These strategies are offered by various players and are intended to give newer players some ideas on getting started.  Your mileage may vary.  Contributing players receive game $.

Faction Strategy Suggestions from Juggalo

The council should try to earn money for the faction without causing the members to go broke in the process. Balance of the cost settings is important to ensure that everyone, including the faction itself, benefits from it. Not just the council members. Keep in mind the faction pays for a lot of the costs for the new players. Therefore it needs , at least, to remain stable in terms of amount of cash on hand and ,at best, increase in amount of cash on hand each cycle. Too high of a stipend with too low of a percentage of dues and interest is what causes them to dip.

Most of the members of Red faction make their money from betting rather than on their horses' winnings. Therefore raising the food, training and stable costs(about 95-100 seems to work ok on food/trainer and 800-900 stable) doesn’t really hurt them. Instead the players with several horses soak up most of that damage and currently that is really only three players, the council, and they will be refunded at the end of the cycle if the cost settings are properly balanced.

The interest should be high (15-20%)for a number of reasons 1) to encourage players to pay off the loans 2) adds more funds to the factions account 3) demands players to bet on the races in order to earn money to keep them from taking on additional loans, which will most likely result in going bankrupt and not paying back the loans at all. Most of the monies lost by the faction are due to unpaid loans by bankrupt players.

Dues should be reasonable since the interest is so high. A really high dues setting can break players, even the ones that place good bets because of the fact that the more you make the more a high dues setting takes. Especially if the player only has a few horses as this also dictates the entry fees. However, setting the dues too low takes away from the faction. 10-12% should keep everyone in the game. It could be a little more or less depending on the amount of money the faction has.

Rebate should be high enough to encourage trading within the faction but not too high less the faction take a beating for it. Currently there is not a lot of horses for sale in the red faction and trading within seems to be pretty scarce. Therefore the rebate could benefit the faction by lowering the setting to about 5% If the number of available Red Faction horses increases, then the rebate should also to encourage the members to trade among themselves.

Commission works almost the same way but stud fees are included. If we set the commission too low the other members won’t mind looking to the other factions for their purchases/stud selections. A higher commission will encourage trading/breeding within the faction. Not to mention produce funds for the faction.

That brings me to stipend. If the other settings are balanced enough to earn money each turn, then a setting of 22-26% should refund the council members dues paid for the cycle. Basically we get to skate on the costs. But we should not try to increase our personal money levels with the stipend. Our horses and our betting should be what makes us rich ;) The other members should, with smart betting and purchases, be able to afford to stay in the faction and increase their position within it.

New Player strategies from Heather

Hi, I'm Heather, & I just started playing a few turns ago, so don't take my comments too seriously cause I'm not exactly sure about everything myself, but I have been fairly successful in the game so far(although I don't have any horses yet so the prestige isn't exactly up there). Anyways, you start with a 10 K loan from your faction. Once you join then an Email report is sent to you every other day (the same days as the HOF pages are updated, so look there for the last update) when you get the update. It probably won't say much if you don't do anything, but it WILL tell you your faction & your current amount of money and some stuff about promotions, which you will understand well enough for now.

The first thing you want to do is to make money to pay off the loan. 10K is not enough to buy & maintain a horse, so you need to increase your money by betting. It's fairly simple as far as placing the bet, but picking the horses gets a little trickier. The main things to look at are the relative predicted value to the other horses in the race, stress level, and the past record. Also the owner is a minor factor in that the bank's horses are always at a level of 100   trainer/food

If you bet on the races where there are high claiming prices, the payoffs will be better since owners are forced to bet more on their own horses. Pick out the higher estimated values in the race and check that their stress level isn't too high, because then they are more likely to be injured and not place in the race. You shouldn't worry too much about your first bets, since it's easy to restart back to the original 10K if you loose money

 The faction matches your winnings when you are a new player, so take the opportunity to make some money. I've gotten to about 70K now, and am beginning to look for a horse or two to buy

Betting Strategies:

Study the race form. Look at the horse's value, record, stress and racepoints and compare them. Compare the record to the number of races ran. If it is a tight field compare the stress levels. In theory a horse with lower stress is less likely to stumble or injure. But it is not uncommon for a horse to stumble and still show, or even win.

Horse Buying Strategies

Keep betting and pay off the loan. Dont buy a horse until you have about $50-60k then, make sure you buy a GOOD horse. One that either has a winning record or a high valued youngster. The horse viewer shows the actual $ values and the exact scores for the horses genes. Dont be afraid to spend a big chunk of cash if you know the horse will earn it back quickly. If you mess around and buy a $4-5,000 horse that couldn't pass a pack mule with your $10k, the costs of keeping such a nag will break you fast. And the only buyer you're likely to find will be the bank when you are forced to sell it to them.

Buy your horse and raise the food and training up to a level that is competitive with the other stables. If your horse is not winning you money try putting a claim price on it that will place it in a race with horses you can beat. If it doesn't earn you money, dump it. Count your losses and try another horse. Can’t sell? Put a claim of $1 on the horse and the bank will buy it for a fraction of the actual value.

Intermediate Strategies

Dont quit betting. Keep betting on the horses that win you $. Just because your new horse wins you $37,000 a day is no reason not to make $10,000 at the betting window. And if you finish in the top 3 a lot then don’t be afraid to risk a good stack of bills on your own horse.

Take your winnings and buy more GOOD horses. Study the viewer or compare the race values to find a good one. Keep buying and betting and you'll be doing great. If you need more help post your questions on the bulletin board, there are a lot of helpful veterans here happy to answer them for you. Hope this helps Good Luck!