Put another brick on the Photo Finish™ wall, as we’ve officially hit the midway point of Season 9.
From double-the-major Race fun to record sales, product updates, and an influx of new players, the past seven days have only strengthened the foundation as we inch toward the Virtual Kentucky Derby and the end of 2023.
A lot has been going on. A lot is coming up. Let’s talk about it all in this week’s Crown Weekly.
$5,000 Third Time Championship
A Third Time Championship on a Thursday? Don’t mind if we do.
For the first time, there were not one but two $5,000 Major Series races happening in the same week, the first being the Third Time Championship on Thursday night.
Fittingly, the seemingly unstoppable Photo Finish™ poster player, SOLmate Stables’ took down the first-place purse prize with its horse, Dr. Ethel, followed by two horses from Soma, Optimus, and Sunrise.
Thanks to everyone who showed up for the first-ever Third Time Thursday Championship!
$50,000 Record Horse Sale
With so many things going on, it seems like an eternity ago, but the record-breaking $50,000 purchase of a horse named ‘Ovation’ happened just this past week, and we chatted with both sides of the transaction to hear more about the deal.
As it turns out, breeding a PFL horse will, hopefully, directly impact real-life breeding – what a time!
Read the full story about the $50,000 sale here.
Meet Third Time Games’ Ryan Duguid
That man is Third Time Games Business Development Lead Ryan Duguid, who has been a busy man. From Hong Kong to Dubai, he’s been boots on the ground, working the stage wherever industry leaders have congregated to share ideas and open their eyes and ears to what’s next.
Spoiler Alert: Photo Finish™ is what’s next.
We caught up with Duguid between flights and hotel rooms to learn more about his travels and what the streets say about Photo Finish™.
Read it here, in the community blog.
Meet the Teams
Label them whatever you like, but it’s clear there has been a shift in dynamics, with multiple groups coordinating efforts to combine resources to form what amounts to a Photo Finish™ super team.
We noticed it happening, so we talked to each team about what they have cooking and how others can be involved.
Read about the new PFL teams on the block in the community blog.
It was another week chock full of content from our incredible community.
ICYMI, here are some PFL content highlights from this past week:
11/27: PFL Mondays with Peeb and Jim
11/27: Barn Blessings Charity Auction #2
11/28: Doughboy After Dark
11/29: MJ Gaming ‘Across the Board’
11/30: Mo Knows Third Time Carnival replay
12/1: AbSOLute Horsepower
12/1: Mo Knowz After Dark
12/2: Habor Festival w/Mo and Fib
ICYMI Educational Content:
Pasteur Bedtime: Fanta of the Stable
NFT Leano: Multiple streams.
Product Updates
- Ability to ‘scratch’ or remove a horse after he’s been entered into a race
- fixed issue where a benchmark race could error out and vomit all over our server and cause the race not to finalize
- Updated the importing of ALL articles from the Third Time website
- Improvements and hopeful squashing of the ‘slingshot’ effect in the final 2 furlongs – Fix the issue where only breeds with a valid Discord user would make their way to the #breed-bot channel. Now, all breeding should make it
- More fixes and improvements to the @photofinishbot auto-poster to not die on posting so often and vomit errors into our servers
- Fix the issue with 100m/200m distance markers sometimes appearing at the wrong time/location
- Fix for breeding timeline view
- Change the color of the ‘Retired’ badge to Gray
- Move the ‘make pick’ checkbox to the correct location (right aligned)
- Various UI/UX improvements
⛵️ 21-1 🏇🏽 WINS the $5,000 Harbor Classic
🏆 Snake Venom 💰$2,350
🥈 One-Hundred 💰$1,100
🥉 Schroedinger 💰$800🏇🏽 Phantom Stable takes home the W in its FIRST-EVER Major Race with a 21-1 longshot horse!
🏇🏽 Congrats to Divine SOL for hitting the 21-1, turning a $6.80 horse… pic.twitter.com/8PrPwBH7EX
— Photo Finish™ LIVE 🌹 🐎 Virtual Horse Racing (@photofinishgame) December 3, 2023
21-1 Underdog Wins Harbor Championship
How great is playing the ponies? When you think you’ve got it all figured out, a 21-1 horse from a stable that has never won a Major Series race bursts across the finish line with a dynamic last 100 meters to cash a string of huge picks.
Congratulations to Snake Venom on a legendary against-all-odds win.
