will be able to cope with collecting payments for these services. (See Administrative staff)

09. Administrative staff
Tue 10th Jan 12
Admin staff will help earn you interest and income, and also help reduce your costs - but only to a limit

Administrative assistants manage the office at your stable, taking care of some of the day-to-day financial aspects of owning a stable. If you have many debts or many funds available, you can hire an administrative assistant to reduce your interest rates, or find the best investment for your bank account. Administrative assistants can be found on the 'Stable facilities and training' page.

Administrative assistant functions include:

  • increasing interest received for positive bank balance;
  • decreasing interest payable for negative bank balance (overdraft);
  • affecting capacity and public leasing of agistment stalls;
  • affecting capacity and public leasing of training facilities;
  • helping with general facilities expenses by getting you the best price;
  • reducing travel costs by getting you the cheapest deals;
  • keeping up good relations with your sponsors;

You'll need to pay a one-time fee to hire or fire Administrative assistants. On top of this, they are paid a wage each week - the amount adminsitrative assistants demand to hire/fire, and also for their weekly services and is determined by your racing class level.

10. Training
Tue 10th Jan 12
* Training happens once a week for each stable - either Monday (Class 1-3) or Friday (Class 4-6). (See Daily/Weekly timetable).
* The next available training session for your stable is shown on the 'Facilities and Training' page

To train a horse, first you must have Training capacity available. You can do this by hiring a trainer (an hour at a time) to come and work with your stable on the 'Stable facilities and training' page. Any training hours that you do not use during the week may potentially be sold on (possibly at a profit!) to the public, with the amount of hours that can be sold depending on the number of Administrative assistants you have employed. (See Administrative assistants)

Once you have training capacity to suit your needs, you can begin to Schedule the training of your horse. Pick a training type for any horses that you want to train, assign a trainer for however many hours that you require, and then apply the training. If this has been successful, a confirmation message will be displayed to tell you when the training will take place, and the training will be entered into the horses' Upcoming Schedule. Your horse will continue with this training program each week until you change it, unless your horse misses a training session due to a Schedule conflict. Of course, the horse will be busy training from the start of training time, for however many hours you have asked it to train. Make sure that training doesn't interfere with any other commitments!

Your trainer/s flatly refuses to travel - probably because of how difficult it is to move the training equipment from one location to another?! Whatever the reason, for a training session to happen your horse will need to be located at your stable at the appointed training time. You can double check that everything is OK by looking at the Upcoming Schedule for that horse. Schedule conflicts will be highlighted so you shouldn't miss any that may appear.

Different training activities will have different outcomes for your horse, but one thing is for certain - it takes time and effort to see the changes in your horse. Practice makes perfect! The results of your training will be seen each week at the designated Training Time for your race Class (see Daily/Weekly Schedule). Training rises are shown in blue, and training drops are shown in red.

Trainers often have more trouble training highly skilled horses, so it will take more time with the trainer to see the results of training on your champion thoroughbred than it will with your young unskilled prodigy. No matter the skill of the horse, the longer the horse spends training, the more the horse loses interest. Short sharp training sessions are more effective (hour for hour) than long drawn out sessions... and there's an upper limit of 12 hours training per week on any individual horse. Some training types are also affected by various Specialist Facilities - some for better and some for worse! (See Specialist Facilities)

Training Types

Each type of Training has it's advantages and disadvantages - you need to decide how to shape your horses abilities.

Following is a quick description of the training types available, and how they affect your horse:

  • Beach gallops - A refreshing gallop for the horse on the sand, helps stamina and heart and works off a few pounds too!
  • Beach walks - A relaxing walk along the seaside. Sea air is good for the soul and condition, but it's not really good for the muscles?
  • Conditioning - A medium workout used to 'harden' a horse. Good for stamina and putting on some muscle weight, and being a medium workout it doesn't take too much out of the horse.
  • Cross country - Some good positive exercise that builds body stats, although it's fairly taxing. Horses take small steps going over obstacles though...
  • Pampering - Sometimes, you just wanna spoil your horse! Massively good for recuperation, but not really the sort of training a true champion needs!
  • Short sprints - A medium workout that is aimed at helping your horse reach its maximum speed as quickly as possible
  • Starting stalls - A whole load of work in the gates might help your horse to explode from the gates. All this standing waiting for the bell is taxing for the heart though!
  • Swimming - A really heavy workout that will really get the blood rushing and the muscles aching. It takes a lot out of the horse though
  • Time trials - This gives the horse practice over race distance. It's tiring, but it certainly helps them learn how to handle a race of that length.
  • Trackwork - distance - A long run on the track. Not as tiring as swimming but not as effective either.
  • Trackwork - speed - Some time spent at the track focussing on maximising a horses top speed.
  • Walking trail - Time to have a day out with the horse. Has restorative effects for the horse, and some minor impacts on physical stats.
11. Vet services
Tue 10th Jan 12
* Your horses will need occasional vet treatment to help keep them in peak condition.
* Vets can be hired on the Facilities and Training page.

Just like Trainers, Vets operate on a schedule. They work 5 days a week, taking Mondays and Fridays off so they don't get in the way of Training. (See Daily/Weekly timetable)

Vets are useful to help speed up the natural recovery process, helping your horses regain their physical and medical condition after a big race or a taxing training session.

Again, just like Trainers, before you can give your horses the veterinary attention they need, you'll need to first have some spare Vet capacity. You can hire Vet Services (an hour at a time) to come and work with your stable on the 'Stable facilities and training' page. Unlike trainers though, any excess time that the Vet has while at your stable will not be sold on for use by the public - so only hire the vet for as many hours as you think you will need!

Once you have some spare vet capacity, it can be assigned in blocks of one hour to your horses on the 'Stable facilities and training' page. This page will also show you the time and date that the vet is going to come visiting. As you might expect, this time and date is also recorded in the horses' Upcoming Schedule. Once a vet schedule has been successfully arranged, the vet will continue to come and see your horse/s for the same amount of time each day in the vets' working week - not stopping until you either make changes to the schedule, or until the horse fails to keep a veterinary appointment.

If you have the Enhanced Vet Centre Specialist Facility, then during the nightly Scheduling process (approx 00:00), any unused vet capacity is automatically assigned to the horses in the worst medical condition.

Remember that the horse will be busy with the vet for however many hours you have assigned, so be sure the horse isn't booked with the vet for so long that it misses out on something else like Race Preparation!

12. Racing
Sat 03rd Oct 15
Class League races (at your Local Track Tuesday - Thursday),
Cup races (usually at Regional Tracks on Saturday - Sunday), and
Stakes races (Monday and Friday, at every track around the world!
Use Your Local Track to find local races, Racing Newspaper for broader options, and Cups Information - (See Entering a Race)

Horse racing is an exhilarating sport, and it's no different here at Track King!

There are 3 different types of races within the game:

These contests are held over varying distances, categorised as follows:

  • Sprint : up to and including 1250m
  • Short : 1251m to 1500m
  • Medium : 1501m to 1800m
  • Long : 1801m to 2200m
  • Epic : more than 2200m

League races will always consist of one race of each distance type, while Stakes and Cup races may cover longer distances. The exact race distance changes regularly to ensure all horses have the same opportunity to prosper over time. It's up to you to select the right combination of race distance, jockey, horse, race instructions and opposition to give your horse the best shot at winning! (See Entering a Race)

Some races will have eligibility criteria in place that your horse will need to meet, such as gender or age restrictions, or that the parent stable must be racing to an appropriate local Track or Region. You'll need to check the eligibility criteria of the race you want to enter to be sure. Class races will only impose loose restrictions - namely that you must be part of that Racing Class at that Track, and that the horse must be between 3 and 10 years old. The eligibility criteria are:

  • Age: All entrants must be aged within the upper/lower limit at the time of the race
  • Gender: All entrants must be of the specified gender/s at time of race entry.
  • Class: All horses must be racing in the appropriate Class at time of entry.
  • Location: All horses must be owned by a stable based at the specified continent or track
  • Maidens: All horses must have not won a race at the time of race entry
  • Apprentices: Only apprentice jockeys can compete in this race
  • Won less than $X million: All horses must have career earnings of less than the specified amount at the time of race entry
  • Rated below X: The horses OR when at optimum condition must be less than the specified rating

In order for your horse to be able to race, it must of course be located at the appropriate track at the designated race time, and it must also have completed 3 hours of Race Preparation immediately prior to the race. Never fear, this preparation will be booked in for you automatically when you enter a race - you just need to make sure your horse can get there!

Please note, horses that are at physical or medical condition of 5-Drained or lower 1 hour prior to commencement of any racing will be scratched from the event. Any bets previously made on these runners will be refunded by bookies, as is standard for scratchings.

At the end of the Race Meet (See Continents), prestige, purses, and Class league placings are all updated. Horses placed in the Top 5 will share the purse, while prestige is awarded to the top 7 runners - of course, the higher you place and the more 'real jockeys' in the race, the better the reward!

There are so many races available to enter in Track King - Stakes races twice a week, Class League racing, plus many Cups during the season. The big question is - which races will you enter, and which will you decide to miss? A stable would need to be very large to compete on all fronts...but be warned, the cost of maintaining a large stable is quite high!

H.O.O.F. Instant Racing

Instant Racing is a fun way to pass the time. Races run every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day

You can find H.O.O.F Instant Racing in the Races menu. Races are run every 10 minutes, so keep an eye out for challenges, or make your own! If you are an Owners Club member, you'll receive alerts for every HOOF race that is available.

The winners of HOOF races may get an experience boost for their horse. To qualify, there must be at least 3 runners in the race.The more runners, the more experience up for grabs, with 8 runners guaranteeing that the winner earns experience.

The Training Track

You can use your Personal Finances to send your horses to the Training Track - with no risk of injury!

For a small cost, you can take any of your own horses to the Training Track, using the banner link on the Home page.

The Training Track is the perfect way to experiment with various jockey instructions and horse/jockey combinations. Of course there's no race purse to be won, but the bonus is some instant knowledge about your horse - and a little bit of experience to boot!

Also located at the Training Track is the 'Arcade Mile', which is an arcade game featuring your very own horses! If you manage to place in the Top 3 for any of the skill levels, you will earn yourself a trophy which you hold until someone beats your score!

13. Tracks and weather
Tue 10th Jan 12
* Each track follows a weather pattern over the course of the 3-month season.
* Weather directly influences the Track Condition - and of course, some horses and jockeys will prefer certain conditions over others

Your Local track is the home of your stable (and many others), and is the venue for your weekly Class league races. (See Class Races) Up to 150 human-owned stables can call each track home, with 25 stables competing against one another in each of the 6 classes of racing at each track. On entering Track King as a Stable Manager, your stable will have been assigned to a Local track.

Local Tracks have a Prestige Rating, which is a guide to how many players reside at that Track in Class 1,2 or 3. The higher the Prestige level for a Track, the more likely that Track is to schedule a Local Cup Day.

At the end of each 11-week racing season, and prior to the start of the next racing season, you'll have the opportunity to relocate to any other Local track in the world that has an opening at your Class level. If you are moving to a track of lower Prestige Rating, there will be a cost associated with the move. (See the end of section Class Races)

The track is also home to a resident tipster, an virtual equine expert who doesn't mind a bet or two - sometimes he'll offer his choices for race favouritism in the betting stakes. Check each individual race page before the event to check his early mail! Maybe he knows something you don't?

Weather
Each track has it's own weather, which is updated every day. On each Track page you can see what the weather is like today, and a weather forecast for the next 7 days. As we all know, the weather forecast isn't always entirely accurate, but they get it right quite often. The weather isn't selected completely at random every day. It's connected to what the weather was like the day before. If there was rain today, there's a greater probability of rain tomorrow as well, compared to other types of weather.

The chances are exactly the same for rain, sunshine or anything else regardless of which track you choose. No tracks have better weather than others. You may also notice that each continent has its' own "Weather patterns", with each real-time month marking the start of a new Weather pattern. Pay a little attention and over time you may be able to predict where the wet and dry tracks are likely to be at any time of the year. There are three different Weather patterns - Hot, Wet, and Average - and they always follow each other in that order. The only thing that isn't known is which of those Weather Patterns that each Continent will start with at the beginning of each new racing season.

The weather affects track conditions, which in turn affects the performance of your horses and jockeys on race day. To be a truly successful Track King, you'll need to be able to predict how the track will respond to the coming weather so that you can be sure to enter your horse into races where the track condition is likely to suit your steed.

Track condition
As most horse trainers and keen punters know, a stretch of hot sunny weather or a spell of rainy days can really affect the condition of a racetrack. The horse racing tracks in the game reflect this, with subtle changes the result from the weather conditions.

Some horses perform better in heavy going, some horses prefer faster track conditions. Some horse skills are more useful on heavier or drier tracks, and some qualities of a horse are consumed faster in heavier conditions than on good and fast tracks.

Track conditions (from fastest to slowest)
  • Fast
  • Good
  • Dead
  • Slow
  • Heavy

14. Regions
Tue 10th Jan 12
* Each Region is made up of 15 Local Tracks, and 1 Regional Track which will host the majority of Cup events for all of those Local Tracks.
* Some Continents only have 1 Region, some have more.

Each continent within Track King contains one or more regions.

There is no difference between the regions within a continent - they are all equal and experience similar racing conditions over time, as well as similar Cup competitions. Additional regions may be added to a continent if the existing regions have reached their capacity.

Regional tracks are only used for Cup racing. Each Regional track is the 'hub' for 15 Local tracks, with each Local track hosting 150 stables that participate throughout the 6 different racing classes. (See Tracks and weather)

Although the other stable managers at your local track are your direct opponents, don't forget that you may sometimes need to band together as track representatives to compete against other tracks - or even other regions or continents - in very prestigious Cup competitions. After all, when a horse makes a name for itself on the big stage, the punters and media are bound to want to know about the place it came from.

