A Quick Start First Time Buyers Guide to Photo Finish Live
It’s great to see so many new names in the Photo Finish Live (“PFL”) Discord — and now is the right time to share my playbook on how to make your first purchase count, and how I would approach it being a new joiner in PFL.
Credentials and Bag Disclosure
Why should you listen to me, and what conscious or unconscious biases might I have?
I am Peeb, co-owner and manager of the YSM Racing Club. You may remember me from such films as “Top 10 performing stables in terms of gross winnings and ROI in all 3 betas” and “Vainshytr the Great, we hardly knew ye”.
I joined PFL in partnership with a friend, having fled Zed Run in January 2022, and we syndicated our stable in the second half of 2022; through PFP breeding and Gen 0 ticket trading, I doubt there have been many traders who have dodged, ducked, dipped, dived and dodged as I have during that time.
We have fashioned a premium stable in the Left Dirt Soft niche. We own 5 colts and 8 filles, mostly LDS, a little bit of LDF, all S, S- or A+ horses. 5 of them have 1/1 colt parentage, the rest are high grade, high boost, primo horses.
This article presumes an awful lot of assumed knowledge. At the end of the article, I have included some useful foundational articles from other sources that might fill any knowledge gaps that might exist.
Jargon Busting
Just to help you understand some of the key lingo;
Grade — each Generation Zero horse has a baseline performance which is denoted by it’s Grade. The grades range from B to A to S, with plus and minus marks in between. Future generations will be able to grow both stronger and weaker, based on breeding.
Future horses can breed higher than S+, up to SSS. Horses can be bred down to grade C and below.
Boosts — the number of cumulative stat points on any given ticket, derived from PFP breeding.
Archetype — each horse has one preference in 3 different categories;
- Direction (Left/Right)
- Surface (Dirt / Turf)
- Condition (Firm / Soft)
There are therefore 4 types of race — Left Dirt, Left Turf, Right Dirt, and Right Turf. Within each of these 4 types of race, there are Soft condition and Firm condition preference horses, making 8 archetypes in total, commonly referred to by their acronym;
- RDF; LDF; RTF; LTF; RDS; LDS; RTS; LTS
1/1 sires / colts — refers to the famous 5 PFP colts who have made the biggest and best performing Gen 0s in the game.
Where Do I Start?
You’ve dipped your toe in this or a previous Beta, or maybe you’ve just watched one of the 3 betas from the sidelines, and you’re ready to take the plunge. What next?
1. Establish your budget
If you’re anything like the OG PFL community — whatever your budget is, you are going to get hooked and smash it. So set a budget in mind which you can afford to top up — there will be opportunities you can’t pass up, make sure you can strike on them.
Some indicative costings to help you, at the time of writing. Only a microcosm of the horses available, but this gives you a rough top and bottom range;
These are indicative prices. Some of the best pieces will be unattainable, this is a diamond hand community. For any given piece you are interested in — check the price with a couple of OGs. We still do it before every purchase with our go-to guys — plenty of them around in this community, ask around find yours who you trust.
2. What Makes A Good Ticket?
A real Birdseye view on this one, there are some really useful articles referenced below that go into more depth;
Grade is generally accepted as the most important feature of a Gen 0 which dictates a horses strength. Take into account boosts (the more the better, the more full bars 3 out of 3, the better) and preferences (the closer to 9/9, the better, in theory).
An A+ 10 boost horse will in theory compete with an A 20 boost horse on the track. It is expected that the A 20 boost horse will be a better breeder. Expect the A 20 boost to cost more. Understanding these various price dynamics is imperative to understanding the value of any given ticket. There may be some variations to this, if the horse has a high PFP match count. Be sure to fully read up on the official Third Time series of blogs below, which are mandatory bedtime reading.
Want the best available ticket in PFL? Look for S horses over 19 boost, or very high boost (21+), high match S- horses.
Everything else is a case of what fits into budget.
3. Choose Your Archetype
This is a whole blog in itself — and in fact I have written one, after collating the views of many prominent community members —the blog is coming very, very soon. There are tens of reasons for and against each archetype, and the blog will cover exactly this. Horse distribution within an archetype are key factors in determining whether an archetype is a good fit — see below for a little more on this.
There are other reasons outside of gameplay why you may want to enter a certain archetype. A good recent example — the recent partnership with Kentucky Derby may push people towards Left Dirt horses, given this is how the Virtual Kentucky Derby will be run, which is just one reason why you may want to set up to be a Left Dirt stable.
A future Royal Ascot partnership (who knows?!) might see you delve into Right Turf. Also — RT just looks aesthetically better, maybe that’s your thing.
You can either choose a niche and build there, build across several, or maybe make no choice on archetype; maybe you decide that archetype isn’t important, and instead you go with best available value.
Here is an overview of the horse distribution split by grade and archetype;
Weigh up your aims with buying a horse with the archetype you are operating in.
Looking to just buy a stud to race, then sell covers? Make sure that your filly market is big enough to serve, and that your competition in that archetype isn’t going to blow you out of the water by hogging all of the covers themselves. Each stud can breed 35 times every breeding cycle — satisfy yourself that the colt is good enough to get appropriate market share.
Worried about races filling in the early days? Look out for the low populated archetypes — but maybe you want to buy RDS (a very low population archetype) to try and take on RDF (a very competitive and high population archetype) when the weather forecast says good weather, but ends up as soft or sloppy? A legit play.
Point is, you need to think where you want to be. Just make sure you know that archetype heavily influences price, and not all Gen 0s are created equal.
4. Fitting A Stable In Your Budget — Fillies or Colts?
How you set up should be informed and determined by your budget. Playing with low double digits SOL? Pick up a floor colt or two, prepare for madness of claimers, try and trade, beg and barter your way up the foodchain. Want to get your kicks from racing, don’t care at all breeding? Colts are a lower entry point than fillies — do your sums and see if you think you can get ROI from race profits alone during the horses lifespan.
