Year-End

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2010 Auction

Chapter 8 - Year-End

As the racing season winds down, other PF activities begin gearing up. After racing ends, stables prepare for expansion, breeding, and the auction. This is the time when all players must evaluate their stable and decide what they wish to do with it the following season. It is at this time that the sales system is shut down for the season, and all private sales stop until they are re-opened by the Steward.

Year-End Reports

To help in that is the Year-End Report. This report is mandatory, and every stable must file one or face deletion from the game. Announcements will be made on the Forum when the reports will be processed and when the deadline is for filing one.

Beginning in the 2011 racing season, the Year End Report will be standardized and placed on a spreadsheet that players will be able to download, fill out, and mail back to the steward for processing.

If you do not have Microsoft Excel, email the steward and she will tell you how to send in your report.

The report contains information about your stable and what you want to do with it for the following season. Whether or not you will expand your stable to the next size, whether you plan to retire any of your horses for breeding in the current season, whether you will be sending any of your horses to the auction, and information on pricing for them. The Year End Report will not contain any information on your pairings for breeding, that is done later in the off-season.

Stable Expansion

Over the course of many seasons, stables grow and expand. The advantages to expansion are more stalls, which means more horses that can earn more money. Stables may only expand once each season, during the off-season. Each stable has a Size, and a number of stalls associated with that size. A stable must stay at each size for one season before expanding to the next. The Steward will set a cutoff date where new stables joining after that date will be ineligible for expansion until the following season.

Each Size costs a certain percentage of a stable’s total bank account balance as shown on the following table:

Size	Price	Total
1	$0	5
2	20%	10
3	25%	20
4	30%	30
5	35%	40
5+	10%/ea	1

Stables already at Size 5 (the maximum size) may not expand to another size, but may purchase extra stalls. Each one costs 10% of the stable’s total bank account balance. You may also buy extra stalls at any time by sending in a donation. See Contributions in Chapter 10.

Stables at Size 2 may NOT expand to Size 3 unless a donation has been made. See Contributions in Chapter 10.

Auction

After Year End Reports are filed, and stable expansions processed, the year end Auction is the next big event. All horses that were sent to the auction by their owners will be compiled, and a list of all the horses that will be up for sale will be placed on the web site usually about a week before the auction itself. The auction is always run on a weekend, begins on Friday at midnight, and closes on Saturday and Sunday at 8pm ET. Usually on Saturday the auctions on Racers close, and on Sunday all other horses (breeders and yearlings) close.

The auction is run like an Ebay auction. Each horse begins with a minimum bid of $10,000, and its owner may have a reserve set. Horses that have a reserve price set have a red ‘R’ next to their name, and when the reserve is met, the ‘R’ goes away.

Also like Ebay, there is a proxy bidding system in place. This does two things: It makes it unnecessary for players to have to stay up for the end of the auction (the auction sometimes ends in the middle of the night for players in some countries), and it helps reduce the load on the server from too many people logging on at once to place bids at the last minute. You simply log in, place the highest bid you are willing to on a horse, and forget it. The system will up your bid for you automatically to match any other bids made, up to your high bid.

It is important during the auction to not place too many bids on too many horses. You may not buy more horses than you have open stalls for in your stable, and you may not spend more money than you have in your bank account. Remember that you will need to save some money for breeding fees, maintenance fees, and entry fees in the season to come. If you accidentally win too many horses, you will either have to buy new stalls to house them in or you will lose the extra horses at random from those you won. So be careful!

Also, be careful when placing your bids. Try not to accidentally type in extra digits when bidding, and check your bid before confirming it. The only way to fix these mistakes is by emailing the Steward, who must fix it manually, so please try not to make them.

The software currently used to run the auction is old and does have a few bugs. One of these bugs is that when the auction on a particular category of horse is supposed to end, not all the horses in that category always get marked as ended. If the deadline for bidding is past, but the auction hasn’t ended on the system, do NOT continue to bid. Any bids placed after the deadline will be deleted, regardless of whether the horse showed up as still open or not. So be aware of the time when you bid. This is another reason proxy bidding is preferred rather than waiting until the last moment to bid.

Once the auction is over, the Steward will compile the winning bids and owners and will post a list of results on the Forum. Until this list is posted, any and all auction results are unofficial. After the list is posted, any money for horses you sold or bought will be recorded in your account, and the horses moved to the stables of their new owners.

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