15. Continents
Tue 10th Jan 12
Racing on each Continent happens at a different time of the day, so if you find your Races are at an inconvenient time of day, you can consider moving to another Continent at the end of the season

There are five (5) continents represented in Track King.
The main difference between the continents within the game is the cutoff and start/end times of races:

    Please note: Times given below are based on gametime. Check the clock in the Track King header.
  • Australia
    1:00 - Cutoff for race instructions/scratchings in Australia
    2:00 - Raceday start for Australia
    4:30 - Raceday finish for Australia
  • Asia
    4:30 - Cutoff for race instructions/scratchings in Asia
    5:30 - Raceday start for Asia
    8:00 - Raceday finish for Asia
  • Europe
    8:00 - Cutoff for race instructions/scratchings in Europe
    9:00 - Raceday start for Europe
    11:30 - Raceday finish for Europe
  • Africa
    11:30 - Cutoff for race instructions/scratchings in Africa
    12:30 - Raceday start for Africa
    15:00 - Raceday finish for Africa
  • America (Nth & Sth)
    15:00 - Cutoff for race instructions/scratchings in America
    16:00 - Raceday start for America
    18:30 - Raceday finish for America

Your horses are able to travel to other continents to participate in Stakes and Cup races, however there is a small transport cost associated. (See Travelling)

If racing times in another continent are more convenient for you, you are free to move your stable to any local track in that continent that has a vacancy. Moves can be made during the break between the end of the 11 week Class racing season and the start of the next Class racing season. (See Tracks and weather)

16. Class races (leagues)
Thu 11th Sep 14
* Class Racing is the only type of Racing that affects your position on the League Table.
* Class Racing for each of the 6 Classes (Divisions) happens at your Local Track between Tuesday and Thursday.
* Each Racing Season starts at the beginning of each quarter year - in January, April, July and October.

There are 6 classes of racing in Track King - from the dizzying heights of Class 1 racing down to the less glamourous gallopers of Class 6.

Your stable's racing class represents your racing 'league' at your local track, and the group of direct opponents you'll be racing against to get promoted to the class above. In Class league races, you will only compete against other stables located at your track in the same racing class as your stable. Your stable can occassionally race against stables in a higher/lower class, but only in Stakes and Cup races.

Class league races are held during the week, depending on which racing class your stable is in:

  • Class 1 : race on Tuesday
  • Class 2 : race on Tuesday
  • Class 3 : race on Wednesday
  • Class 4 : race on Wednesday
  • Class 5 : race on Thursday
  • Class 6 : race on Thursday

Race entrants (horses and jockeys) must be nominated before 23:00 on the day prior to the race. You may withdraw (scratch) your horse from a race voluntarily up to 1hr prior to the start of the racing in that continent. (See Continents)

There are 25 stables per racing class at each track, competing over the course of 11 Race Days in a fixed 3-month season. The seasons in Track King happen within the following months, with the first week of racing starting from the first Monday of the month:

  • January to March
  • April to June
  • July to September
  • October to December

Week 1 of racing within each Class will begin from the first Monday of the opening month. For example, in the January to March season of 2008, the first Class 1 Race Day will be on Tuesday the 8th of January, as the first Monday of the month was on the 7th of January.

For each of the 11 weeks of the season, you will be offered the opportunity to enter into two of the 4 Class League races (one for each of the 'common' distance categories) for your Race Class at your Local Track. These invitations will be presented to you on your Stable page in the section titled 'Important Information and Events'. Alternatively, you can look at your Invitations in the Races Homepage and enter from there. However you do it, don't leave it too late to enter, as your choices of which race to enter will become more limited as other horses enter. Class League races are restricted to a maximum of 15 horses in the field.

Where leagues have 18 real players or more, a 5th race (Epic) is scheduled on alternate weeks starting on week 1. For these weeks the maximum number of entries per race drops to 13 instead of 15 per race.

On completion of each Class League race meet all runners will receive a payment for competing, based on the following formula:
Automatic League Entry payment = (7 - Racing Class) x $5000, scaled based on the number of Named Jockeys in the race
This automatic payment means there is a clear incentive to compete in your League Races each week.

The League Table

* The results of your Class Races will affect your position in the League over the 11 week season.
* At Seasons end, the Top 5 are eligible to promote, and the bottom 5 face Relegation!

League Points are also awarded to the horses that competed based on their finishing order. These points are then tallied up to work out the stables' standing within the Class League Table. Points will be awarded as follows:

  • 1st place - 10 points;
  • 2nd place - 8 points;
  • 3rd place - 7 points;
  • 4th place - 6 points;
  • 5th place - 5 points;
  • 6th place - 4 points;
  • 7th place - 3 points;
  • 8th place - 2 points;
  • Lower placed finisher - 1 point.

Tiebreakers: Where the total points earned is equal between Stables, league position is decided by the number of 1st place finishes, then 2nd places and so on, down to the number of races competed. If everything else is equal, then the stable which held the lead on the table the week prior will continue in the higher position. In the event of a tie for any position after the last round of the season, league position will be determined by the stable which had their horse finish in the highest position in the longest distance Week 11 race contested by either/both of the tied stables.

At the end of the 11 week Class League season, prizemoney will be awarded (See Finances), the top stable of each Class (except Class 1!) will automatically promote to a higher racing class where prestige, race purses, and often stakes are higher and the competition is tougher. The 2nd to 5th placed stables of each Class will be given an offer to promote to a higher Class if they wish. If this offer is not accepted within 5 days of the season end, then the offer to promote will be withdrawn. So, if you have an unsuccessful racing season and finish in the bottom five positions of your League, don't despair! There's always a chance that the people racing in the Class below you might not take up the offer to promote, and you'll hang on to your prestige!

Relocating to a New Local Track

* In the last week of each season, you may choose to relocate your stable to another Track - a chance to find new opponents, new challenges, or new opportunities!

At the end of the season, aside from prizemoney being paid, all stables will have a small window of opportunity to relocate from one Local Track to another.

  • Why would I move? - A couple of reasons. To get a better chance at promotion (ie less competition), or to race against friends, or just to move to a continent that has a more suitable race time.
  • What does it cost?- There's no financial cost for the move at all, but if you move to a Track with a lower Prestige Rating, then you may suffer a small prestige penalty.
  • What will my new stable size be?- A stable the exact same size of your old one will be made ready for you at the new track - don't worry, your agents and admin staff have got it all covered!
  • When can I do this? Moving stables can be done from the completion of Friday stakes racing in Week 11, right up until midnight Thursday/Friday morning week before the new season starts. In some seasons this may only be a 1-week period, but your Stable Important Information box will help you work out when the window closes. This period also coincides with the promotion/relegation period for all stables.
  • Where can I move to? - You can move to any track at your own Class level where there is a stable that is willing to swap. Unowned (bot) stables are always willing to swap. You can put an offer out to one human stable at a time only, so it's probably a good idea to arrange it via in-game email first, just to be sure. If you finished in the promotion/relegation zones and haven't yet gone up/down a Class, you'll need to do that first before moving.
  • Nobody at the other track wants to swap with me! or I'm waiting to be relegated but it isn't happening! - Thats unfortunate. Try communicating by email with the players in the other Class league, or try again next season.

At the start of Week 0 of each new season, the officials in charge of each League Track will pay a "Competitive League bonus" to all players in C1-C3 Leagues where there are 8 or more human opponents. This bonus is between $32,000 and $900,000 - scaled depending on the Racing Class, and the numbers of human opponents in that Class.

17. Cup races
Tue 10th Jan 12
Cups are mostly held at Regional Tracks, require an Invitation, and can be seen on your Stable Calendar or on the Cup Information page.

Cup races are more prestigious than other races within Track King, as entry is via invitation only! If you are qualified for a forthcoming Cup race, the invitation will appear on your Stable page, and any races that you are qualified for will become visible when you enter your horse into a race. (See Entering a Race)

There are a variety of different Cup competitions that are run throughout the course of a season. Some of the more regular Cup styles are:

  • Open Invitational Cups - everyone is able to enter!
  • Stables that were promoted/relegated through the same Class barrier (stables that moved from 4 to 5 competing against stables that moved from 5 to 4 in one Cup)
  • Stables that finished top 10 in their class
  • Stables that have won Cup competitions within the past 2 seasons
  • Class-based Cup competitions against other stables in your region and continent
  • Corporate sponsored Cups, sponsored by 'real life' companies or people

Cup races are generally held at Regional tracks (See Regions), which means that you're very likely to need to book travel. Don't leave your travel bookings until the last minute! In many cases all Regional tracks across the world will play host to an equivalent Cup - some being more prestigious than others, and some offering a larger race purse, or demanding higher stakes to enter. Check out the description of any Cups you are invited to - there may be a good alternative away from your Regional track....although bear in mind that travel times will be longer!

Cup races are held on weekends - Saturday and Sunday - throughout the racing season. Race entrants (horses and jockeys) must be nominated by 23:00 on the day prior to the race time. You may withdraw (scratch) your horse from a race voluntarily up to 1hr prior to the start of the racing in that continent. (See Continents)

Qualifying for the next round

* Invitations for next rounds will be issued after Race Meets complete each Sunday.
* You'll need to have placed well enough in this round to advance to the next one!

When working out which Stables have earned entry to the following round, all results are sorted by:

  1. Finishing position; then
  2. Longest distance completed; then
  3. Race time

If you check the Information about the Cup (you'll find a link from every Cup race to the Cup Information pages, as well as a link from your Races homepage, and also a "Cup info" link from the Home page), you'll notice a table detailing how many runners/races there will be at each Round of the Cup. With that information in your possession, you can then calculate whether your Stable has made the cut to get through! Of course, if you wait until after Race Meets on the Sunday in your Continent, you'll know for certain as the invitations will arrive within an hour of the end of the racing day....but if you're inclined to work it out yourself, the following example may help.

Example: Round 1 of a Cup event has a maximum of 75 runners, spread over 3 races of 25. Round 2 of a Cup features 25 runners total, in one race, as follows:

  • Round 1 (up to 75 runners):
    Race 1: Field of 17 runners over 2000m
    Race 2: Field of 8 runners over 1800m
    Race 3: Field of 20 runners over 2000m
  • Round 2: up to 25 runners

On completion of Round 1, the 25 places would be awarded as follows:

  • 8 places automatically given to each race (Remember, first we sort by Finishing Position);
  • So with 24 runners allocated out of 25, we look for the longest race to award the extra invitation to 9th position. As both of the remaining races were 2000m, we then look for fastest time;
  • Whichever 9th placed runner in Race 1 or Race 3 would then receive the 25th Invitation

Of course, quite often there are more races and more variation of race distance to sort through, but the same basic principles apply. Hope that helps!

Cup Finals, Trophies, and Prize Money

Everyone in the top half of the final placings will earn some money and prestige - but only the winner will get a trophy!

So the big day has come and gone, and the big question of course is 'Where's my shiny trophy?!'. The results of Cup racing are updated as follows:

  1. At the usual time of closing for a Race Meet, the top 5 runners will get their normal race purses, as with any other race. Experience, prestige and health updates are made, and the results are final.
  2. On the following day (Sunday), the results of racing for the entire Cup weekend are processed. This includes issuing invitations for future Cup rounds, presenting trophies to the winning horses, jockeys and stables.

Cup Finals also offer a special bonus to all entrants that finish inside the top half of the field. These runners will also receive a payment equal to 5% of the total race purse. This payment will be made during Trophy presentations.

Community Cups

* Community Cups are proposed and supported by the gaming Community by donating Credits until they reach the required amount.
* One great form of Community Cups is the Rivalry Cup, where two tracks face off against each other!

Community Cups are a chance for the Track King Community to help build their own racing calendar! A Community Cup can be "proposed" by any individual player for a fee in Game Credits. Then, the "proposed cup" is made visible to everyone, allowing the community to donate Game Credits to support the idea. You can see a list of who proposed the Cup, and also a list of who has donated towards it presented near the heading of the Cups description page.

Once enough credits have been received then this Cup is scheduled! On a Thursday night at 22:00, any Community Cups that have received enough support are automatically scheduled to take place for the weekend beginning in 30 days time, and Invitations will be available as per the standard Cup processes.

After a Community Cup has begun, it will again open for Support from the general public, so that it can be re-run every season if you like!

Rivalry Cups are a special form of Community Cup, where all stables from two Local Tracks are invited to compete at a neutral venue in an elimination Cup. Aside from the winning stable getting their personal glory, there is also an award for the winning Track. The winning Track is the one that has the highest total number of placings in the Top 5 over every race of the series. No extra score is given for 1st or 2nd - all placings are equal. Every stable from the winning Track that competed at least once in that Cup series will receive a bonus payment equal to 25% of the final race purse! In the unlikely event of a tie, then all competing stables will receive a bonus payment equal to 5% of the final race purse.

Local Cup Days

At Local Tracks where there are enough players, Local Cup Days will happen occasionally, giving a wider range of horses and competitors the chance to earn some silverware!

Starting in 2011, Local and Regional Tracks with sufficient populations will have several Local Cup Days throughout the Season. These events will be arranged at the start of Week 0, for the season ahead, and will be advertised to all Stables at the local tracks. Details of Local Cup Days can be seen on the Track page.

Local Cup Days will be held based on Local Track Prestige Rankings as follows:

  • Grand (14) and above = Meetings on Wks 4,6,7,9/10
  • Satisfactory (10) and above = Meetings on Wks 4,6,9/10
  • Moderate (7) and above = Meetings on Wks 4,9/10
  • Underdone (4) and above = Meetings on Wks 4,10
18. Stakes and Invitational Races
Tue 10th Jan 12
* Stakes races happen every Monday and Friday at every Local Track around the world.
* You can search each Track manually to find the best races for your horses - or if you purchase Owners Club you can use the 'Search for a Race' feature.
* If you haven't been sent an Invitation to enter a Stakes race, you'll still be able to enter during the 3 days before the Race as long as it is not full!

Stakes races and Invitational races are 'friendly' races, some created by unowned stables and some created by other Track Kings like yourself. You can use these races to hone your horse's skills or to test your horses against those from other stables in a little bit of friendly competition. There is little or no prestige for this racing type - especially when racing at your own track - but the racing is just as exciting and you may get to learn more about your horse and jockey, track conditions, and other Track Kings from across the globe, under differing race conditions. And of course, there's the purse!

Stakes racing occurs on Mondays and Fridays during the racing season. Race entrants (horses and jockeys) must be nominated by 23:00 on the day prior to the race time. Don't forget, if you're travelling to another track to compete in a Stakes race, you will need to make your travel booking the day before race entry cuts off at the latest - check the Schedule and Transport page for your horse to get a quote on how long the travel will take, and plan ahead!. You may withdraw (scratch) your horse from a race voluntarily up to 1hr prior to the start of the racing in that continent, although beware, entry stakes are not refunded. (See Continents)

Stakes Races

Anyone can compete in a Stakes race, but they can only be created by Owners Club members (See Owners Club). Stakes races can be held at any track on any Monday or Friday. If you create a Stakes race, you offer up the purse out of your own Stable Finances, and then your sponsors will kick in an extra amount up to 50% - the stricter the entry criteria the less they will contribute. You'll earn prestige based on how generous the purse is, so don't be too stingy! There's no limit to the amount of Stakes races you can sponsor, and you're able to have them run at any Racetrack around the world.

