Why do players champ their horses?

[RoyalCrownAcres]

Warning

As much as it may seem like I’m being a “Debbie downer”, I’m not. I’m just genuinely curious.

I’ve always wondered why players pay to have their horses champed. It doesn’t necessarily prove the horses talent. If anything (most of the time) it disproves the horse. Sometimes horses will be SMGCH but only have a 10% win rate because the owner payed to have the horse “accomplished”. I’ve always entered my horses in shows that I know they will do good in (I.e. they have a good win percentage rate in that discipline) and wait for them to gain a title because they “earn” it.

Why do you pay to have your horses champed? I’m genuinely wondering and figured I would ask the community. No hate or ill intentions are meant. I apologize if you feel in any way that I am criticizing those who chose to have their champed via payment. I am just asking a question because I am curious.

[dulsinayae]

It does seem weird. The money in local shows is so bad so if you aren't spamming those, what else do you do with your turn besides just train the horse yourself?

[Ziel]

My best guess is it’s some kind of image thing - a “status symbol”, that also somehow automatically makes a horse more valuable in many player’s eyes.

Meanwhile, so many good horses are on the market crazy cheap that could earn a bunch easily if trained up, but they don’t sell.

[HallOfFame]

Coming from me, who has had people pay to have their horses champed, I have specific rules set out so that the horse will be successful. For example, I stated in the past when I used to champ that I would prefer the horse to be trained and be Arabian since I specialize in Arabs in Endurance. Most of the horses I have Champed to SMGCh. have a win rate of 80% or above which isn't horrible. I do understand your point of the people who do just "Champ" the horse for the money and not for the potential of the horse. That being, they just enter them in a lot of competitions and hope they become a Champ. I think that people need to realize that horses excel in different things. For example, entering a Thoroughbred constantly in a Log Pull show because they started out with 67 points does not mean the horse should be champed in that.

I can agree with Ziel as well, people tend to want horses with titles because it makes the Bloodlines look good. For example, "Champion bloodlines, will sell for $____ minimum because of bloodlines" which seems odd to me since the horse's sire or dam could have a title, but not the stats to make the horse valuable enough for the desire price.

I am glad that you have brought up this discussion because I do find it odd to pay $15k for a horse to be champed when you could champ the horse yourself and earn even more from big purse competitions. In all honesty, the Champer earns all the money, not the person who owns the horse. I can understand if people do not have the time or know what their horse excels in, then they may need to hire. But this is a good topic for us to discuss and I think it's kind of important!

~ HOF 2

[Royale Ranch]

Interesting thread - and certainly something I have wondered about myself as well.

a. It's not so difficult to enter your own horse in a comp, even if it is your choice to spam them...
b. has anyone else ever noticed that some of the best horses, with the highest win rates/ record holders pretty much have little to no competition experience in their bloodlines
c. if you're looking to make your horse more "superior" than others by gaining titles - it will only last a little while, until you discover your horse isn't so good after all.
d. if you're aiming to get on the "best horses" list - (which unfortunately, is too easy to do with a "not so good" horse - speaking from experience) - where's your true sense of accomplishment?
e. the idea of champing horses usually = earning money, right? so why do people pay others to do it for them? - i'm not judging either side of the game - the enterprising people, or the customers, but would love to learn more.


yes, i'm guilty of spamming comp's for various reasons in the past... but it doesn't take long to learn what a truly valuable horse is...

[BlackOak2]

Personally, I think it's much about what Ziel and HallofFame said: making the horse look good on paper.

I also think it's a bit of a holdover from other games (the one that comes to mind is Howrse, which has been talked about a lot in recent days), where having a strong competition record does lead to stronger offspring. We know that on this game, competition records don't affect breeding at all (except in describing the talents the horse already has).

Although, I must admit, having a long pedigree of titled horses does look much better then having a long pedigree of just breeders... for those of us looking to purchase or breed into strong competition lines, we do our homework.

There is one other thought that comes to mind. For designing a competition line, it does make sense to track generation after generation, to see if the line is improving where the owner wants it to improve in, or whether the line is failing. In this case the average rate of how quickly a horse earns a title such as champion would be a good base. Plus this can be tedious if a breeder has 12 foals a 'year' and years pass by multiple times in a single day.

[Bitapetrone]

I figure it's got to be a paper thing. Titling is one of those things that has had its value diluted simply because literally any horse can gain a title eventually, thus seeing titles is actually really common. It's just a matter of attrition and/or selective competing like staging competitions (entering a bunch of untrained/really horrible horses against one okay horse).

I can see where it could make horse shopping easier because it shows that the horse did in fact win enough to gain a title in whatever competition, but then one still needs to figure out how the horse gained it since the title cannot stand alone. If a horse is well-suited for a particular competition I find that they can title easily in a night or two if their shows run and, additionally, will have a nice win record and scores to showcase as well. I feel like all of these aspects together are what show value.