Race Classes & Entry Fees
The eleven classes, what they cost to enter, what they pay — and how a horse climbs.
Racing starts in the Maiden — free to enter, where a horse reveals its hidden points — then climbs the paid ladder from Class 7 up to Group 1. A class sets three things: what it costs to enter, how much there is to win, and which horses are allowed in.
Entry fees and prize money
Every race takes twelve runners. The prize pool is the total of the entry fees less the 5% race fee, and is split 60 / 25 / 15 between the first three past the post. These figures are live from the database:
| Class | Entry | Gross | House 5% | Pool | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maiden | Free | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Class VII | $5 | $60 | $3 | $57 | $34 | $14 | $9 |
| Class VI | $10 | $120 | $6 | $114 | $68 | $29 | $17 |
| Class V | $25 | $300 | $15 | $285 | $171 | $71 | $43 |
| Class IV | $50 | $600 | $30 | $570 | $342 | $143 | $86 |
| Class III | $75 | $900 | $45 | $855 | $513 | $214 | $128 |
| Class II | $90 | $1,080 | $54 | $1,026 | $616 | $257 | $154 |
| Class I | $100 | $1,200 | $60 | $1,140 | $684 | $285 | $171 |
| G3 | $125 | $1,500 | $75 | $1,425 | $855 | $356 | $214 |
| G2 | $150 | $1,800 | $90 | $1,710 | $1,026 | $428 | $257 |
| G1 | $200 | $2,400 | $120 | $2,280 | $1,368 | $570 | $342 |
| World Championship | Free | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| ROX Monthly | Free | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Entry fees and prize money are handled in dollars, so an entry that costs $50 today costs $50 next month — the price of a class never moves with the market, and a winner's prize is worth exactly what the table says.
The return is the same at every rung: a winner returns roughly 6.8× their entry — a profit of about 5.8× once the entry they already paid is netted off — whether they are running for $5 or $200. Only three of twelve runners are paid, and the nine who finish outside the places lose their entry — that is what funds the purse.
Who fills the gates while the game is young
Every race takes twelve runners, and a race with three runners is not a race. So until there are enough players to fill a card, ROX Official horses make up the numbers — 352 of them, owned by the house.
Entries close 60 minutes before the off. That is the declaration deadline: up to that moment every gate is yours to take, and the house takes none of them. At T-60 the field is completed in one pass with however many ROX Official horses are needed, and the field is published. Twelve player entries means no house horse runs at all.
This is deliberately the opposite way round from most games. The house does not reserve gates early and give them up — it waits until the deadline, so a player arriving at any point in the entry window gets the gate they wanted. And because the field is settled a full hour before the race, there is a real card to study and to bet into, rather than twelve names appearing five minutes before the off.
As you arrive, we leave. Every gate a player takes is one the house does not. Nothing needs to be switched off: when the entries fill a card by themselves, the ROX Official horses simply stop appearing in it.
Group races close three days out instead of an hour. G3, G2 and G1 are booked thirty days ahead like the rest of the card and stay open to entries until 72 hours before the off. In the week before that, ROX Official horses join slowly — at most six, so at least half the field is always yours to take. At T-72h the house fills every remaining gate, entries close and the race is scheduled. From then on the field is final, and that is when betting on it opens: the card you bet into cannot change.
Where the prize money comes from
The pool is what players paid to enter. Nothing else goes into it. The house adds no money, and a ROX Official horse pays no entry fee — it takes a spare gate so the race can run.
That has one consequence worth stating plainly, because it decides what a win is worth:
- You are the only entrant. The pool is your own entry. Winning hands it back to you — and we take no 5% fee, because charging you for winning your own stake back would leave you down for having won. What you actually gain is the result on your horse's record and the points that come with it, and points are what carry a horse up the ladder to the graded races, where the purses are real.
- Two or more of you entered. Now you are racing each other for each other's money, whether or not ROX Official horses fill the rest of the field. That is a real market, and the 5% applies as the table above says. Two $25 entries make a $50 pool, $47.50 of it payable.
So a ROX Official horse in the field never costs you anything, and never wins anything from you: it has no owner to be paid, so its share rolls down to the next finisher who has one.
Roll-down. A share of the purse that cannot be paid rolls down the finishing order — second is paid as the winner, third as second, fourth takes third, and it keeps rolling further down the field if it has to. The pool is always paid out in full.
A share cannot be paid when the horse that earned it has no owner to receive it. Today that means the ROX Official horses that fill fields while the game is young: they run, they can win, and their share passes to the next finisher who has an owner.
A Hyperion with an owner collects its prize like any other horse. Blood does not change who gets paid; roll-down is only ever about a place with nobody behind it to receive the money.
How entering a race works
A race opens. Every race is announced with its class, distance, racetrack and entry fee before anyone can enter, so nothing about the cost or the conditions changes once entries are being taken.