For each Stakes race you sponsor, you'll receive 15 Invitations to issue to whichever Stables you want. You might give them all to one stable, or share them around...or maybe even not invite anyone at all! The choice is yours - but once you've sent an Invitation, you can't take it back!

Each Stakes race is open to a maximum of 25 runners, and at 00:00 gametime 3 days before the race all remaining Gates will be made available for entry to the general public - so if you get an invitation, be sure to respond in enough time to guarantee your place. This might seem a bit inconvenient, but it does help to ensure fairly competed races for Stables and Punters alike.

Invitationals

Invitationals are similar to Stakes races in most ways, except for a couple of major points:

  1. Any stable can create an Invitational by first purchasing Game Credits from the Shop;
  2. You will get all 25 Invitations to hand out - but can only send 2 invitations to any stable;
  3. When sending Invitations, you have the option to invite the stable, or to pick individual horses from that stable!
  4. The first 3 horses win a FREE Week of Owners Club!

The purse for Invitationals does not come out of your Stable finances at all - instead, the starting purse is decided based on how many Game Credits you spend, and then the rest of the purse is made up from Stakes from the entrants.

Also, in the 3-day window prior to the race, 'uninvited stables' may only enter the race if there are less than 10 runners entered. So if you create an Invitational, and all of your friends enter the race early enough, then nobody will be able to gate-crash your party! Invitationals must be paid for and booked at least 7 days prior to the event, and Invitationals must be run at the Regional Tracks. Why not buy a Credit now and invite your mates!

19. Prestige
Tue 10th Jan 12
* Prestige is a simple way of working out how 'famous' your stable is.
* You'll keep building prestige as long as you keep competing (even faster if you're successful!)

Prestige equates to your stable's overall 'score' in Track King, an indicator of the success you've had as a stable manager and sometimes gambler! Prestige can make your facilities more attractive for public lease, can open doorways into higher stake (and purse!) Cup racing, and help persuade better jockeys to sign with your stable.

You can gain prestige to a greater or lesser extent by:

  • winning races
  • placing in races
  • promoting to next racing class (or lose prestige by demoting!)
  • participating/winning races away from your Local Track
  • being a successful gambler
20. Breeding
Thu 11th Apr 13
* If you own a mare aged 4-10, you can 'service' her with one of your own stallions, or by purchasing rights to a Stud from the Auctions.
* Many people try to time the breeding so that their foal will be born early in a 3-month season, giving them a few extra weeks to train it into a champion!

Horses are (well, in all the cases I know of anyway!) the result of breeding. As is the case with most things living, they inherit traits from their parents, which in horse circles are called their Sire (father) and their Dam (mother). Stallions from 4yo to 12yo (inclusive) can service mares from 4yo to 10yo (inclusive). Any mare that was serviced prior to her 11th birthday will still give birth to that foal, even after turning 11 years old.

When breeding, one of the best ways to start on the right hoof is to find a good stallion, set him up with a good mare....do a little bit of Cupids work for him...set the mood with some candlelight and maybe a little red wine...and voila! You have a foal! This whole process is not guaranteed to breed a future champion, it just gives you a better chance at a good youngster than just buying yearlings. Of course, like everything in Track King, there's a bit of science behind what makes two horses a "good choice" for breeding, and it may be that at the moment your mare or stallion would be better off racing? If you are a member of the Owners Club (See Owners Club) you will also be able to use the Family Tree to explore potential studs and quickly check the traits of their foals.

To service a mare, go to her horse page and click on 'Service this mare (breeding)' in the top right menu. This will bring up a list of eligible stallions (including any you have bought the stud rights for within the previous 7 days), select the one you want and click on 'Service this mare'.

OK, so you've brought your stallion and mare together. The deed is done. After the big occasion, Sire is likely to be a little tired, and Dam, well, she'll be out of racing action for 3-4 weeks, and won't be as focussed on any training as the new life grows within. The healthier the mare at the time of birth, the better headstart that the new foal will have in life. Similarly, ensuring that you have a vet (or more?) on the payroll at the time of the birth will help the new foal be in as good health as possible. The Broodmare Paddock Specialist Facility may help the process run a little more smoothly - but regardless, the mare may just need a rest and a bit of vet attention after the foaling, before she contemplates any more babies...

Now here's where the mystery comes about. Horses in the Track King world seem to have invented some sort of magical growth formula for their young. After their incredibly short pregnancy, the foal emerges from the Dam and *pooof*! It's suddenly 2 years old! That's probably a good thing, because horses can't race in Class League Races in Track King until they are 3 years old...so you won't have to wait too long to try out your new little prodigy on the track!

This wondrous new foal will be the property of the stable that owns the Dam at the time of birth. As the expectant owner of a new foal, be sure that you have room in your stable for the new baby, or you'll overcrowd your horses! (See Agistment).

Line-breeding, the practice of breeding related horses, is a possibility - you're the boss! - but be wary. Breeding two horses that are too closely related might just give you unexpected results a little more frequently....but then again, maybe you'll guarantee that the trait you hoped for becomes dominant?

So if you are the owner of a stallion that has the characteristics and the racing history to make it a successful super stud, you can advertise its' services in the Stud Auctions and maybe turn a profit! (See Horse Auctions)

Genetics, and more detailed Breeding information

Breeding uses genetics to determine which traits are passed on to the foal.

Each horse in Track King has DNA, which decides what traits a horse carries, and what traits it is likely to pass onto its foals. You can view a Genetic Report for any of your horses, or for any horses on Auctions, for a small fee - or even for free if you own the Specialist Facility called 'Genetics Laboratory' (See Specialist Facilities).

With some research into the DNA of your horses, you can (with some certainty) decide whether two horses are likely to be a good pairing, and whether the foals that they produce might contain the traits that you most want to breed.

Reading the report

If you look at the 'Report' section of your Genetic Report, you will notice two columns of information for each gene.

This first column will indicate whether the gene is ENABLED or not, and the second column will indicate whether the gene is a CARRIER or not, ie the possibilitiy of producing OFFSPRING with the gene ENABLED.

For example, the "gatespeed" gene is represented as a "g" or "G". The upper case letter means that half of the gene is "off" or "inactive". So a gene combination for Gatespeed of "gg" would mean that the gene has an impact for this horse (both letters are lower case).

For a horse to have a racing style, it must have the "racing style" gene enabled ('rr') AND have at least one specific racing style enabled.

When breeding, both parents contribute one half of each gene to the foal. Disregarding mutations (which can happen), that means that the following outcomes are possible:

  • "gg" breeds with "gg" - always produces "gg"
  • "Gg" breeds with "gg" - possible outcomes are "Gg" or "gg"
  • "GG" breeds with "gg" - possible outcomes are "Gg" or "gG".

Genetics will have an impact on a horse in racing and training. Some of these effects may be enhanced, reduced, or negated, depending on combinations of genes

Detailed information on how to interpret a Genetic Report is available within a 'mini help file' within each Genetics Report.

21. Horse Auctions
Tue 10th Jan 12
There are Auctions to buy horses, and also Auctions to purchase Stud Rights to a stallion.

The Auction House is one of the main areas that a successful Track King will keep an eye on! Auctions come in two types: Stud and Sales. In both types of Auctions, the principle is the same - a horse is placed up for Auction for a period of exactly 3 days, during which time anyone (with enough money!) can place a bid. On completion of the auction, the highest bid wins.

During an auction, each bid must be:

  • at least $1,000 higher than the last, or a 2% increase on the price (whichever is the greater)
  • if the bidding is under $50k, the bid may be no more than a 10x increase; and
  • bid may not be more than a $500,000 increase, and
  • once the bidding (not the reserve price) passes $100k, you may not outbid yourself at all

If a bid is placed within the last 5 minutes of the Auction, the Auction end-time will be extended by 5 minutes from the time of the bid. This is to ensure that there is always a chance for a return bid! Each bid you place/receive will also be registered in your Stable Diary page (See Stable Diary) to give you a convenient way of tracking the progress, and if you are outbid on an Auction that is currently in progress, your Stables page will show a message in the 'Important Information' box.

Within 15 minutes of completion of the Auction, ownership or stud rights will be transferred to the winning bidder, and money will change hands automatically. The Auction house will take an 8% cut of the final sale price as commission for their work - but if there is no sale there is no charge. Horses bought on Auction may not be sold for a period of at least 3 weeks. 3yo horses bought from Auction may be renamed in this 3 week period.

When placing a horse up for Auction, you will be asked to state a minimum price, also known as a 'reserve'. This establishes the lowest bid that may be placed by any prospective buyer - but beware, set the reserve too high and you might not get any bids! The maximum reserve for your Auction is established by the Auction Officials based on an assessment of your horse, but this is often an over-estimation of the horses' value so it may be wise to check the market and decide what your horse is worth, or maybe compare against some recent sales.

Buyer Beware

Auctions are 'buyer beware'! While a horse is still owned by the vendor stable, they are entitled to race the horse or use it for stud - after all, they are still the owners!

If a horse has a scheduled race for a race meet that commences after the Auction ends, then that horse will be scratched from the race. However, as horses cannot be scratched after race cutoff time, if a horse is entered in a race and the Auction is set to complete during that race meet, then the horse is considered to still be owned by the vendor stable for the purposes of that race meet. The horse will not travel to the buyer stable until after their scheduled race.

Similarly, if a horse is in foal and delivers the foal prior to the end of the Auction, then the foal remains the property of the vendor stable.

In both of these situations, the horse will no doubt be in a lesser medical/physical condition than when they were advertised on auction. Buyer beware!

Auction limitations

  • When looking through the Auctions, you will have an opportunity to search by many of the horse statistics and attributes. It is important to remember that the horses stats shown on the Auction lists are those of the horse when it was listed, and it is possible that those attributes have changed slightly since the Auction started.
  • When searching using Overall Rating, the horses are rated based on their overall rating when their medical and physical condition are Adequate (ie normal).
  • Stallions can be listed for Auction up to and including week 8 of the season prior to their 13th birthday
  • Mares and Geldings of 10 years of age can be listed for Auction up to and including the end of Week 8 of a season

Stud Auctions

If you purchase stud rights to a horse, you will have 7 days from the completion of the Auction in which to service your mare (See Breeding). After this 7 day period, the rights will expire!

From the completion of the Stud Auction through to the expiry of the 7 day period (or until the rights have been used by the buyer), the owner of the Stable will be unable to Sell the horse or to give it away.

22. Yearlings
Sun 26th Feb 12
* You can buy a Yearling once every 6 days, often a cheap alternative to an Auction
* Yearlings are mostly a 'lucky dip'. You might get lucky, but most often the foal is just average.

Each week, you'll have the opportunity to attend yearling sales - hoping to find that young gem that you can nurture and train into a genuine champion! You can visit at any time you have the money and the urge, as long as it has been 6 days since your last search. Also, it should be mentioned that although these horses are "yearlings", in the world of Track King horses are 'born' as a 2 year old.

So, when it's time to search for a (two)-yearling, you firstly select which of the 15 Local tracks you want to scour to find the best yearling you can. No matter how many tracks you travel to, you'll only bring home the best one you could find - but the more places you travel to the better the chance of a skilful foal. The quality of horse that you find when searching for a Yearling is also noticeably improved by one of the Specialist Facilities - the Yearling Scout Network. (See Specialist Facilities)

As with everything, there is a small cost involved to travel to each track which must be paid before you can head off for your search. And of course, you must have spare room in your stable to agist this horse! (See Stable agistment). This page also contains an Owners Club feature (See Owners Club)

23. Travelling
Tue 10th Jan 12
* You can book Travel automatically when your horses or jockeys need to travel for a race.
* The further you are travelling, the longer it will take, so plan ahead!

Although all of your Class League racing will take place at your home track, sometimes you'll feel the urge to hit the road with horses and jockeys, and experience racing at other tracks. This might be for competing in a Cup race at your Regional Track (or a more distant Regional track!), or for participating in a Stakes race against opponents from other locations, or even just to give a horse or jockey more experience under given track conditions.

On entering a race at another track, you will be presented with an option to attempt to book travel automatically for your horse and jockey, or to book the travel manually. Booking automatically is the easiest method, with your horse and jockey being scheduled to arrive on the hour just before their preparation/race starts, and scheduled to leave just after the race - although your jockey will stay on for an extra hour by default, just in case you want them to race again at that race meeting.

If you decide to book travel manually, you can organise travel in one of two ways - either by selecting the Horse or Jockey and then using the "Schedule and Transport" link in the Page Menu, or by finding a race/track that you want to visit and then using the "Arrange travel to this track" link in the Page Menu.

Depending on your destination, travel time and costs will vary. The travel page will provide you with a way to get a quote for your travel cost and travel time.

Travel can only be booked for after 12:00 if booking travel for the same day, or anytime 'tomorrow' onwards, up to 14 days in the future. You may also cancel travel in that same period. Cancelling travel due to start more than 72 hours in the future will refund 2/3 of the travel cost. If the travel is any closer than the 72 hours then no refunds will be given.

24. Schedule
Tue 10th Jan 12
Every Horse and Jockey record their future (and past) activities in their Schedule

Everybody's gotta be somewhere sometime, yeah? The same applies in Track King! And luckily, in Track King, each of your Jockeys and Horses keeps a complete diary of their planned movements. Well, maybe the Horses get some help from stable hands....either that or they've taken English Literacy classes at a local school. But that's not important. The important thing is that the Schedule exists, and it's a very useful tool to plan things.

The schedule for each Horse or Jockey can be found on the Horse or Jockey's personal page. It shows you all of the things that they have got coming up, starting from right now - races, preparation, travel all appear from the moment they have been booked. Training and Vet activities will always show at least the next activity, and on some occasions will show the next two. A more detailed version of the Schedule can then be accessed from the Page Menu, under the heading "Schedule and Transport".

Sometimes - and hopefully not too often! - you'll notice that a schedule shows a conflict. That is, an item had a dark red background with an exclamation mark next to the reason for the conflict. A little bit of thought and you should be able to resolve the conflict, either by cancelling one of the activities, or by arranging travel prior to the activity to ensure that the horse or jockey are in the correct location.

The Daily Scheduler/Re-Scheduler

Sometimes, daily processing will remove items from Schedules if they cause a conflict or if the horse is travelling or in the wrong location.

Each night, an automatic Scheduler comes through every horse diary and checks the activities that are planned for the coming 24 hours. The Scheduler will remove any activities that have a conflict due to start time (ie. the horse is not ready to commence a new activity because they are still doing something else), or due to location (ie. the horse is not in the correct location to start the activity). Any Training or Veterinary Services activities that are planned for the coming 24 hours will be automatically booked to repeat themselves on the next available Vet or Training day. However if the rebooking would cause a conflict with an activity like Race Preparation or Travel, then the vet/training will not be re-booked. The Specialist Facility called "Enhanced Vet Centre" can help a little in these situations, as any unassigned vet hours will be automatically distributed to the horses that need it most. It's always better to do it manually though, to be certain of who is getting Vet time.

