Race types

There are three ways to race in Post Time. Live races go off on a shared card in race meetings, 3 a day, and everyone watches together. Quick races and Story chapters are solo races against the Club’s rival stables that you can run whenever you like. On top of that sit the card’s Features and the scheduled big days: the weekday Qualifiers, the Weekend Feature, the Saturday Plate and the Season Final.

#Live races

The race card runs in race meetings: 3 a day, starting at 07:00, 13:00 and 19:00 UTC, each of 8 races 15 minutes apart (24 Live races a day). The card is published 24 hours ahead: entries open as soon as a race is on the card, so one visit a day is enough to enter any meeting before your next visit. Fewer, busier races mean you race against other stables, not just the Club. Each race is shared: every stable that enters runs in the same field, and every viewer sees the same race at the same moment. The race card shows how many stables have entered each race. Entries close 30 seconds before the off; then the Club fills the empty gates with its own horses up to the race’s field size (between 5 and 12 runners). An ordinary race that no stable entered is called off quietly; the big days always run. Club horses are seasoned, rated at their real ability and kept like a typical stable's horse of that rating, and they are pitched at the entered horses: most are about as good as the middle horse of the stables’ runners, a few up to 10 points better, always inside the race’s rating band, so to win a horse has to be better than the race’s middle.

• A Live race counts as a career start, moves the horse’s official rating and adds to its record.
• Each horse can run one Live race a day, by the race’s UTC date.
• It costs stable entries, not credits: see Credits & entries.
• Each race runs at a course that races its surface, on that course’s going and weather that day: summer cards ride fast, winter ones heavy. See Weather & going.
• When a race is one gate from full, the same race (same trip and ground) opens on a sister course in the same slot that races its surface, so nobody is turned away; once every such course has one, a second division opens.
• Live races are the only races where a career-ending injury can, rarely, be fatal. See Injuries & insurance.
• Only Live races score League points.

#Race classes on the card

Every meeting runs the same pattern of 8 races. The first is the meeting’s top race: at every other meeting the Feature, a Listed race or a Group 3 with double prize money, and a Listed race at the others. Then Maiden and Novice races, which every new horse can run, alternate with the three Handicap bands. Between them, a day’s 3 meetings run Maidens and Novices over every trip and surface. In the evening meeting a big-day race (a Qualifier, the Weekend Feature, the Saturday Plate or a Season Final) takes the place of the top race or a Handicap, and one evening Handicap a day is a claiming race, where every runner is for sale (see Claiming races). These are real meetings from the card:

Maidens are for horses that have never won. Novices are for horses with only a couple of wins. Handicaps are grouped by official rating into overlapping bands, so a horse on the edge of two bands can choose. Listed and Group races are the top level. Your horse’s rating decides which bands it may run in: see Ratings & form. Each race’s own conditions (wins, rating band) decide who may run; the entry sheet shows the reason when a horse can’t.

Some classes also need a licence. You start with the Club licence; each Story chapter you complete earns the next one.

#Scheduled cards: the big days

A season lasts 28 days. Its calendar of special races is fixed in advance, and each one runs in the evening meeting, taking the place of one of its races (on the season’s last day the evening meeting starts at 18:00 UTC so all 4 Season Finals are part of it). Find them under “Big days” on the League page.

Each week’s Feature has a distance division (sprint, mile, middle or staying), and the Season Final runs one championship for each of the 4 divisions. More on the season in The League.

A horse that ran in a Qualifier that week and missed out gets a second chance in the Saturday Plate, a Listed race over the Weekend Feature’s own trip and surface, 30 minutes after it. A horse that did qualify runs in the Feature instead. This week under Racing shows Saturday’s trip and surface from Monday with its likely going from the weather outlook (the real going once the race is on the card), your places in the Qualifiers and which of your horses are in, in the Plate or not yet. The going on the day is the weather’s: see Weather & going.

#Quick races and Story chapters

Under “Race the Club now” on the race card, Quick Pick finds your best-suited fresh horse and runs it straight away in a solo Story race against the rival stables of your current chapter. You can also pick the horse and plan yourself. The race secretary usually finds a trip and surface that suit your horse, and the field is matched to its rating.

Story mode is a campaign of 4 chapters, each with 6 fixed races against named rivals. Win 3 different races of a chapter to complete it and earn the next licence.

Quick races and Story chapters work the same way, and differ from Live races in a few important ways:

• They are free: no stable entries, no entry fee. They pay a Story reward instead of a purse.
• They don’t use up a career start, so they never bring your horse closer to its 40-start retirement, and they don’t add to its race record.
• An injury is possible, but never a fatal one.
• They still tire your horse, still move its official rating and still count towards the 3 races a day, but not towards the one Live race a day.

#Purses

A Live race’s purse is shared among the first 6 home. Only stables’ horses are paid: when a Club horse finishes in the money, nobody collects its share.

Purses are paid in Stable Credits as soon as the race is settled. Your winnings also go on your horse’s record and into your Trophy Room.

#Sponsor a race

Put your stable’s name on a Live race. Choose any ordinary race on the card up to 7 days ahead and pay for it: for that one race, Larkspur Handicap (0-55) becomes The Glenmorrow House Handicap (0-55). Your silks go on the racecard, you get a note with the result, and the race goes up on a plaque in your Trophy Room. If other courses run the same race, they keep their own names and say who sponsored it.

• One sponsor per race: the first stable to pay gets it.
• A stable can have up to 3 sponsored races coming up at a time.
• Big-day races are not for sale: the Feature Qualifiers, the Weekend Feature, the Saturday Plate and the Season Finals.
• You can sponsor a race until its entries close. The credits are spent for good, unless the race is abandoned; then you get them all back.

Start from the Sponsor a race page, linked from the race card.