You enter a horse. You pick one of your horses and a starting gate. Your horse must be eligible for the class — see the points rules below. The entry fee is taken at the moment you enter, and the horse is committed to that gate.
One horse per stable, per race. You may run as many of your horses as you like across different races on the card, but only one of them in any single race. A race is between twelve stables, not twelve horses from one.
The field fills. A race takes twelve runners. Entries stay open until the deadline, and the number of places left is shown as the field fills.
Entries close. At the deadline the field is locked. If fewer than twelve owners have entered, the remaining gates are completed automatically so the race still runs — a short field never cancels a race, and the prize pool is paid in full regardless.
The race is run. The result is decided from a random seed drawn after entries have closed, applied to the horses in the field. Because the seed is drawn last, no one — including us — can know or influence the result while entries are still open.
Prize money is paid. The 5% race tax is taken from the total entry fees; the prize pool is what remains. That pool is then split 60 / 25 / 15 between first, second and third, and paid in the same dollars the entries were taken in.
Entry fees are only ever taken when a horse is entered, and nothing is held over between races.
Where the money goes when a house horse places. ROX Official horses have no owner to pay, so their share rolls down to the next finisher who does. Until 25 August 2026 it did not — the share was simply dropped, and with almost every field containing house runners, most of the pool was reaching nobody. It is paid out in full now.
If a field is so house-heavy that fewer than three runners can be paid, the shares that do find a home are scaled up to the whole pool — one payable finisher takes all of it. And in the extreme case where no runner in the field can be paid, the race pays no purse and the entry fees are returned instead.
Which horses may enter
Eligibility is decided by a horse's Points — with one royal exception at the very top: G1 and G2 are Hyperion-only grades. The two highest stages belong to the aristocracy, and they are where the biggest betting pools in the game run — championship-grade races where high rollers play in the millions.
And the exception runs both ways: a Hyperion races Group — and Class I. It cannot drop into Class VII to Class II at any rating, and the Maiden is closed to it. A Hyperion races G3 from the day it is minted, climbs to G2 at 340 and G1 at 500, and while its points sit in Class I's band (185 – 249) it may also run Class I. The gate says so in those words: Kepler horses race in Group races and Class I only. So the points table below tells a Hyperion owner where the OTHER bloodlines stand; their own horse is on the Group ladder from the start.
New Class I, G2 and G1 races are put on the calendar once at least twelve horses have the points to run them, so the top classes are booked for fields that can fill them.
For every other bloodline, the ladder runs to G3 — elite company by any measure — and beyond it waits the one door blood cannot close: the World Championship is open to ANY horse with fifty wins in paid races. That is where a $25 Cosmo can still stand in a field of Hyperions, once it has earned the right the hard way.
Where the championship runs — Kepler-442b. The Group grades (G3, G2 and G1) are held on Kepler-442b, a dedicated championship planet far out on the edge of the galaxy: a warm super-Earth whose long, punishing courses run 2,000–2,600 m. No horse begins its career there. You earn your way to Kepler — only the top-ranked horses, by Points, ever race under its golden light, which is exactly why its races carry the deepest betting pools in the game.
Points run on the public 0–500+ scale. Bands widen going up, because points thin out toward the top and an elite tier should be selective — and the ceiling/floor entry rules below are what let a horse stretch beyond its band.
| Class | Points to enter |
|---|---|
| Class VII | 0 – 9 |
| Class VI | 10 – 24 |
| Class V | 25 – 49 |
| Class IV | 50 – 84 |
| Class III | 85 – 129 |
| Class II | 130 – 184 |
| Class I | 185 – 249 |
| G3 | 250 – 339 |
| G2 | 340 – 499 |
| G1 | 500 + |
Starting points
| Bloodline | Starting points | Typically enters |
|---|---|---|
| Hyperion | 185 – 280 | G3 — and Class I while its points are 185 – 249 |
| Starfire | 90 – 160 | Class III – II |
| Neutron | 30 – 70 | Class V – IV |
| Cosmo | 0 – 20 | Class VII – VI |
The two rules
- Ceiling — a horse may enter races in its own band, and one class above it as a stretch run.
- Floor — a horse may not enter more than one class below its band. Without this, a high-rated horse would farm the cheap classes and drive new players out of them.
How points move
Every race moves points on a zero-sum points table — what the front of the field gains, the back of the field loses, so points can never inflate across the game:
| Place | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5–8th | 9th | 10th | 11th | 12th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base points | +4 | +3 | +2 | +1 | 0 | −1 | −2 | −3 | −4 |
That is a full twelve-horse field. A shorter field mirrors the same table against itself: last gives up whatever first gains, second-last whatever second gains, and anyone in the middle moves nothing. So a six-runner race pays +4 +3 +1 −1 −3 −4, and every field size still sums to zero.