The Schedules for your Horses and Jockeys are a vitally important part of Track King, especially if you plan on competing at other locations. It is worth checking in on everyone each time you logon, just to be sure that everything is going to plan. One final tip - As a general rule, you can cancel almost anything at almost any time using the 'Schedule and Transport' page....but to set up something or to alter it (like training or vets or travel), you'll need to book it the day BEFORE.

25. Specialist Facilities
Tue 10th Jan 12
* These facilities are not critical to your stable
* If you're low on finances, you can reduce funding to the facilities without losing them completely.

All stables have equal potential to train or breed a future champion of any distance or style. Maybe, though, you might decide that you'd like to specialise your stable in a particular area, improving your potential slightly in certain areas. Specialist Facilities will help you do just that.

Firstly, Specialist Facilities are expensive! They are not something that a new stable should be concerned about immediately. Every stable will function perfectly well without these extra facilities, and the bonuses they provide are only a small enhancement to the 'standard' performance of a stable.

If you have the spare cash to build a Specialist Facility, then you can install your Facilities on the 'Facilities and Training' page, accessible from anywhere in your 'Stables' Menu. From this page you can investigate the list of Specialist Facilities and decide which ones you might want from looking at the relative costs and benefits of each Facility. Each stable may only have 3 Specialist Facilities at a time, so choose wisely!

Each Facility in your stable has a 'Condition', which will rise or fall over time. The condition shows you how well the Facility is functioning, and what level of benefit it is giving your stable. When it is at top condition, it gives the maximum benefits possible. When at lowest condition, it gives the minimum benefits possible, which is only very slightly better than not having the facility at all!

When a Facility is first built it will have a middle level of effectiveness, and will present you with 5 choices about how much money you want to spend each week to develop your Facility. The level of funding that you choose will affect the condition of your Facility each week during the Financial Updates. If you choose the top level of funding, your Facility will gradually improve until it reaches top level (and then be maintained). If you choose the lowest level of funding (no funding) then your Facility condition will gradually deteriorate until eventually it gives only the smallest rewards possible. The maximum weekly investment for each facility is less than the original build price.

Because the change to your Facility condition will only be gradual, you can change this level of funding each week if you need extra money for your stable, and not suffer any major losses. Remember though, the longer you have a lower funding level, the worse condition your facility will become.

a1. Denominations
Sun 18th Dec 16
* Remember that each point on the rating scale is actually a 'range'.
* For example, 'Vigorous' describes the top 10% of medical/physical condition.

The following are descriptions of the ratings scales used in Track King. Rather than come back to this page every time you need to check the scale, you can always click on the rating itself - that will bring up a window that shows you where that value sits in the relevant scale.

Skills/prestige rating scale
  1. Dire
  2. Awful
  3. Miserable
  4. Underdone
  5. Ordinary
  6. Average
  7. Moderate
  8. Adequate
  9. Acceptable
  10. Satisfactory
  11. Reasonable
  12. Admirable
  13. Excellent
  14. Grand
  15. Tremendous
  16. Marvelous
  17. Majestic
  18. Spectacular
  19. Imposing
  20. Awe-inspiring
Medical/physical condition ratings
  1. Incapacitated
  2. Debilitated
  3. Exhausted
  4. Wasted
  5. Drained
  6. Spent
  7. Weary
  8. Adequate
  9. Fresh
  10. Vigorous
Track conditions (from fastest to slowest)
  • Fast
  • Good
  • Dead
  • Slow
  • Heavy
Race distances (from shortest to longest)
  • Sprint(up to 1250m)
  • Short (1251m to 1500m)
  • Medium (1501m to 1800m)
  • Long (1801m to 2200m)
  • Epic (over 2200m)
a2. User forums
Tue 10th Jan 12
There's a lot of information to be gained - and fun to be had - on the Forums
* Please treat the rest of the Community politely, with respect

The Forums are the main place that all Track Kings can come to chat. Everyone is welcome to join, sharing views and opinions on all sorts of topics, whether that be asking for help or advice, bragging about your latest champion horse or race victory, lamenting over the race that got away or a massive loss on a sure thing, or just talking about your favourite past-time outside of Track King.

There are two different types of forum - Public forums, which are the ones tied to Tracks/Continents...and of course the Global Forum - and there are Private forums. (See Owners Club). The heading in the top left of the Forum Page will remind you which type of Forum you are currently looking at.

By default, you will remain subscribed to the Global Forum, to your Continent's Forum, to your Regional Track's Forum, and also to your Local Track's Forum. Feel free to go snooping on conversations in other Continent or Track Forums - you can find them by looking for a particular track homepage, region homepage, or continent homepage, and then using the link in the Page Menu to visit their forum. If you like the chatter then feel free to subscribe!

When using Public Forums, it is important to remember that you are in public, and that Track Kings come from all age-groups and backgrounds, so be sure to behave appropriately! General code of Forum conduct is:

  • No swearing or abusive language;
  • No verbal attacks on any other player;
  • No spamming, repetitive messaging, bumping threads, SHOUTING or other comments aiming to discriminate or vilify individuals or groups;
  • No auction ads in Global Forum
  • English text only.

If you feel offended by the behaviour or language of any other Track King, there is a link from the Help Page Menu and also from the Forum Page Menu to report to Track King staff. Any reports will remain anonymous, and will be dealt with discreetly by staff. The Track King staff have the right to edit or delete any inappropriate comments, as well as to hand out penalties or Forum bans to any Track Kings that refuse to follow the guidelines. Of course, it is sincerely hoped that there will be no need for any penalties - after all, this is jsut a game!

In Private forums, the rules are a little more relaxed. In fact, the codes of conduct within each Private forum is at the discretion of the Forum owner. Each Forum owner has the right to invite or uninvite any other Track King for whatever reason they see fit.

a3. Entering a race
Tue 10th Jan 12
* Check your Races Homepage for Invitations to future events.
* You can enter Stakes or Invitationals without an Invitation, as long as it's within 3 days of the Race.

The horse race - the main highlights of our Track King week, maybe only matched for excitement by the joy of finding your horse has levelled in another skill! All Class and Cup races require an invitation to compete - invitations will be presented to you on your Stable homepage, and also on your Races homepage.

Stakes races are invitation-only at first (to allow the Sponsor time to invite friends) but 3 days before a Stakes race or Invitational at 00:00, the remaining 10 or more positions become available to everyone, first in first served!

There are 3 main ways to enter a race:

  1. By invitation: Startpoint - your Stable homepage or your Races homepage.
    On your Stable homepage you should notice an area titled 'Important events'. This will show your invitations to Stakes and Cup races in the next 2 weeks, and also any Class League races scheduled within the coming weeks. Similarly, on your Races homepage you will find a section called "Your Race Invitations". This area lists all of your race invitations for the future, in order of when the race is held.
    Selecting one of these Invitation links from either of the pages will take you into the "Enter a Race" process with the race, date and track already selected. All that is left for you to do is to select a horse and jockey!
  2. By Race: Startpoint - the Race page
    If you go searching around in future races at various tracks, any races that you are eligible to enter will offer you a link to 'Enter this Race' underneath all of the race details. Following this link will also enter the Enter a Race process with Track, Race and date all selected.
  3. By Horse: Startpoint - one of your horses homepage
    When looking at any of your horses homepages, you should spot a link in the Page Menu saying "Enter this Horse into a race". Following this link will take you into the Enter a Race process with only the horse information pre-selected. From there, you can use the tools provided to scan racetracks for upcoming events. This will only locate races open to you within the coming few weeks.

You may elect to withdraw from races aytime up to the cutoff time for races in that Continent (See Daily Timetable), but be aware that you will forfeit any stakes that you have paid to enter the race.

If the race that you are entering is not at the same location as your horse/jockey, then you'll need to arrange travel. An option will be presented to try and have your travel booked automatically - these bookings will be made to try and arrive at the track as soon as possible before the race, and to leave shortly after all tasks have been dealt with. The jockey will remain at the track for approximately 1-2 hours after the race, so it's possible to save travel bookings if you are competing in multiple events at this track, by entering the early races first.

Remember, if you're planning on travelling to another track to enter a race, you'll need to book travel to the track for your horse and/or jockey - this must be booked at least the day before the race (See Travelling), and don't forget to book return travel!

Race Criteria

* Race Criteria apply to Horses and Jockeys at the time of entering the race.
* Search for races with Criteria that give you the best chance of winning!

There are several 'eligibility criteria' to keep an eye out for when entering a race. These will describe exactly what sort of horses and stables can enter. It is strongly advisable to try to find races which give your Horse the best chance, especially if you're a new Stable. There's nothing more dispiriting than a terrible showing!
Eligibility Criteria apply at the time of entering the Race. Horses will not be scratched where circumstances change after Race Entry has been completed

Possible eligibility criteria are:
  • Class Restricted - Only stables of a particular Class level can enter
  • From Track/Region/Continent - Only Stables based in the specified Track/Region/Continent can enter
  • Age Restricted - Only horses within the specified Age range (at the time of entry) will be eligible to enter
  • Geldings, Entires, Mares/Fillys - Only horses of the specified genders can enter
  • Rated below 30/40/50/60 - Only horses with an Overall Rating BELOW the specified level, as determined when they are fully fit, can enter
  • Owner/Breeders Only - Only foals that were actually conceived in their current Stable can enter
  • Horses born in the last X days - Only horses that were foaled or yearlings bought within the past X days can enter
  • Won more/less than 5/10 - Only horses with more/less wins at the time of entry are eligible
  • Maidens - Only horses that have never won a race can enter
  • Debutantes - Only horses who have never raced in a Stakes/League/Cup/Invitational can qualify
  • Won less than $xx - Only horses with career winnings less than the specified amount can enter
  • Racing Style Required - Only horses who possess a Racing Style can enter
  • Prestige level - Only Stables with prestige above/below the specified level can enter
  • Apprentices Ride Only - Only apprentice jockeys from your stable, or the dreaded 'Unowned Apprentices' can ride
a4. Owners Club
Tue 10th Jan 12
Track King is always FREE to play.....but you can choose to support the game for a small cost, and get yourself some useful bonus features at the same time!

We all know Track King is FREE to play for all players - one of the most important things in the world of Track King is a fair community. However, should you wish to support the development of the game and purchase Owners Club, many bonus features will be made available to you to improve your gaming experience.

Some of the main features made available to Owners Club members are

  • Racing: -
    • Access to the newest & best version of Race Vision, with hi-res graphics and the ability to tilt and zoom the camera, and to resize the viewer to small or full screen.
    • No restrictions on watching races - watch any race, anytime!
    • Access to H.O.O.F. Instant Challenge racing 24 hours a day!
    • Customised silks for your jockeys that can be seen in the race! Without Owners Club, all jockeys wear brown.
    • "Race Search" tool to search for races of any type, anywhere in the world
    • Access to the RAT - Race Analysis Tool (See screenshot)
    • Ability to create your own Stakes Races and invite others
    • A countdown timer to your next race
    • Ability to fire a jockey
    • Quick navigation through Race Cards at the same track
  • Your stable: -
    • A logo for your stable
    • A guestbook for your stable
    • See Career/Season results tables for your stable - and everyone elses!
    • Bookmarks for up to 100 Track Kings, Stables, Horses, Races, Jockeys etc
    • All major schedule events for your horses/jockeys/stable displayed on the Stable Calendar
    • Ability to read the Racing Guide newspaper for all Regions around the world
    • A blog and private notepad
    • 'Alerts' showing how many bookmarked friends are online, telling you when you've been outbid
    • Set Automatic reminders for your Important Events
    • Ability to see your Stables Net Worth during the off-season
    • Access to create and join Private Forums
  • Horses: -
    • A fully sortable page giving a summary of all your horses, invaluable for planning ahead!
    • The Horse Computer - a graphic aid for comparing your horses (See screenshot)
    • Graphs for your horses' stats and lifetime race form
    • Unlimited usage of the Family Tree - explore the family history of any horse!
    • Search the Auctions for horses based on Overall Ability
    • Drag & Drop to sort horses in the right-hand menu to any order you like!
    • See Career/Season results tables for every horse
    • Slow-reveal of stats for your Yearlings
    • Ability to list your retired horses in the Hall of Fame
    • One or more free credits to rename your 2&3yo horses with every purchase of a season or more!!

To purchase Owners Club, navigate to the "Shop" menu in the Main (top) Menu. From there, you'll be able to check out the current price and make a secure online payment via Paypal. If you still have some Owners Club credit remaining, any additional membership that you purchase will be added to the end-date, so you'll always get what you pay for.

As a BONUS, every time you purchase more than one season of Owners Club, you can nominate one Track King (not yourself!) to receive one FREE week of Owners Club, effective immediately. If the person you nominate already has Owners Club, their membership will be extended by the bonus week.

SPECIAL BONUS!! - Any non-member that wins a race will be given a special one-time bonus of 1 week Owners Club! FREE! (Note: This only applies to players who have not had Owners Club within the past 110 days, and the player must logon and visit their Stable homepage within 48 hours of the race result to claim their prize).

Refund and sales policy - Payments are preferred through Paypal but may also be made via Cheque or money order. Owners Club will be activated immediately upon successful clearance of moneys. If you are not satisfied with Owners Club, you may contact a GM within 3 days of the purchase with a full description of why you are dissatisfied, and request a refund. Fair consideration will be given to your request based on the circumstances, and refunds will be made at the discretion of Track King, based on the circumstances of the refund. Any breach of the Track King Terms & Conditions which results in suspension/closure of your Track King stable may also result in forfeit of remaining Owners Club credit.

a5. Betting
Tue 10th Jan 12
Betting on Races uses your 'Personal Finances' - that is, the money your Stable pays you each week as a wage

Although your stable is prohibited from placing a bet on a race, there's nothing to stop you as Manager/Owner of your stable from having a flutter. After all, that's what your stable pays you wages for eh?

Odds in Track King are totalisator odds, which means that the amount bet by other Track Kings on each horse is what drives the final price - these odds are not any form of prediction by the game itself. The betting 'pool' for each race (ie the money that other people have bet out on this race) is shown above the betting tab, attached to the bottom of the Race page/field. On the page you will see the horses, and the current 'expected' return for each dollar you bet on a win or a place. These odds will change as more bets are placed, and the money that is paid out will be paid based on the odds at the time the race starts - NOT the odds at the time you placed the bet. Be warned that the totalisator does take a small cut, so if you are the only person betting on the race then your win often won't be as large as your bet.

