Showing is quite painful. ..

i have 46 horses that are showing i recently upgraded all their tack to G5 (which i took a long time to do because of the amount of money it takes) and my show earnings from yesterday...

$17,655 Amount earned in shows yesterday. 16:45:17
$12,200 Amount spent on show entry fees yesterday.

i auto show on cheapest nothing special.

I am having very little problems with showing and am gaining an average of 44k per night on shows and spending about 6k repairing tack for all horses. I spend about 56k on shows, and make about 100k.

I use Autoshowing. My first two divisions, Studlies and Arabians (about 30-40 horses) are shown at Lowest Entires they get the least stats and most money. All the rest are shown at Cheapest(About 180 horses give or take some foals and retireds). All horses have level 5 tack and are treated daily with bag treats for their specialty(for the most part).
Usually horses are entered after 8pm EV time, in some instances there are no shows for some horses if entered after 10 or 11pm.

However, There is a large disparity between horses on my account, I have random ages and disciplines and stats, so get a wide range of entries, but that also results in some ranges in earnings even amongst similarly entered horses.
I accidentally entered most of the studs and Arabs in Highest entires instead of lowest last night so a lot of them gained no money last night, but a few did well and got 2k each!
With a smaller herd it'd be easier to track things and enter strategically, but with a larger herd you can afford to have some horses not preforming well as long as there's others to fill the gaps.

Reading what you wrote, Sab, maybe I'm missing a key factor in the showing, and that's why I'm consistently losing. You say you enter your horses in the shows with lowest entries, and this way you earn more money but less stats?
I'm quite slow on the draw today hah, because logically, wouldn't the lowest entries mean the less money you'd make but the greater chance at earning stats (placing 1st to 3rd)?

I'm also beginning to question that my year of feeding peppermints to my horses has really done a lot of damage in their showing success. Although (western discipline) they have the most stats in speed and intelligence, they still have stats in the other areas, too, so that might be hurting them. D:

Moneywise with lowest entries they are more likely to place because there are fewer horses to compete against, and thus gain money. However it can also be costly because generally the shows with the lowest entries are the most expensive because default for autoshow is cheapest and Entry fee less than $50 for hand entering.

For Stats, since most of the horses I'm entering in the classes are higher grades the shows are less likely to be full and many have less than 5 horses, therefore the shows don't give stats. (Because you only get stats if the class has more than 5 entires).

And yeah i feel you on the peppermints part. My best kiddo's line had been fed peppermints and other all stat treats all their lives, but I'm continuing him that way anyway since I like the extra boosts they give him even if he's not placing.

I've tried showing in all the different options for a few days, and I lost money (10k to 30k) in all of them. At the time, I had horses with medium and high stats for their levels. I dumped them all in the RC and locked the rest of my horses after that. lol.

I don't get it... I'm barely having any trouble making money in shows, and I have a bunch (okay a huge bunch) of store horses that I've been showing...

I mean...

March 5th...

$45,369 Amount earned in shows yesterday.
$40,460 Amount spent on show entry fees yesterday.
4,909 profit

March 8th... (account locked in between)
$36,627 Amount earned in shows yesterday.
$30,380 Amount spent on show entry fees yesterday.
6,247 profit

March 9th...
$39,479 Amount earned in shows yesterday.
$29,200 Amount spent on show entry fees yesterday.
10,279 profit

March 10th...
$39,443 Amount earned in shows yesterday.
$33,125 Amount spent on show entry fees yesterday.
6,318 profit

March 11th...
$49,789 Amount earned in shows yesterday.
$35,275 Amount spent on show entry fees yesterday.
14,514 profit

March 12th...
$37,275 Amount earned in shows yesterday.
$54,935 Amount spent on show entry fees yesterday.
-17,660 loss

I'm not sure what's going on, I mean... Today's been my only loss in weeks, and I blame myself for that (I got on super late). I always auto show on "cheapest" mostly because I'm lazy. The 10th and 11th of March did have my best horses in club shows. I wish I knew why you guys were all having problems, so I knew how I could help. :(