Got more funds to play with, and feel like setting up for the long haul? My first piece of advice in devising your strategy is; get as many fillies as you can. Fillies can race just as well as colts (right now), and crucially, mares keep all of the foals after breeding.
A natural first move for new joiners is to want to buy a breeding pair. It does add certainty and the ability to breed in house; my personal view is that using valuable liquidity on a non-premium breeding colt isn’t the smartest move right now, unless there is also an external market for that colt to sell covers and generate stud fees. Stick to the fillies, protect the ability to build your stable and build your bloodlines.
For those who bred through PFP breeding, we all saw what happened. Fillies held their value, colts were much riskier, with volatile desirability in terms of stud covers, especially for any studs that were not top echelon — it stands to reason that Gen 0 may follow a similar pattern. The smarter money is spent on fillies.
If I was joining now; subject to affordability, I personally be looking to buy 4 fillies — from a racing perspective, 4 is a nice number to not be waiting too long for that next race. Breeding-wise, that also gives you a chance of getting a strong breeder, and offsets the chance of a dud. It also gives the ability to breed offspring through multiple generations and avoiding all inbreeding penalties.
Make sure you keep enough money aside for racing and stud covers.
Four fillies for me also becomes the tipping point for when you may want to consider buying an in-house stud. Some may be attracted to buying colts for the regular churn of cover fees — I would spend a lot of time researching before any colt purchase. Filly purchases are often salvageable, even overpaying. Colts, maybe less so.
5. Things To Look Out For In A Horses PFP Lineage
Here’s some handy tips to look out for when reviewing a Gen 0s PFP parents. You will want to avoid inbreeding at all costs, and scarcity or abundance can drastically affect your strategy and price.
There were 5 x 1 of 1 PFP colts, who were bred fairly abundantly. These have produced the best performing racing horses in all betas — high boost S horses obviously being the best performers. It should be easy enough to avoid inbreeding in most archetypes, but this is the biggest challenge with buying at 1/1 offspring.
If you are buying a primo 1/1 — know your competition. Know who the comparable horses are in the archetype, and try and understand whether you will have an advantage on and off the track.
Some Gen 0s have colts that were bred with huge volume — 9930 is a good example, 111 Gen 0s have this colt as their PFP sire. Keep an eye on this, it definitely impacts price and limits future breeding options.
Inbreeding impact ends once you remove Great Grandparents from lineage. It is therefore pretty easy to avoid inbreeding. Unique or low sibling count tickets aren’t overly important in my opinion.
6. Don’t Be Scared To Sit It Out And Wait For Gen 1
If you aren’t happy with what your budget can buy you in Gen 0 — do not be afraid to wait right there with your swag bag, ready to pounce on the first batch of Gen 1s. The first foals will be available to buy around 2 months after Go Live, and ready to race another 2 months later. OK, so there is a bit of a wait to get on the track, but it very possible that you will be able to buy a higher class of horse.
It’s a risky approach for sure; Gen 0 breeding outcomes were much more reliable in both betas, each generation seemed to get each more and more variable. Plus, the game could literally skyrocket, and prices go stratospheric. It’s still worth considering.
7. Buyer Beware
NFA. DYOR. Don’t take this opinion piece as gospel. Talk to others, form your own opinions.
You are early. But some in the PFL Community are a little bruised right now, because we’re a little way off all time highs in terms of valuations. Don’t get caught by wolves in sheeps’ clothing trying to sell you their dogshit and citing their cost base — the crypto market was in a different spot back then — PFL appeared immune for a long time, but there has definitely been a bit of contagion.
Always sense check your first buys. I’ll happily accept DMs and offer an opinion. There are plenty of trusted members of the community who will give you impartial, fair and realistic advice, ask in the relevant channels and you will be answered. Get minimum 3 opinions and discard any outliers.
Be careful on relying on horses performance, in racing and in breeding, in any Beta, including V3. No guarantees of future performance.
Some people will cite some fairly tenuous reasons as to why you should buy their horses. Exercise caution. Funny examples include the offspring ratio of number # fillies versus # colts borne unto a filly in Beta — there is no evidence or insight from the team that this is genetic. Sibling count is another metric which attracts limited additional value, in my opinion.
Trust some of the good guy OGs to help you with your first purchases — most people want to see newbies succeed with their first buy, because they will stick around and buy more. Bad first buys can turn someone off for good, and nobody wants that.
PFL is nuanced and complicated. If you want to ape in but want to avoid a potential stampede you think might be on the horizon (maybe after the Kentucky Derby partnership announcement, for example), get someone you trust to help you identify the best available horse for your budget. Then get someone else to sense check it before purchasing. Even the most experienced PFL stalwart can be out of touch with the market at any one time.
You can then buy, spend time really learning the ins and outs of the game, comfortable in the knowledge that you have a strong Gen 0 or two safely in your wallet.
The best available horse might not be on the market at any one time. Check in regularly with the Trading Selling section of Discord.
8. Other Resources
That’s it. A nutshell overview, hopefully useful.
Here’s some further resources that will add context and depth to this article. You can get lost for days in this project, and it’s a great use of your time quite frankly.
Feel free to give me a shout on Discord. Peeb — YSM Racing.
GETTING STARTED:
HOW TO BUY A HORSE (GEN 0):
INVESTMENT THESIS & $CROWN:
BREEDING:
OFFICIAL PFL VITAL BLOGS
PART 1: https://thirdtimegames.com/pfl-inside-track-genes-matches/
PART 2: https://thirdtimegames.com/pfl-inside-track-part-2-gen-0-traits/