When you place a bet, you may bet on several different outcomes:

  • Win - Wagering on a horse being outright winner, only pays 1st place
  • Place - A bet on the horse to finish 1st, 2nd or 3rd. Usually pays at a lower rate than the win odds but more likely to pay out.
  • Exacta - Picking the first and second placed horses, in exactly the right order
  • Trifecta - Picking the 1st place horse, followed by 2nd and 3rd in either order (2 combinations in total, so twice the price)
(See the bottom of this page for some examples on bet types and payouts.)

As we've all got access to a little insider information in Track King (after all, we are the Stable owners, right?!), there are a few restrictions placed on betting.

  • To bet on a win: The field must contain at least 3 horses, with 0 or 3-or-more named jockeys.
  • To bet on a place: The field must contain at least 5 horses, with 0 or 5-or-more named jockeys.
  • To bet on an exacta: Same as a place bet
  • To bet on a trifecta: The field must contain at least 7 horses, with 0 or 5-or-more named jockeys.

Winning bets are paid out within 15 minutes of completion of a race. If a horse you bet on is scratched, then your wager will be refunded in full when bet payouts are made. Similarly, if you bet on a 'place' and then one/more runners are scratched/withdrawn which prevents place betting, your bet will be refunded when race winning are paid out. If a scratched horse/bet suddenly becomes valid again (ie the horse is re-entered or the race fills out again) then the bets are re-activated! You cannot use "unfinalised" winnings or expected money from scratchings to bet on future races - you must wait for the money to be paid out.

Of course, there's a certain notoreity from being a big punter. A large win can increase your reputation - and hence bring prestige to your Stable. Beware though....a big loss can have the opposite effects!

Finding a race to bet on

You can find some great information about blockbuster Races in the Racing Newspaper.

There's several ways that you can find a race to place a bet.

  • If you're looking for Races in a particular Region, why not try the Racing Newspaper? It has some extra information and tips about each runner that can't be found anywhere else!
  • If you're just looking for one of the next races to jump around the world, try:
    1. Going to the Home page
    2. Selecting 'View Bets' from the "Your Stable" box on the left
    3. Select the tab called 'Betting Pools for next race meet'
    This page will show the next 25 races to jump anywhere around the world, with links to their track page and the race itself, and a total of how much has been wagered into the pool for that race.
  • If you know which Continent you want to bet on
    1. Visit that Continent page (simplest method is Home, and then pick the continent name in the "Around the World" section bottom left
    The continent page shows the next 10 races to jump in that continent, the time it is to jump, and the pools for that race

Examples of betting:

Example 1: A win and a place bet.

John likes horse number 7. He's pretty sure that #7 will finish in the top 3 spots. To try and safeguard himself and guarantee a return on his bet, John types in $20 as the bet amount, and ticks the "win" box next to #7 to place a bet for #7 to finish 1st. He also selects the "place" box next to #7 to bet on #7 finishing 1st, 2nd or 3rd. By entering $20 as the bet, and picking both "win" and "place", John has spent a total of $40 - 2 bets in all worth $20 each.

John gets lucky! #7 wins the race. John gets paid 20x the final odds to Win for #7, to pay back the "win" bet that he made. He also receives 20x the final odds for a Place for #7, because of the $20 he bet on a place. Well done john!

Example 2: An Exacta.

Hilde has got her two best horses in a race, numbers 1 and 2. She is confident that #1 is her best horse, and should win this race. She decides to place an Exacta bet. She clicks the "win" box next to #1, and the "place" box next to #2 with an amount of $100. The bet costs her $100 in total because she has only bet on #1 to win and #2 to come second.

Tragedy! #2 gets up to win, and #1 finishes a close second. Hildes bet is totally worthless. She has lost her money. If only she had placed two Exacta bets , selecting the "win" for both horses and the "place" for both horses. Sure, it would have cost her twice as much, but she would have won her bet.

Example 3: A Trifecta.

Bellamy is waiting for his next Class League race and decides to have a flutter. He finds three horses that he likes in the next race - #1, #2, and #3, and clicks both the "win" box AND the "place" box next to all 3 horses. He types in $10 for his bet amount, and sees that the overall bet will cost him $60, for six combinations (1,2,3 - 1,3,2 - 2,1,3 - 2,3,1 - 3,1,2 - 3,2,1).

The race finishes #2, #3, #1. Bellamy is ecstatic. He wins 10x the final odds for that Trifecta payout and cheers, guessing that this win might just be enough to lift him another rung on the most prestigious stables list!!

a6. Daily/weekly schedule
Sat 06th Sep 14
* Your Stable Calendar in the bottom half of your Stable Homepage shows most of the events that impact your stable.
* Planning for events in the coming weeks will certainly help you prepare your horses better

Daily timetable

0:00 - Scheduler & weather updates
1:00 - cutoff for instructions/scratchings - Australia
2:00 - Raceday start for Australia
4:30 - Raceday finish for Australia
4:30 - cutoff for instructions/scratchings - Asia
5:30 - Raceday start for Asia
8:00 - Raceday finish for Asia
8:00 - cutoff for instructions/scratchings - Europe
9:00 - Raceday start for Europe
11:30 - Raceday finish for Europe
11:30 - cutoff for instructions/scratchings - Africa
12:00 - Noon schedule checks
12:30 - Raceday start for Africa
15:00 - Raceday finish for Africa
15:00 - cutoff for instructions/scratchings - America
16:00 - Raceday start for America
18:30 - Raceday finish for America
20:00 - Training updates (Mon classes 1,2&3 or Fri classes 4,5&6)
21:00 - Vet updates (all days except Mon & Fri)
21:15 - New foals are born (Friday only)
23:00 - Cutoff for all race entries on the following day
23:15 - Training Credits allocated to Apprentices (Friday only)
23:30 - Health updates for all horses (except Sunday), Financial updates (Sunday only)

Weekly timetable

  • Monday - Week start. Stakes Racing, Class 1-3 training, health updates
  • Tuesday - Class 1&2 League Racing, Vets, health updates
  • Wednesday - Class 3&4 League Racing, Vets, health updates
  • Thursday - Class 5&6 League Racing, Vets, health updates
  • Friday - Stakes Racing, Class 4-6 Training, health updates, Foals are born
  • Saturday - Cup Racing, Vets, health updates
  • Sunday - Cup racing, next round Cup invitations, 1st Round Cup Invitations for Cups starting in 2 weeks time, Bots enter races, Vets, Financial updates

Season timetable

  • Week 0: Class League fixtures are booked at racetracks
    Invitations for Class League races are sent
  • Week 1 -> 11: Class League season
  • Friday Week 11: Invitations to promote sent out
    Window to promote or move track opens
  • Wednesday Week 12: 12:00 Window to manually promote closes
  • Wednesday Week 12: 21:00 Automatic Promotions take place
  • Thursday night/Friday Morning Week 12: 00:00 Window to relocate closes
a7. The Race!
Thu 02nd Sep 10

Ok...so the big day is here - your horse is about to race. But what happens now?!

Firstly, in order to compete, your horse needs to:

  1. Have completed 3 hours of Race Preparation. This will be booked automatically when you enter a race. Be sure that nothing prevents this race preparation or else your horse will be scratched!; AND
  2. Be located at the correct racetrack prior to the start of race preparation. Check the horses' current location and schedule.

Assuming that your horse got to the track on time and has prepared for the race adequately, then it will be eligible to run.

Jockeys, too, need to make sure that they're located at the correct track prior to the race, however they don't need time to prepare or recover - they're quite happy to back up race after race if you need them to - as long as the race start times are more than 15 minutes apart - they need time to freshen up and maybe ponce around with the other jockeys between races! If you've assigned a jockey to a race and they can't make it, never fear, an apprentice will be on hand to take the ride (you may just regret that!)

At the start of the race, each horse is 'assessed' in terms of their condition, their stats, and their ability to race in the given race conditions. This is used to determine a few factors for the horses, which includes some measurements that can loosely be called 'Energy', 'Willpower' and 'Staying power'. The horse and jockey are also compared to determine how much the horse will 'resist' the jockey during the race

And there's the bell! The horses bolt out of the gate - their gate speed and acceleration and the instructions of their jockey and owners all playing an important part in the jump. From then on, it's all a matter of how well they can last the distance. How fast will they expend their energy? Can they continue to push on if they hit 'empty'? Are the horse and jockey suited to the conditions? Will the jockey time a run nicely to preserve the horse until it really counts? Will the jockey run the horse into the ground, or can they finish the race well and leave the horse in reasonable condition? All jockeys (besides apprentices!) use Artificial Intelligence to respond to the situations they find themselves in during a race, so keep a watchful eye - maybe this jockey isn't what you're after?

After the race, horse and jockey go their separate ways. Horses will find themselves a little depleted and out of condition, and will probably need the loving attention of a good vet or trainer (or a spell from racing) to get back into shape. At the end of the racing day, horses and jockeys alike will receive updates to their form, experience, and morale.

And at this point, a good owner takes time to assess the results. Check the Form Guide/Race Report for the race to see what the jockey and trainers thought of the performance. Check the quarterly times to try and decide where things went wrong (or right!) - was it a result of the jockeys skill, the horses abilities, the race conditions, strength of the field, badly planned race instructions, or a combination of all of these?! If you're a member of the Owners Club, (see Owners Club) then Race Vision might be a useful tool to get more detail on what happened. Race Vision is available to non-Owners Club members too, but may not be as 'pretty' as the one provided for Owners Club members.

Most importantly though, you've had a nice day out at the track and learned something about your horse and jockey. Or even better....maybe you won a big fat race purse!! Good luck!

Advanced Players - The Jockeys Brain, jockey instructions, and how it all works in a race

The Basic concepts

  • Each jockeys brain is composed of several different "riding considerations", sometimes referred to as "traits".
  • Each trait also has a "sensitivity" that goes with it, which determines how easy it is for a jockey to think that they need to act on a certain situation. For example, a jockey with a very low sensitivity for the trait "Concern for horse condition" will mean that the jockey doesn't feel the need to ease a horse until it is almost exhausted! However, if the sensitivity was very high, then the jockey will feel the need to act at the very first signs of horse fatigue.
  • For each individual Riding Consideration, the jockey has a matching set of "responses". In the previous example, if the jockey was worried about horse fatigued, then a valid response would be to ease the horse. A slightly less valid response would be to hold current speed, and an invalid response would be to accelerate.
  • In order to make their final decision, the jockey looks at the responses from every Riding Consideration, and picks a single course of action which best fits the entire situation as they perceive it.
  • Of course, the situation is complicated a little, because some jockeys are less accurate in the way they understand their horse and the race itself. this of course might lead them to make a less-than-perfect decision more often than a more "gifted" jockey.

Jockey Instructions

  • When you set a particular Riding Consideration as the most important, the jockey is effectively given a "second choice" to make....a "nagging conscience".
  • The jockey makes their decision as per normal, and then makes a second decision based entirely on the Riding Consideration you have told them to pay most attention to.
  • The jockey then uses their judgement - basically their "certainty" of their own decision versus their innate respect for you and your stable - to decide which action is the best to take.

A Race Example

Lets imagine a jockey with
  • a low-medium concern for horse condition;
  • a very high eagerness to lead;
  • a very high concern for the inside rail.

For the sake of this example, we'll ignore other considerations and only highlight a few points in the race, to give some basic insight into the jockeys thoughts.

Early in the race, the jockey gets a feel for the horse and decides that the horse is not fatigued. They check their race position and decide that it could do with improving. They also decide that they should be closer to the rail. All of these factors put together, the jockey decides it would be appropriate to accelerate and also drift towards the rail.

A little later, the horse is starting to show early signs of fatigue and the pair are sitting in second place and have an inside running. Analysing the situation, the jockey looks at the horse - but because the concern for horse condition is not met, there's no need to ease. However the very high eagerness to lead provides a clear response - accelerate. They're currently sitting on the rails and there's no need to "change lane", so the final decision is simply "accelerate".

Entering the home turn, the horse is becoming very tired, and although they've caught ground, they're still in 2nd place and on the rail. Because of being in second place, the jockey would dearly love to accelerate, however the horse condition is now low enough that the jockey is taking notice of that too. Conflicted - should they accelerate or ease? In this case, it happens that the jockey also has a race instruction from the owner that "eagerness to lead" is the top priority....and that decides it. Accelerate it the final choice.

Along the home straight, the horse is totally exhausted and being overtaken by other runners. The jockey is now becoming adamant that accelerating is necessary - the position is much worse than would be desirable. The concern for the horse condition pales in comparison. The jockey tries to accelerate and the horse tires even more quickly, and begins to drift wide as it begins to really ignore the jockey instructions.

Hitting the finish line The jockey is now totally pre-occupied with leading and also getting to the rail. The decision is to accelerate and move towards the inside lane, but the horse is unresponsive. The jockey finishes 5th, and probably could have managed that race a lot better.

As you can no doubt see, it's very hard to equip a jockey for every type of race, so it may be a tactic to slowly build a "library" of jockeys that you can use depending on the horse, the race, and the quality of the opposition.

a8. FAQ Frequently Asked Questions
Sat 29th Jan 22
The basics:
* Enter 2 League Races per week (Tuesday -> Thursday). You'll see Invitations on your Stables page.
* Stakes Racing at every track on Mondays and Fridays, Cups on Weekends.
* Don't spend all your money too quickly
* Don't be afraid to ask questions in the Help Me Forum

This section is intended as a 'quick reference guide', particularly for new Track Kings. For more information, try some of the 'Newbie Guides'.

  • What do I do first?

    Have a look around. Don't click on anything that says it will cost you money until you're sure that it's actually what you want to do! Building your stable up will involve a bit of planning and some steady growth. The bank will allow you to go to $250,000 debit before they start forcing you to tighten the belt - but once that happens, it could take weeks of slow recovery before you're able to splash out again!
    1. Get to know your horses - check out their stats....and think about what distance/track conditions they suit best. Experience is valuable, so don't be too hasty to sell! (See Horses, The Race).
    2. Then you're probably ready to think about improving your facilities and training (See Training,Vet);
    3. ...and also to look around for some races to enter. Be sure to enter your Class League races. You'll see invitations for them on your Stables homepage, and a more detailed list of your Racing Invitations on your Races homepage (See Entering a Race).
    Good luck!

  • What do the stats of my horse mean? And why haven't they improved?!

