Showing is quite painful. ..

My activity feed confuses me, can't determine anything from it. Since not all the shows run at the same time. So some shows might not have run at all just yet.
I got one horse who placed 6/10 shows so he's doing alright.
Out of about 25 horses only 9 horses have show results yet, which is very weird.

Ok, this seems like a typical day for my showing, I spent nearly 12,000 to enter the entire herd got show winnings of over $16,000 and just quickly running down the list as a group they accumulated 115 in stats, usually just +1.
That was entering all in most entries auto showing and granted my horses were competing against each other.
If I look at individual horses they seem for the most part to have won more than the entry fees in showing yesterday.
These are not "high statted" horses btw, most are 200-300 stats with 5/5 tack and competing in Western.

Megansparrow, shows have finished running for the day, so if you only have results for 6 horses still, that means that the remaining 16 didn't place any higher than 3rd.

i'd wager that if you check out those individual horses, they either have lower grade tack OR are at the very bottom of the stat range for the level they are in (or perhaps both?)

Sparkles, they might not be "high statted" compared to other horses, but i'll bet that they are high state in their show level range. that's the nice thing about this new showing system, is that horses get to compete against horses closer to them in in a small range, rather than having any horses regardless of stats show against other horses. :)

Most of my horses have pretty high stats in non disciplinary stats. I bet that's the main reason for them earning zero. I also had two horses in the wrong discipline. And one more who needs a switch.

78552-(2400+2400+60885+7356) = 5511

Total Made From Shows - (Farrier + Shoeing + Amount Spent on Shows + Repairing Tack) = Profit.

I personally don't consider buying or upgrading tack to be show costs; I think of them as account costs similar to buying a new division or increasing the number of horse I can own. Why? Because tack you purchase and upgrade isn't a cost specific to one horse, you can keep using the tack with other horses and therefore is almost impossible to consider it a showing cost in my opinion. Also I think that including vet and farrier costs maybe a bit of a stretch as those are just general health costs of owning a horse like feed or treats; even on the Old EV where I rarely competed my horses I paid farrier and vet bills.

I know that some people are loosing money showing, I don't argue that point and I really wish I knew how to help them out; but I don't.

Thanks Aglet, I'm paying more attention to what I'm doing and like I said may try splitting part of my entries to a later time of the day. Also after noticing that some of my horses had no shows to enter late evening, I'm going to create shows in the low areas of the chart. I really think just upgrading tack and treating everyday will show results.
Megansparrow, making sure your stats match your discipline should help. If you need tack, I might be able to help with a couple of sets especially dressage which I have few horses in.

I have a very large show string, around 100 horses, so I don't have the time (or the dedication, lol) to enter them individually. I use autoshow, and in the hopes of getting stats, I tend to always select shows with highest entries. (Not entirely ideal, as it means I wind up with a fair number of my horses competing against each other.)

I still almost always make money. Usually at least 10k, sometimes up to 30k.

I don't know why this is, since I'm using basically the worst possible strategy. I don't know what to suggest to help people.

@megansparrow, I'm glad you figured out that your horses were probably just mis-disciplined. I really love the "convert training" feature we have now!

Well, I did misplace them on the old EV, just because I want to have driving shetland ponies.

It's only 3 out of all my horses, still does not explain the others not placing. Maybe it's because most of my shetlands also have 50+ stats in the wrong discipline adding up.

Anyway, I will now enter my horses into shows, according to this plan:
-0 profit? Random cheap shows, max of three horses in one
- some profit, but not break even? Random show, not in the cheapest but also not in the highest (20 evd shows)
-Made profit? Random highest prices shows.

I will also be looking at the amount of horses I enter in one show and the amount of horses that are already entered in those shows.
But first my phone's battery needs undying, since I made my scheme of yesterdays shows on there.

Good luck Megansparrow, I have one other suggestion, just something I occasionally do is look at the winning horses on a show you placed in or even lost in. This allows you some insight into what horses are defeating you. 🙂

I don't record shows I enter in. But there's only a handful of shows available for my horses mostly.
It seems horses randomly win. Since today completely different horses won. Will make this on an excel sheet from now on. My loss is less now, about -200.


Guess I was too early with that. Made 3k (wil make that excel sheet though)

I now entered my horses with the following simple rules:
-Try to spread out horses that are in the same level/discipline and belong to the same "cost" group.

"cost" groups are based upon the horse his performances of the previous day:
minus or 0 earnings= cheapest shows
little profit=30 evd per show
doubled profit=40 evd per show (might take this one to 50 if this works)
tripled profit=highest shows available.

If 30 evd shows aren't available, the horse will be entered in 20 evd shows, same counts for the other rules.

Last edited on 2016-03-14 at 15:13:04 by megansparrow

I had a big increase in winnings today. I'm
Thinking getting my horses more spread out in more different shows helped.

I don't even know what to think of the showing system anymore, or if there is any strategy to it . . . I used to make decent income (or so I thought) off of showing and now I spend twice as much to enter as I get in income from winnings despite using the 'cheapest option' for auto-showing. It's not like my horses suddenly became bad, but I feel like I don't win much any more. Maybe it's because I have added a couple new breeds with stats that need help, but since showing is one way to gain stats it seems there isn't an advantage to not showing? It seems there's something I may be missing. I don't feel I have any grasp on how winnings are calculated anymore.

You might want to rethink your cost groups. Horses who did really well the previous day may have been at the "top" of their showing group. i.e. a N1 horse with 149 stats will do really well one day, gain ~4 stats (maybe more) and then will be N2 with 153 stats, this horse will now compete poorly because it is at the bottom of it's showing group (to be at the top it would need to have 190-199 stats).

bottom stats for competing class = cheapest shows
middle of the road stats for competing class =30 evd per show
within 10 stats of going to the next competing class =40 evd per show (might take this one to 50 if this works)
within 5 stats of going to the next competing class = most expensive shows available.

Just something that might help, this will require a lot of time to do and if you have a lot of horses will probably be too unrealistic.

I sort of feel like the points earned is out of balance with the money earned, but I suppose when I set my auto-entry to "cheapest", that's most likely why I'm not making very much money, all things considered. I want to do a little experiment - at one point, I was entering them all in lowest entries, and I only had four pages of results compared to my usual twelve. Hmm....this showing system is interesting.

I always enter my horses using the highest entries selection. And I always spend 1000-5000 more than what I get, but my horses get some experience...