That's my assumption. Though, experience might also play a part in tiebreakers.

Thankyou for creating this!

So finally after years of playing this game, your showing guide clicked (or so I hope). I started a side account (this account) to play around with manually entering shows with a smaller number of horses, and I am glad I did. I am running into the issue of being organized...

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I will enter a horse that has had 3 to 4 weeks to train up and they will place "not in the money". Now I know that just means they need another week, and then try again. But I am having a hard time separating those horses from ones that just recently levelled up

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Am I missing something in the guide that explains my problem, or is it an organization thing? I would imagine with any more than 50 horses it would become tricky to remember who just needed to wait a week, and who just levelled up and needed 3 or 4 weeks

If I'm understanding your question correctly, the horses who recently leveled up will usually have a good placing, i.e 2nd or whatever. The level next to their placing also won't match the level in the dropdown menu. Meanwhile, the horses who simply aren't ready to show will place low, 9th or worse. That's really the best, at a glance, way of determining who's where in the showing cycle.