This changed on 18 August 2026. The table above was applied as written whatever the field size, and the negatives only start at 9th — so a race with fewer than nine runners handed out points nobody paid for, and the "can never inflate" above was not true of them. It is now.
Base points are then multiplied by the class weight — beating a better field teaches the points more:
| Class | VII | VI | V | IV | III | II | I | G3 | G2 | G1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weight | ×1 | ×1.5 | ×2 | ×3 | ×4 | ×5 | ×6 | ×8 | ×10 | ×12 |
So a win is worth +4 in Class VII and +32 in G3 — the base points table times the weight of the class it was won in.
The climb — easy in the dust, brutal at the top
In the lower classes, promotion comes fast: two or three wins clears each band, and a new owner tastes their first promotion in the first week. From Class I upward, points alone stops being enough — a horse must also win repeatedly at that level before the door opens:
| Rung | To clear it |
|---|---|
| Class VII | ~3 wins (points) |
| Class VI | ~2 wins (points) |
| Class V | ~2–3 wins (points) |
| Class IV | ~2 wins (points) |
| Class III | ~2 wins (points) |
| Class II | ~2 wins (points) |
| Class I | by points |
| G3 | by points; ceiling for non-Hyperions |
| G2 | by points; Hyperions only |
Promotion is decided by points and bloodline. The bands above already stop a horse entering a class it has not earned, so nothing else stands between a horse and the next grade.
Add it up, for a horse that wins every start:
- A Hyperion reaches a G1 field in about 6 wins from the top of its starting band, 10 from the bottom of it. It begins at 185–280, most of the way up the ladder already.
- Every other bloodline tops out at G3, which takes about 21 wins from a standing start at zero. No amount of winning admits them to G1 or G2 — those are Hyperion-only — but a horse that outgrows G3 keeps racing in it rather than running out of ladder.
- The World Championship is the one door open to everyone, at 50 wins in paid races.
A very good horse rather than a perfect one gets there in 100+ races over months of campaigning. Most never do — and that is exactly why the ones who arrive are worth fortunes.
G1 and G2 are Hyperion-only. However high a Cosmo, Neutron or Starfire climbs, its road tops out at G3 — and at the World Championship, the one door blood cannot close.
Race distances
Races are run over nine distances, from 1,000 m sprints to 2,600 m stayers' trips: 1000 · 1200 · 1400 · 1600 · 1800 · 2000 · 2200 · 2400 · 2600 m. Every race card states its distance before entries open, and winning times are calibrated to real thoroughbred racing — a 2,200 m race is won in roughly 2 minutes 10 seconds at 60–66 km/h. The distance belongs to the race, not the venue: any of the 220 racetracks can host any trip, so a sprint under Mercury's sun and a marathon in Neptune's ice light are both a card away.
The World Championship
Above G1 sits a ring that is never open — it is earned. Fifty wins in paid races are the only way in — Maidens are free and run twice a day, so they do not count toward it, and there is no entry fee at all: the championship is the one race money cannot buy a place in. Betting on championship days runs as pari-mutuel pools with no upper limit. This is where the bought-in aristocracy and the horses that climbed from five-dollar dust finally meet — and both of them paid in the same coin, a hundred races.
The ROX Monthly
Once a month, on the 1st, the best horses of the month race four championship races on LHS 1140b, a planet used for nothing else. It is free to enter, and no owner enters it: the horses earn their gates.
- Qualifying closes three days before the 1st. Every horse is ranked on its results since the last cut-off — wins, then places, then points gained, whatever its class — and 48 are entered automatically.
- Player horses come first. Every qualifying player horse gets a gate before any ROX Official horse; house horses fill the places that are left.
- The Crown (18:00 UTC, The Eyewall, 2,600 m) takes the twelve best-ranked of the 48. The other 36 are split by rating into Elite (12:00, Terminator Ring, 2,400 m), Contenders (06:00, Cetus Deep, 2,200 m) and Rising (00:00, Coldshelf, 2,000 m). A horse runs one race only.
- Every race is open to betting, and half of ROX's 12% betting cut from each race is its prize pot, paid 60 / 25 / 15 to the owners of 1st, 2nd and 3rd.
- A prize won by a ROX Official horse rolls into next month's Crown.
- While betting runs on play money, the prizes are play money too; the same rules pay USD once real-money betting opens.
The live field, the pots and the Road to the Crown leaderboard are on the tournaments page.
Why the top classes are not the whole story
Prize money alone never justifies the most expensive horses. A Cosmo bought near the bottom of the market pays for itself in two wins at Class VII; a Hyperion would need dozens of G1 victories to cover its price.
The return on a top horse is breeding. Owners set their own stud fees, and a horse's points and race record are what a stud fee is argued from. Racing is how a horse proves what it is worth; the stud farm is where that value is collected. This is how thoroughbred racing has always worked, and it is why a G1 win matters far more than the cheque attached to it.