    You can find a description of each of the Stats in the 'Horses' section of the Help pages (See Horses - Or just click 'Help' when looking at a horse)
    Most stats in Track King are represented by a level like 'Underdone (4)'. (See Denominations). The level that you can see is really just 'rounded off' from the true value of the stat. Although your trainers or vets may have been scheduled to work, it's possible that their efforts did not lift the stat into the next level - but don't worry, the system knows the true value. Keep trying, the stat will increase (or decrease!) eventually!

  • What is a Local Track?

    A Local Track is the place where your stable is based. It hosts 150 stables, it has its' own unique Forum (See User Forums), its' own weather and track conditions, and its' own resident tipster.
    More importantly, the Local Track is the home of your main weekly competition - the Class League.

  • What is a League Race?

    You compete one day a week in Class League Races (See Class racing). Class League races are the only races which affect your league position. There are 6 Classes at each Local Track, with 25 stables to each Class. At the end of the season the top 5 stables of each Class League have a chance to promote.

    Class 1&2 League Races are on Tuesdays, Class 3&4 race Wednesdays and Class 5&6 race Thursdays.

    It is possible to relocate to a new Local Track during the break between seasons, and it is possible to travel to any other Local Tracks to compete for Stakes and Cup events.

  • What are Stakes Races?

    Stakes races are just for fun, money, and prestige. They do not affect your League position. You pay a stake to enter a horse into the race, and get a share of the purse only if you finish in the top 5 placings.

    Stakes Races are run at every Local Track around the world on Fridays and Mondays. If you have not been invited to a Stakes Race, you can still enter but only within 3 days of the race date. (See Entering a Race)

  • What is a Region?

    Within each continent, there are one or more 'Regions'. A Region has a Regional Track (the track where Cup races and other special events are held). No Leagues or Stables happen at a Regional Track.

    Each Regional Track is supported by 15 Local Tracks. A Region has its' own unique Forum, weather and track conditions. It is possible to travel to any other Regional Track in the world to compete in selected Cup events (See Cup races).

  • What is my horse/jockey doing next?

    Each horse and jockey keep their own personal schedule. You will find it on each of the horse or jockey pages. It shows what time each different task will be started, and the location that it will happen in. If there is a clash in the timetable, it will be highlighted to indicate what the problem is.

    You can find even more detailed information about the Schedule on the "Schedule and Transport" page. On this page you can also cancel any future activities.

  • How do I hire a jockey?

    Hiring a jockey is important to get the best out of your horses. Senior jockeys will definitely perform better than Apprentices, and those apprentices perform better than the unlisted apprentices that bot horses use. There's a few small tricks you might want to pay attention to:
    1. You can only hire a jockey of the same Class as your stable
    2. You can only hire a jockey that is not contracted, or is not on holidays
    3. Jockeys only want to work for stables that have a similar prestige level to them. So when you search for a jockey, double check the jockey prestige you are searching for against the prestige of your stable.
    If you are still having trouble finding a jockey, try removing any extra search criteria you are using. If you STILL have trouble, then report the issue to a GM.

  • How do I get new horses?

    There are several ways of acquiring new horses - although you may want to be sure you've got room for those new horses in your stable (See Agistment)
    1. Auctions - You can buy/sell horses on the Auctions. Be sure about your bid - it can't be removed once you place it! The horse will move to your stable within 15 minutes of the Auction finish time, and once you purchase a new horse on Auction, they're required to stay with your stable for at least 3 weeks. BEWARE! that you're not bidding for 'stud rights' to a horse on the Auctions!! (See Auctions)
    2. Yearlings - Although less talented, yearlings are a cheap way of acquiring horses - you may get lucky!
    3. Breeding - A mare in your stable, and a Stallion you own (or stud rights that you purchase) and then wait a few weeks. These horses are often more talented than yearlings - depending largely on their parents skills! (See Breeding)

  • What do the staff in my facilities do?

    Your stable has several different kinds of staff:
    - Vets - help your horses medical and physical conditions improve, and help with births (See Breeding, Vet services);
    - Trainers - Undertake training activities with your horse to improve various stats and abilities. Services may also be sold at a profit (See Training);
    - Admin Staff - Involved in almost all financial operations of your stable, including (but not only) leasing of agistment and training services, and interest rates (See Admin staff).

  • What are Owners Club Features?

    Track King is free to play. However, there are some features available to you at a small quarterly/yearly cost, designed to improve your gaming experience.

    These features are such as bookmarks, customised stable logo and silks, a stable blog, access to Private Forums, summary pages of horses and jockeys, the ability to rename your foals and create Stakes races, and of course, unlimited access to Race Vision which allows you to watch every race that has ever been run in the world of Track King. (See Owners Club).

  • I'm having trouble with seeing Race Vision and Silks


    There's a few possible causes, but probably, just try viewing Track King through Google Chrome, and on a PC. As at 2021, many mobile devices and Macs have trouble with WebGL graphics.... I'm confident this will be less of an issue in time!
a9. Hints and Tips
Sun 11th Jul 10

This section of the rules has been contributed by players of Track King. The tips are in no particular order, so a quick skim of the bold 'subject' headings might help identify the items of interest to you.

Newer players might like to read Frequently Asked Questions first. For more information, read CBCs guide for newcomers or check some of the Helpful WebSites.

  • Help, I'm going broke! - Most common mistakes people who are losing money make are:
    1. Too many vets. You don't necessarily need as many as you may think. 1-2 hours per horse is more than enough for most purposes.
    2. Growing too much to quickly. People seem to think that they need to get to 60 trainings as soon as possible, when the better idea is to grow proportionately. Only hire as many trainers as your horse winnings can pay for. If you have tried for max trainers, I'd suggest leasing out as many as you can
    3. Spending on specialist facilities - you don't really need them early on, and are probably the easiest extravagance to cut back on. Don't demolish them for now, just drop the investment to zero, which will still give you some benefits, but cost nothing each week.
  • Starting a stable Financial advice and general strategy
    It is quite hard to figure out at the beginning, but I think the point is (and has been put forward a number of times in help and tips for beginners etc) to go very slowly early and see what hiring people will do to your bottom line each week. The trap is that you find a new game and get really excited and try try try buy buy buy early on and realise that things cost more than you think. Personally I started off in Adelaide and had to go up against the devs (and others that had played the dev version) and basically had to be pretty stingy right from the beginning or die a slow death.
    I was here from the beginning almost and have slowly built up to a stage were i am financially sound. But for the first 8 weeks or so, I had to bank on the fact that all i would bring in in a week would be whatever i won for entering a league race. I made sure the difference b/w my expenses and earnings each week was not much more than $15000 (i.e what I was assured of winning each week at least). Maybe that was less than an hour of vets for each horse, and at absolute most 2 hours of training per horse.
    What it comes down to is that I now have a steady bank balance of $500K odd, but I personally have never won a league race, only placed in 1 cup race (round 1) and did not get top 5 in my league. And i have never been able to afford to give any of my horses more than 4 hours training.
    This is my advice to new players, don't expand till you know where you are. I won a race for $40k today against all bots by travelling within my continent (Buying Owners Club helps cos you can search for high paying stakes races) so the races are out there.
    Just build slowly and learn what you can from the forums and you will be fine. Thanks for listening
    Contributed by mattblack of Dazed and Confused.
  • Training: General strategy
    Train like a madman! Identify your best horses, and pour the trianing into them. Try and sell the others, don't waste a cent on donkeys... Contributed by Carlosa of Carlosa Lodge
  • Training: Choosing a training type.
    Keep in mind which stats to train based on the distance that your horse is running. e.g. if your horse is a sprinter, it's probably important for it to have good acceleration/gate speed, but not as important for it to have good stamina. The description of the training on the Help pages will give you a good idea of what stats that training will improve or decrease(See Training). If you want to know more, ask on the forums or keep a log of the results, or check out some of the External Websites.Contributed by RhiaAryx of Rhia's Cavalry
  • Training: Early training recommendations
    Starting stables should train horses in swimming or conditioning. I trained 3hrs per horse for the first month, and then 5hrs per horse when I could afford it. Increasing stamina, muscle tone and heart allows your horses to last the distance, and you'll be regularly winning and placing in the longer distances quite quickly. Contributed by ashario of Relegation Material
  • Entering races: Target the right races
    Try and work out a horses preferred distances and focus on them...dont be afraid to travel with a horse for an easier race, although prob not at the expense of missing training at this (early) stage...Contributed by Carlosa of Carlosa Lodge
  • Finances: Looking for some money ideas?
    I have my horses set to 4 hours of training (combined) I have 2 hours left over that are sold to the public, making some money. You can also do the same with spare stalls. Good luck! Contributed by gemic of The Vineyards
  • Travelling: Organising travel
    You can organise travel in one of two ways - either by selecting the Horse or Jockey and then using the "Schedule and Transport" link in the Page Menu, or by finding a race/track that you want to visit and then using the "Arrange travel to this track" link in the Page Menu. Don't forget to bring them home. Contributed by CBC1 of Lonestar Inc
  • Jockeys: Hiring a jockey
    (When searching for a jockey) make sure the top 3 boxes read - prestige-dire -ordinary . (jockey prestige)...dont try for top jockeys (straight away) wages are too dear..... Contributed by zeromatrix of Zeromatrix
  • Breeding: Setting up your stable
    Get yourself a mare, of course the better mare stats the better but if not don't worry, start breeding it, if you have a stallion in your stables great the breeding is then free but if not go for a nice stat-ted stallion off the auctions and you might end up with a nice little future racer OR something to sell for a bit of dosh.Contributed by kimmerz of DivinityLane Stables
  • Offseason: Tactics to get through the break between seasons
    Theres lots of tactics you can use during the off season to gain an advantage over those at your local track.
    1. During the off seasons there are a LOT of desperate TK's out there who auction reasonable horses at really cheap prices.Wait till the very last week of the offseason to purchase your new recruits when their desperation levels are at their maximum.
    2. Try not to buy horses off people who are also at your local track in your class...I cant stress this enough...let them choke...they are your opposition and if they recover its YOUR purses that will suffer in the long run.It may seem mean but this is business!
    3. If you are desperate for cash try this...buy a horse not more than $5000 max...$1000 preferably..theres tons...race it once...if it wins keep it...if it runs a place auction it for 3 times what you paid for it...if it fails give it away straight away (dont tie up the stall) and buy another $1000 horse...do you realise if just one "thousand dollar horse" wins you say even $20000 that enables you to buy and discard 20 more..do the math..you get $ for up to 5th place dont forget.
    Contributed by Cerberus of Skank Town Stables
  • Horses: Having a competitive stable
    You need 4 horses custom designed for each distance that can effectively compete at class level.One for 800-1200...one for 1300-1600...one for 1700-1950 and one for 2000+.Train your 4 horses for that exclusively.Long distance horses for example should get beach gallops till they are sick of the beach...sprinters should get starting stalls and short sprints training...the ones in the mid ranges need variety...they need to be competant in a variety of skills....never ever under any circumstances cut back on training...you get behind on quality it will be hard to catch back up...3 hours per week per horse! Also, have a back up plan...What are you going to do with these wicked horses in your class races if it keeps raining and you have no mudlarks? What will you do if one of your "big 4 " gets injured...you need some 3yo and older that can fill in for when "it hits the fan". Contributed by Cerberus of Skank Town Stables
g1. CBC's guide for newcomers
Tue 14th Feb 12

This section has been entirely contributed by CBC1, of Lonestar Stables. It should also be noted that there are many opinions on how to start your stable - this is simply one persons' view. It has been included in the help sections because it highlights how important it is to think things through before jumping forwards. As such, it is not a definitive guide to success - there are definitely many other options that would see your stable begin on equally good foundations, and maybe even better! - but the ideas listed here are certainly a solid way to start out, and if you take the time to think about each step, you'll certainly begin to understand some of the finer details of Track King.

"Here are some Simple Steps for brand new stables to help get you started:

  1. Read help section 3 times!
  2. Hire 1 admin staff.
  3. Purchase 11 hours of training. (3 hours will be leased to public.)
  4. Purchase 4 hours vet service.
  5. Apply 2 hours of conditioning or swimming training to each of your horses. (These are good simple training to start with that build body stats.)
  6. Apply one vet hour to each horse that are not at vigorious for medical and physical conditions.
  7. Hire 1 jockey. (This may take a day or two. If not then you can use a apprentice jockey for your first race.)
  8. Enter 1 horse that has fresh or vigorous for physical or medical conditions into a league race or stakes race at your local track. Look at your horse distance experience to figure out what distance race to enter your horse into. This will get you familiar with entering a race.
  9. After entering race, think about race instructions for your horse
  10. While you've got time before your races, there is a lot of useful info in the forums, especially from other beginners asking questions.

These are just some simple steps to get you started. You will learn more as you get familiar with Track King. Don't be afraid to ask questions because someone will help answer your questions. Good Luck and Have Fun! See you in the winners circle!"

"Simple steps for newer stables to be competitive financially:

  1. Only race horse if medical and physical conditions are fresh or vigoriuos. (This will give you the best chance for the purse money.)
  2. Train using 2 or 3 hours per horse. (Horses get more out of training doing short crisp workouts than long drawn out training.) (I read that from tk hairboy awhile back.)
  3. Purchase 1 vet hour per horse. Allocate to horses that are below fresh for medical and physical conditions. (Vet hours are for medical recovery and less for physical recovery.)
  4. Be sure to enter both League Races each week - it's free money!
  5. Enter stakes races with generous purses you think you can win. Enter computer generated stakes races with 6 to 8 bot stables and few human stables. Do not enter human created stakes races because the competition will be very strong.
  6. You can find some winnable stakes races at other tracks. Travel to other tracks on your continent is cheap. Average about $650 round trip for horse or jockey.
  7. Dont go crazy with money and expand stable fast. Be patient and expand slowly. Save money in case you go a week with out winning a race.
  8. Be careful not to spend to much money at the auction. You will have to determine what price you are willing to pay for a horse. You can also purchase a yearling that is most of the time cheaper than purchasing a horse at auction.
  9. Selling extra training hours and stalls is helpful but, you will not break even or make a profit by selling stalls and training hours. You must win races, sell horses, breed monster winning horses, or sell stud rights to earn money.
  10. Be patient and you will see the rewards!

These are just some simple steps. You will be able to tweak your finances as you get more familiar with Track King. Ask questions because there are stables managers who will be glad to help you. Good Luck!"

Written entirely by CBC1 of Lonestar Stables

l1. External Websites
Thu 05th Sep 19

Many dedicated Track King players have taken the time and effort to create websites about Track King to guide new players, or to entertain the veterans! The following is a list of external sites - please note that the content is not controlled in any way by Track King.

