Claim For Fame

If you've had no luck buying horses in the sales ring, you may want to try your luck buying one via a claimer.

Claiming a horse is a great way to purchase if you are new to Raceclubs. Not only can you see the ability of a horse before you buy it, but when the horse becomes yours you also get it's full past training history.

When you're new to the game this can be very valuable information as you can use it as a guide when assessing the abilities of your other horses.

You'' also find it most cost effective as you'll usually find the horse has already got a set of blinkers, has been gelded (if it's a boy) and probably still has some days credit left in it's Alumites.

You may also find the supplementary fee has also been paid, so that the horse is eligible to run in championship races.

The downside is, if the horse has been entered for a claimer, unless the previous owner has made a big mistake, it's never going to be a champion. But some decent horses do appear in claimers, even the $15 ones.

To buy a horse via a claimer, select "Claims" from the "Buy a Horse" option on the left-hand menu.

Check the Claim box corresponding to the horse you wish to purchase.

It's a good idea to claim a horse that's shown good previous form. You'll see here Sunny Side Up had won 8 of her previous regular races and 7 out of 8 of her claiming races.

You'll also see 6 other owners have put in a claim for her. This means we may struggle to get her, as the successful claiming owner is chosen at random from those who put in a claim. If we're successful, we should have no problem selling her again via a similar claimer at a later date and hopefully we'll win some races with her in the mean time.

You pay for the horse in the same way you would if buying via the sales ring. The credits are deducted from your account. If your claim is unsuccessful the credits are added back to your account after the race.

If we look at the result for the race you'll see our claim was successful and we became the new owner of Sunny Side Up. Don't worry if you're not successful, claiming races are run every Tuesday and Friday so it won't be long before you get other opportunities to pick up a decent horse.

The first race we entered Sunny Side Up in, was a 4-7 year old special allowance fillies and colts group 2 race.

	Sunny Side Up, brought via a claimer, stretches the field as they pass the 600m marker. The rest of the runners close in on the line, but she just holds on for victory. The jockey celebrates victory, in the Racing-Index colours, onboard Sunny Side Up.

On the same day we claimed Sunny Side Up we also brought Loveable Bunny in another $15 claimer.

As a 2 year old Loveable Bunny finished 3rd in the Juvenile Challenge Stakes race and went on to finish 2nd in the Derby as a 3 year old. Now at the age of 7 and only had 2 weeks until retirement.

Our reason for claiming him was to gain access to his past time trial history, so we could let you know how good a horse needs to be to become a champion.

We decided to let him have one last race before he retired. We entered him in a group 2 event, which was well below what he's used to running in, but it would be nice for him to end his career with a victory and allow us to get back the claim fee.

The old boy didn't let us down. Despite giving weight to all his opponents, he swooped late for victory. We made enough profit to buy another claimer, plus notched up another winner for the stable.

Loveable Bunny swoops late for victory.

Loveable Bunny celebrates in his last race before retirement.

Visit the Raceclubs web site and claim your way to the winners enclosure.

For more information on virtual horse racing see

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