Just a thought but perhaps after the horses increase to the next level (Novice 1 to Novice 2) etc, they temporarily perform poorly in the shows.
However I think my recent poor show day was due to entering so late at night 😒

i just went back through my bank "statements" and ran some numbers. since the recode:

i have spent $73,365 on show entries
i have earned $156,967 in show prize money

i have made a total of $83,602

i have only lost money once.

i do auto showing and routinely set it to cheapest (with the sole exception of once when i set it to, i think, most expensive - that was the day i lost money).

this is all on my main where i'm showing quite a few horses. i do show on my spare accounts where i have no more than four horses and i don't do nearly as well there. so i think the more horses you're showing, the better your odds of making money on it.

To the people counting 5-10K earnings over what they spent on showing 'profit' - I think you're forgetting the money you also spend on tack repairs, shoeing and vetting etc (and, spent on tack in the first place)! :)

Showing to me doesn't seem profitable at all at the moment, I'm 'making' about 2-3K per day on shows (auto-entering as cheap as possible).

I always considered showing, and selling art, the two most reliable ways to make money on this game, so it's rather disappointing to put so much effort in for such a little return (aside from the stats gained from showing).

I think I get why some of my horses don't do well. I made some mistakes in the past with the discipline they show in. So I have one horse who has about 200 stats in a different discipline and about 80 stats in the discipline it shows in. And I also have one with 25 stats on intelligence and 100 endurance/101 strength.
I wrote down what the entries cost me and now I will wait until cron ran to see what they made individually.

I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about showing, not actually caring for our horses! :)

Ps. I don't keep my tack repaired 100% all the time. only when it gets too low.

Last edited on 2016-03-13 at 04:07:16 by kimtia

I'm making similar to what kimmeh posted so I'm not experiencing any issues with that - my profit is positive compared to my total spending. I personally think the % of earnings I'm making compared to spending however isn't the greatest... typically I make 10k more than I spend on entry fees but that may be the adjustment in the fact that horses are now more representative in narrower grade classes and the reality that my horses aren't as great as I thought they were, lol (compared to a huge lump into G5 which was unfair imo). Right now I'm autoshowing into the lowest entries.

I had issues in the beginning but I've been making a pretty steady profit. Sometimes it's small, around 5k, but I havent gone negative once.

I tend to enter shows late and pick least entries because then my horses have a better chance of winning $$, even if they may not always get stats.

Idunno. Not sure where the issue is since I'm not experiencing it.

Edit: ok so look like I went negative by 2k yesterday. Didn't even notice so still unsure where there's an issue. Sorry to anyone having problems with this.

Last edited on 2016-03-13 at 07:30:30 by ₸ayzz

With my very tiny show string (there's literally 4 of them) endurance appaloosas on my spare, I use the method I detailed above, and usually make at least 2x what I spend on shows. There are the dips when my horses move into a new level, and are at the bottom of the range whereas the day before they were at the top of the old range, but my four have varied enough stats/levels that one or two always are making up for the others.

I don't think there's any issue with showing anymore, simply that autoshowing (using ANY of the given options) does not allow you to strategically choose the shows your horses are most likely to win money AND stats from.

Autoshowing is the easy option and will work most of the time, but if you want to be certain that you'll earn money and stats, you need to enter each show individually. A bother, yes, but it's like real life, and totally worth it :)

Well today, I am entering half my herd and waiting a couple of hours to enter the other half. I noticed on one show of 20 horses, only 3 different owners were represented so 6 of my horses were in the same show. I also tried mixing up from most entries to cheapest and even to most expensive on my higher statted horses. And I've created some shows now too.
I think it may be several months before the game stabilizes with members but in the meantime I feel like my entries are supporting the current owners and the game and I am liking the stat gains when I enter most entries.