Help Sites

Youtube Channels

News and entertainment

Chat sites

Track King Tools and Spreadsheets

These are a list of tools made by players to record snapshots of information about your stable, helping you to understand and predict aspects of Track King.

Official Track King resources & links

t1. Terms and Conditions
Thu 10th Jul 14
These Terms and Conditions have been established in order to ensure the integrity of Track King, and to retain a fair, equitable and friendly environment within the game. Each login to the Track King website is taken as agreement by the player to abide by the following Terms and Conditions:

  1. One Stable per person, one person per Stable. You are the sole person responsible for the management of your stable. It is the responsibility of the player to ensure that their password and username are secure, and that they do not allow others to access their stable. Management of multiple stables is forbidden. Only ONE stable permitted per player. Should you decide to retire from Track King, your stable must be allowed to reset - it is forbidden to give/sell your stable to anyone.
  2. Login to keep your membership 'active'. One login is required at least once every 7 weeks to signify that your Stable is still active. Several reminder emails will be sent during extended periods of inactivity to alert you to any 'inactive stable' closure.
  3. Valid, unique Email address will be supplied by each player. A valid email address must be supplied to allow automated email notices, for retrieving lost passwords, and more importantly, to allow Track King Staff to contact you in relation to gaming issues. Your Email address will remain hidden from all Track King players and staff, and will not be referred on to any third party under any circumstances.
  4. Multiple stables from one internet IP address. Where multiple stables are accessed from the one shared IP address, any transfer of Track King money between stables (auction activity, private stakes races etc) is not allowed. Any breach of this rule will be viewed suspiciously and investigated thoroughly.
  5. Fair trade, Fair play. Privately organised 'trade deals' or money transfers between stables is not permitted. All Auction and Race activity is to be conducted in a fair and equitable manner.
  6. Track King is not responsible for the actions of a player Each player in Track King is totally responsible for their behaviour. Track King is not responsible for any infringement of copyrights, trademarks or other laws broken by any Track King player.
  7. Abusive or offensive behaviour not permitted. Forums, in-game mail, and any other text or images supplied by the player must be of a socially responsible and appropriate nature.
  8. 'Screen scraping' software and other malicious attacks not permitted. It is not permitted to manipulate URLs or using any automated 'script' or other processes in order to obtain, scan or change information on the Track King website. The Track King website may only be navigated by utilising the links provided within the site.
  9. Track King staff have the authority to decide if the Terms and Conditions have been broken. All appointed MOD's, GM's, and TK's within Track King have been given the authority to investigate issues within the game, and decide whether an individual is in breach of these Terms and Conditions. Track King staff may or may not privately discuss any breaches of these Terms and Conditions with the individual, or with other Track King staff. Issues will not be publicly discussed excepting to respond to any public questions raised by the player under investigation. Should a Track King staff member determine that a player is in breach of these Terms and Conditions, the staff member then has the authority to decide upon an appropriate penalty. These penalties may take the form of any/all of the following:
    • Fining the offending stable an appropriate amount of Track King money;
    • Removal of any auction bid;
    • Scratching of any horse from any race;
    • Editing of offensive postings, stable name, horse names, or username;
    • Temporary suspension of any player from Track King;
    • Permanent closure of any Track King stable.

As a general courtesy, you are requested to be respectful and courteous when dealing with others in the public forums or through in-game mails in order to maintain an environment that is suitable for people of all ages and cultures. Where any breach of the rules above is noticed, it is requested that players utilise the "Contact a GM" link provided on the 'Home' or 'Forum' or 'Help' pages, to allow Track King admin staff to investigate.

Thankyou for taking the time to read the Terms and Conditions, and it is sincerely hoped that you enjoy your Track King experience.

Privacy Policy

Track King does not in any circumstance reveal or release your personal data to any third party, or to any other players within the game. Aside from providing a valid email address for registration processes and for retrieving lost passwords, there is no requireement on the part of the user to provide any personal identifying information. Any other information gathered during the registration process is used solely for the purpose of assigning your stable to a Local Track that may be of some significance to your home/nationality, or in the course of determining if your stable is a duplicate/multiple application from the one person.

Cookies are used sparingly within the Track King site, particularly to enable some Owners Club features. Allowing Cookies for Track King is highly recommended. No personal data or passwords are stored in cookies - only a counter of how many unread emails you have, and horse/jockey ID numbers.

We use third-party advertising companies (particularly Google) to serve ads to non-Owners Club members. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide relevant advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here

Pop-Ups are only used as a navigational aid for the Track King tutorial. It is possible to play Track King with pop-ups disabled, and there is no need to allow them for this site.

t2. Game changelog
Wed 25th Apr 12

This Changelog is designed to reflect the changes to Track King over the history of the game. As the changelog wasn't commenced until April '08, changes from the first 6 months of TK are not depicted here.

  • April 2012
    • Added HOOF top 50 performers from the past week
    • Finetuned the prediction of Place Odds
    • Reduced cost of HOOF
    • Increased Experience gain for horses in Cup Finals
  • February 2012
    • Added a real-time Chat Room feature
    • Chat Room - Track Steward feature announces all Cups and races at Regional Tracks every 10 minutes
    • Reduced waiting period between yearlings to 6 days instead of 7
  • January 2012
    • Added list of 'Top 10 Betting Pools' to the Personal Finances page
    • Maximum Manager wage increased by $25,000 per week
    • Sun now dries the track with equal speed to rain dampening - should result in very slightly drier tracks, and overall a slightly drier surface average, allowing equally as many fast tracks as heavy
  • September 2011
    • Jockey page and Jockey Bookmarks now report a little more information about estimated holiday return time
    • Introduced Several new Race Eligibility Criteria for all Race Type
    • Amended '25+ wins' to '5+ wins'
    • Cost for creating a HOOF race dropped to $15,000
  • July 2011
    • Introduced 'Continent Only' restriction for Invitationals
    • Prevented Gelding horses while listed on the Auctions
    • Introduced the new Stable Spy feature
    • Increased Apprentice Experience and Training
    • Apprentices can now 'Go to the Races' once a week for fun and profit
  • May 2011
    • Added new Horse, Jockey and Track pictures
  • March 2011
    • Added 'Publish to Race' function for Owners Club
    • Connected to Facebook! Go to your personal details
    • Added messages to race page to explain why entry not possible
  • February 2011
    • Revamped the New Player Tour, and the Tutorial. Both are now advised to new players in their opening emails
    • Bug fixed on Personal Details page where sometimes stable would be charged incorrectly
    • Apprentice jockeys now have 20 training points when hired, and slightly higher starting XP
    • Added Local News and Regional News to the Track page, and also to the League Table
  • January 2011
    • Stablehand Charlie now informs about a range of events regarding ex-apprentice Jockeys and contracts
    • Subtle style changes for top & right menu's
    • Introduced bulk-Game Credit purchase options
  • December 2010
    • Improved navigation for browsing various Cup events
    • Local Cup Day events introduced, and 20+ Cups created
    • Track Page now displays Special Cup Days and links
    • Bots in C1-3 now perform at improved levels (with horses having a higher OR), and wear black/blue/green caps and hoods to help players recognise them
    • Trophy Shelf for Stables introduced
    • Changing Tracks now results in a prestige gain or loss based on comparing Track Prestige. No other penalties exist
    • 7-Day Forecast now uses icons
  • November 2010
    • Display bug for Facilities & Training / Vet times during Daylight Savings has been corrected. It is possible that more bugs will be encountered over coming days, however in all cases the best fix is to leave unusual hours alone, or alternatively, cancel all vet hours and re-assign.
  • October 2010
    • Added the Google-Translate feature
    • Updated Personal Details page to turn off Google-Translate feature
    • Training Track XP bonus is now scaled, with a horse in mid-poor condition receiving no bonus and a horse in peak condition receiving full bonus.
    • Slight changes to rules for listing aged horses. See Auctions help page for details
  • September 2010
    • Introduced "occasional" XP bonuses for HOOF races, and aligned HOOF more closely with current Race Engine. XP bonuses will show as per normal Race XP bonuses IF they are awarded.
    • Created 20 new RSS feeds to tap into information from Track King
    • Introduced "make instructions default" button for horse and/or jockey when setting Race Instructions for a particular race
    • Competitive League bonus introduced - players in C1-C3 Leagues of 8 or more human opponents will receive a bonus in Week 0 of between $32,000 and $900,000 - scaled depending on class and numbers of human opponents
    • Top 50 lists no longer show retired horses or stables
    • Top 50's now includes 50 most competitive tracks
  • August 2010
    • Made the display of Vet Assessment more transparent
    • Introduced internal mail from the Stable Hand where injuries occur during training
    • Tweak to ensure that more of the HOOF races are using stricter criteria rather than excessive winnings-limits
  • July 2010
    • Improved Injury Profiling introduced. In-race performance will be more greatly affected by a higher Injury Profile, and recovery from Injury Profiling is now improved by a spell of greater than 2 weeks - this includes training!
    • Withdrawing more than twice from any single race (regardless of horse/jockey) will incur a prestige penalty. Penalty starts at approximately half a prestige level, and increases by approximately double each subsequent withdrawal
    • Drop-down Menu system/option introduced
  • February 2010
    • Added Race data to the XML stream, created 'help file' visible at sendxml.php
    • NEW - Linked races to specific forum threads, so when looking at a race you can jump to a forum thread dedicated to that race!
  • January 2010
    • Increased clarity in the display of Injury Profile within Vet Assessment
    • Improved Race Instructions - includes capacity for instructions every eighth distance, instructions for jockeys, instructions for individual races, and Owners Club members can see historical race instructions in the horse/jockey history
    • Reduced margin for error when jockeys advise of their return from Holidays
  • December 2009
    • If no HOOF races have been created in the past 10 minutes, a random bot stable will step forwards and create a race.
    • Jockey contract extensions no longer allow a jockey to be contracted past retirement age
    • Added a new 'badge' element to the top banner
    • Patches to Forums to allow more flexibility for GMs with player penalties
  • October 2009
    • 'Charlie' added to the new player tour
    • Any horse with earnings less than $1m may now be renamed
    • Small graphic enhancements to the site - menu icons, improved shadows/roundings, silks background
    • Display bug fix to Summary pages
    • Facebook link added to front page
  • August 2009
    • 3rd European Region opened
    • Improvements to Sponsored Cup payment system
  • July 2009
    • Invitations will be given out for all bot-created stakes races, with bots able to effectively enter any that they are invited to. Exception is that bots will not get invitations to top-end stakes such as 50-60 OR's and >10 >25 wins
    • Improved bot logic for entering stakes races
    • Introduced 'most important' ordering on apprentice training page
    • Fixed personal bank balance calculation on personal details page
    • Fixed a small bug when inviting a player to a stakes race, where stable name was not being displayed
    • Reminder for race instructions and jockey schedule issues on the 'auto-travel booking' page
    • Streamlined jockey schedule/transport checking to allow more flexibility for advanced players
    • BETTING - Trifecta minimum odds are now $1.66, Exacta minimum odds are now $1.33
    • Added some subtle background images
    • Jockeys can now return from holidays at any time of the day, not just 'on the hour'.
    • Spruced the menu's a little with some small graphic stylings
    • FINALLY! I've fixed the Internet Explorer bug on the jockey/horse summary pages. No more overlaps!
  • June 2009
    • Season 8 Race Engine - focus on condensing the field while still retaining previous order and allowing room for obvious signs of horse/jockey improvement over time/training.
    • Auto promotion introduced for following season for all 1st placed stables
    • 'Official' Cup purses increased, and all Cup finals now pay 5% of race purse to all finishers in the top half of the field
    • Increased scale of payments for ex-apprentices
    • Training hours leased out will now be paid directly at training time to reduce confusion
    • Stakes races now only pay the amount for place achieved, rather than paying total purse to small fields
    • Race entry process improved to give more feedback about travel times, spotting possible conflicts, and assist with fixing conflicts
    • Admin tools for managing GM reports, saving GM's from doubling up their efforts
    • Introduction of the 'Share' function on the front page - over 200 uses by you guys in the first week!
  • May 2009
    • Season Calendar function, and assorted changes to the Stable homepage
    • Improved calculations for prestige loss when donating personal cash to your stable. Prestige loss is now relative to the wealth of your stable and wealth of the player. Less prestige loss when player is wealthy compared to stable. More prestige loss when stable is wealthy compared to player - this allows donations to help a stable more easily than to make a stable exceedingly rich.
    • Your own Stable Net Worth now available to all Owner Club members during the off-season. Updated live!
    • Improved 'Enter Race Horse' to show whether a jockey is busy or not at the time of booking
    • Added 'real-time' scoring to Rivalry Cups, and Cup tallies to Track page
    • No longer lose any prestige for a poor Cup result
    • Ability to search for jockey by age
    • All Training Track bugs/problems should now be 100% resolved
    • Ability to reset your private forum
    • Admin tools to manage membership levels more easily
  • April 2009
    • Introduction of new race restrictions based on Overall rating and also based on Career Wins
    • Forum 'ignore' feature added
    • Genetic facility introduced! All horses retrospectively granted enhanced DNA and breeding rules changed accordingly
    • Amendment to Vet Assessment - now shows med/phys condition coupled with an Injury Profile assessment
  • March 2009
    • Very slight increase to recovery speeds of Injury Profile
    • Ability to hire your own ex-Apprentice jockeys no matter what class they are currently in
    • Google translations added to Help
    • Community Cups introduced
    • Merchandising now handled by Cafepress.com
    • Track page bugfixes, and added a trophy cabinet to each Track
  • February 2009
    • H.O.O.F - accessible from the 'xx online' section of the menu.
    • Day One instant access for eligible new stables
    • Brief tour of the site for new players
    • Marketing drive for all ex-TK players
    • Slight amendment to Conference Room facility - now enables slightly better rates for rehiring/firing jockeys
  • January 2009
    • Invitationals can now be restricted to "Owner/Breeder" entrants only
    • commencing Friday Week 3, bot stables now have the option of creating "earnings restricted" races where entrants must have career prizemoney of less than $X million
    • Bugfix - No longer able to give away horses that are scheduled to race - this was causing problems with Invitations not being returned correctly. These horses will need to be withdrawn from races before they can be given away.
    • CHANGE/Bugfix - When entering a race in the next season, aging will be taken into consideration for all races. At the time of aging, 10yo horses will be scratched from any Stakes races in Week 1 or later. This means that 10yo Horses can have a "farewell" event in Week 0 of the new season even if the date falls after 1st of the month....however this will be the final opportunity for them to race. From Week 1 onwards, no 11yo's can race. Also, this means that 3yo's turning 4 will not be able to enter Week 1 of the Spring Guineas or other similar events.
    • NEW - Added the ability to view previous seasons league tables
    • Introduced "Stable of the Day" on Home page, and re-arranged the Home page slightly
    • Bugfix - Viewing all records held by another stable now correctly shows all records, not just sprint records
  • December 2008
    • SEASON 6 RACE ENGINE, see Race Engine Changes
    • Injury risk profiling - See Injury Profiling changes
    • New - list of latest 200 new players to TK available from home page and continent/track pages.
    • Total overhaul of the mail system. Too many improvements to list lol!
    • Improvement to "you have been outbid" banner feature for Owners Club. Banner should now reset after you look at your Auction Records page until further bids are received
    • Minor bugfix - should now be able to 'mark all as read' in Local/Regional forums
    • Horse history now displays the name of the stable a horse left when sold
    • Horse history now displays the sale of stud rights and the usage of stud rights as separate items (for future stud sales/usages)
  • November 18 2008
    • Bugfix - Hopefully when scratching from a Cup, the invitation will now remain valid rather than showing "Horse Not Found"?
    • Interface improvement - Jockey search will no longer over-ride your first skill criteria with default prestige levels
    • Interface improvement - When issuing invitations for stakes Races, page now recalls which race you last invited someone to
    • Horse History now has an additional tab for all horses on Auction and for your own horses to see recent training
    • When all 3 specialist facilities have been built, ability to see other facility descriptions added
  • October 2008
    • On promoting an apprentice jockey from your stable, you will be offered the chance to hire them for 28 days at a modest wage
    • Further 'fairness rules' put in place in the Auctions to encourage fair, market-priced auctioning rather than pre-agreed deals (See Auctions rules page)
    • NEW - list of online users by Nationality. Click the "xxx online" link in the main menu
    • Forum ban mechanism implemented. All MODs now have the ability to ban a player from the Forums
    • New horse photos....and a minor oops to replace the old horse pics for all current horses :-s
    • Minor training adjustment (bugfix?). Cap on increases available in a particular training session. Still generous but no longer possible to add 4-5 levels!
    • Race Engine Changes for Season5:
      Horses
      • Starting speed boost for well suited horses
      • Slightly more difficult for a horse to 'push through the pain barrier' when the going gets tough.
      • Horse ability to stay the distance very slightly more dependant on experience
      • When the jockey says "hold", the horse no longer has the ability to increase speed
      • When told to ease, the horse has a larger chance of dropping speed
      Jockeys
      • MASSIVE AI improvements
      • Progressively better decision making for apprentices as they gain experience through their career
      • Improved senses for horses just in front and current placing
      • Increased desire for all jockeys to place in the top 5
      • Increased sensitivity to horse speed, and better chance of 'feeling' the horses potential
      • Increased ability for jockeys to push a horse beyond 100%, although this will rapidly tire the horse
      Race Vision
      • Jockey whips will (from here on) only show when the jockey is pushing the horse hard, and always when pushing beyond 100%
    • Streamlined menu system - introduced a faster method of maintaining the "Horse" menu, and removed Jockey menu from several pages. This should bring about noticeable performance increases for the site.
    • After withdrawing a horse, a stable must wait 10 minutes until they can re-enter that particular race.
  • September 2008
    • New - Training Track
    • New - Specialist Facilities
    • Help updates for Specialist Facilities
    • Bugfix on race entry for Season 5
    • New - Introduced career progression for jockeys - if they've gotten enough career earnings then at the end of a season they are eligible for promotion to a higher class
    • Bugfix on race entry for Class limitations on promoted stables qualified for a cup in progress
    • Change to prevent new stables being assigned any horses older than 9yo
    • Small improvement to bookmarks for unborn foals. Thanks Saracen!
    • Added numerical values to horse skills and auction results page
    • NEW Added ability for Owners Club memebrs to sort their horses using a drag&drop method
    • Bug fix - You have been outbid message in banner hopefully functional now
    • Bugfix on Auctions page - now remembers racing style.
    • Bugfix on jockey search page - now remembers search criteria
    • Many changes in preparation for new League season:
      • Race Engine changes (as per announcement) prepared
      • End of season tie-break implemented. Where points and results are equal at Week 11 of the season, results will be determined by the best placed stable of the longest races competed by those stables in the final week
      • Specialist Facilities prepared for release in the off-season
      • New secret feature prepared for release in the off season
  • August 2008
    • Minor changes to menu order
    • NEW feature for geeks like me. RSS Feed available for TK, focussed around results and betting dividends. Feed also available on Facebook, so please subscribe to it :)
    • Improvement on betting payout figures - particularly for placings. TK betting now should behave more like a true tote.
    • Bugfix on Exacta/Trifecta payouts where a horse has been scratched. Correct payout will now go ahead
    • Change to Hall of Fame as requested - default view is now 'most career winnings of all time'
    • Small improvement to Search Results page - horses now ordered by age, and results capped to 'current' horses only.
    • Proposed changes to relocation (and penalties for moving to a lower population league) introduced and active.
    • Bugfix to the Race decline option - now appears regardless of eligibility for the race
    • Improvement - Owners Club Race Vision will 'remember' the size of the window you last used in race vision, and also allows access to the Free version of the viewer
    • NEW - Decline race invitations for Stakes and Invitationals
    • NEW - Family Tree via each Horse
    • NEW - Hall of Fame
    • Refined Race Records - only one distance at a time available
    • Friends online and next race added to header block.
    • Race countdown (within 1 hour) added to header.
  • July 2008
    • Updates and improvements to Auction Records page.
    • Prestige change - Releasing an apprentice jockey now gives prestige, to a greater or lesser extent based on apprenticeship served.
    • Yearling pulls can be done on the 7th day now, regardless of time of day of the last yearling pull
    • Added 'you have been outbid' to header
    • Owners Club header receives updates to mail/auction status when in forums
    • Added new Header, which provides 'announcement' facilities for OC members. Currently displays an unread mail alert, and will be expended in coming days.
    • Delayed auto-graduation in Mentor Program, and viewing old messages.
    • Experience 'pops' gained from racing will now be visible on the horse experience tables until the next race
    • Minor changes to Page Menu (reorder, remove, tidy)
    • Race Engine changes - Gate speed now has slightly more impact at the start, Horse less likely to lose large amounts of speed when conflicting with the jockey, Horse may drift slightly when conflicting with jockey
    • Began implementation of Rules in Spanish thanks to maleconero
    • Bugfix - forum adverts created by Invitationals corrected
    • Race Engine changes - To take effect as of Monday 7th.
      1. Jockey ability to push horse 'very hard' for short bursts improved
      2. Jockeys now distinguish more clearly between horses 'just ahead' and horses 'just behind' using 'awareness of nearby horses' attribute
      3. Jockeys pay slightly more attention to instructions to hold/take a breather
      4. Racevision now slightly more accurate in tight finishes
      5. Experience at distance now very slightly more important
    • Jockeys - Awareness of nearby runners now reported in racing styles
  • June 2008
    • Bugfix - promoting jockey date now recorded accurately
    • Search for race now includes search for "any" races
    • Bugfix - corrected discrepancy between manual and auto travel booking times
    • Preparation for third European region
    • New forum feature - private forum owners can now edit/delete postings
    • Top 50 amendments to reduce server load, includes new jockey top50
    • Pagination for horse history. Jockey history pagination coming soon
    • Crash recovery! :-(
    • Removed the ability for non OC members to resize Race Vision, as it was causing multiple loads of race data per person, which in turn caused increased CPU usage.
    • Introduced framework for Invitationals (see Help text) and Cups where the stable must use only one horse (as per the Magic Mile).
    • Cookies used in forums to return you to prior thread when using browser back button within 5 mins.
    • Unborn foals on horse history, links to unborn foal.
    • Introduced "Foetal Rating" when looking at unborn foals
    • Renamed/created Suggestions forum and TK Bulletins forum, moved some threads
    • Bugfix - minor display bug in Cup runners
    • NEW - Ability to negotiate end contract with jockeys
    • Updated jockey help with contract termination details
    • Implemented restriction for Career/Season results tables for non-Owners
    • Implemented 'nagware' banner in header for non members
    • Added Owner Club logo's on stables and in shop
    • Slightly increased the chances for good parent 'genes' to shine through to the foal
    • Slightly larger drops in jockey morale when poor form or not racing often
    • Main Menu updates/improvements for some pages which were 'dead ends'
    • Introduced Google Ads for most pages for non-paying players.
    • Introduced restrictions on Race Vision as per announcement - non paying players can only watch their own races within 3 days of the event
    • Introduced restriction in Auctions - non-Owners Club players cannot use "overall rating" in Auctions.
    • Amended Maidens setup by bots to be a 1/3 chance of appearing at a track, and to be held on Mondays.
    • Number of stakes races at a track in a Friday/Monday will be changeable - between 8 and 12 races over two days instead of always 11
    • Help text updates for OC
    • NEW - All TK's with no OC in the past 110 days (or 3rd week+ new players) can earn a free week of OC by winning a race and logging in within 48 hours!. Offer is repeatable as long as no OC in 110 days.
    • NEW - Added the ability to donate money to Track King
    • Enhanced "Buy Owners Club" link for non-OC members
  • May 2008
    • RACE ENGINE - Slightly increased penalties for racing horses in poor condition
    • 'Remove all' buttons added to vet/training facilities tabs
    • Slight increase to physical penalties for very long training sessions
    • NEW - Introduced new race entry restrictions - apprentices, $XX and maidens.
    • Help text updates to reflect these changes
    • Enhancement to attempt to force bots to enter across all Cup fields. This enhancement may be withdrawn if bots have trouble entering all events they are eligilbe for.
    • Tidyup of Cups info page.
    • AUCTIONS - Added search by Overall Rating, Stride, and Historical Auctions.
    • NEW - Ability to rename 3yo's within 3 weeks of purchase.
    • Introduced slight enhancement on jockey search - 'personality trait'.
    • Bugfix for GM functions in Internet Explorer.
    • Bugfix for Races homepage in Internet Explorer.
    • Work to minimise 'overlap' problem in Horse summary. Problem lies largely with Internet Explorer incorrectly displaying the styles used, not 100% possible to fix without extensive work.
    • 'Small recognition' on the user page for those Track Kings who donate time to a TK publication.
    • Bugfix to 'upper' buttons in the Forums
    • NEW - Owners can record a comment about their jockeys
    • Amended horse overcrowding - instead of all in one hit on Sunday, instead it is gradual condition loss each night.
    • Sneetches in the forums with a 'star upon thars'.
    • Created GM/Mod 'TK mailbox'.
    • Allowed some 'special' characters in polls.
    • Small changes to polls to try and enable iPhone
    • Bugfix on 'back/first page' buttons in forum
    • Added track condition to the results of Race Search.
    • Added 'day of the week' to Search for a Race
    • Added track condition to the Continent page.
    • Database changes to forums to improve speed and performance
    • Bugfix to forum and auctions page to enable for mobile/Mac
    • Slight upwards adjustment to maximum reserve prices (overall approx 10-15% based on stats)
    • Bugfix to sticky threads
    • Short Email questionnaire is now sent to any users that leave the game.
    • Implemented new forum including polls, streamlined message/thread retrieval, improved 'mark as read', and poll management for private forums
    • Implemented horse image when data is being retrieved.
    • Home page - horse image
    • New users now sent TKMail with link to the Mentor thread
    • Improvements to renaming process to allow more flexible puntuation/capitalisation of names.
    • Various help/rules updates
    • Change to weekly finances - first 4 stables have no weekly cost. Announcement to come soon.
  • April 2008
    • Various minor corrections/additions to Help pages.
    • Added extra warning message about purchasing stud rights off the auction. Hopefully this prevents further mistaken bids?!
    • Minor adjustments to the stable selection criteria for Track King Masters Cup, announcement coming soon
    • Refinements/improvements to automatic GM cheat-report tools in Auctions
    • NEW - Ability to automatically book travel when making a race booking.
    • quick bugfix to make sure correct time/cost for travel! oops!
    • Change to front page to show how many active users instead of logged in users
    • Increases to income generated by agistment/training leased to public
    • Bugfix - learned about 'stopwords' for searches and refined the search box
    • Bugfix - Refined search for stakes invitees re: stopwords
    • Bugfix - sort by 'epic' distance XP on Horse Summary now fixed
    • Setup URL redirection from trackking.org -> www.trackking.org
    • Added 'Moved' status to forum threads (not retrospective)
    • Bugfix - completed cups on Stable page showing as not booked
    • Implemented increased/scaled League payments based on number of named jockeys in a race. Should effectively double the participation payments received for Class League Races in the first 2 weeks of the season.
    • Planning and testing some small forum upgrades
    • Bugfix on bugfix for horse stride :-s
    • Bugfix on jockey stats - not showing "maxed out" rails.
    • Minor additions to 'Breeding' and 'League' rules in Help pages, spelling errors corrections throughout
    • Auction "maximum" reserve price scale improved to reflect max stat, min stat, overall rating, and other factors
    • New Racerecords available per stable and per horse - from stable/horse page, or race records advanced search for your own stable.
    • Bugfix to stable page - invitations not displaying where Cups were booked
    • Bugfix to entering races - allowed extra league runners in unusual circs
    • Added another admin tool re new registrations
    • Minor tweak - default jockey contracts extended by approx 10%
    • Bugfix to training (two types) which allowed stride gain of 2m+ - now limited
    • Bugfix to Users page, wasn't allowing stable name changes successfully
    • Bugfix to Gelding page, incorrectly displayed horse spirit immediately after gelding.
    • Small enhancement to Cups Homepage to allow highlighting of Cups for your home track
    • Preparing Horse Summary page for addition of 'The Horse Computer'
    • Bug-fix - some trainings now correctly allow weight loss. Previously no weight loss was ever possible!
    • Updates to jockey page - all racing styles commented on
    • Minor tweaks to Race Engine - jockeys have the ability to push a horse very hard for limited periods during a race
    • Continuing testing/tweaking changes to the race engine (not introduced to live game yet)
    • Spruced up the 'login' page of TK (will be released later today)
    • Fixed a minor bug listing old horses for stud/sale
    • Created another Admin tool
    • Began testing potential tweaks to the race engine (testing only - no changes to game)
    • Fixed problem with missed races on Home page - past/coming races
    • Fix/improved 'current cup runner' on Stables page
    • Amendments to Race engine as announced, so that race prestige and Class League 'automatic payments' are scaled proportionate to number of named jockeys
    • Fix to jockey page to correctly show retired jockeys
    • Fix to Auctions preventing listing retired horses
    • Introduced Changelog

    Thanks for playing Track King!

 



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