Bits are such a "can of worms"! It's hard to know where to stop!

I used a single-jointed snaffle for a lot of years, and found it was OK for riding with a trek of steady ponies (it stopped them leaning on your hands) but no good with a hot headed driving pony. I changed to a straight bar loose cheek Liverpool which gave me the option of several curb settings, and gradually i've migrated to a mullen-mouth Liverpool with loose cheeks and a mullen-mouth Kimblewick (and as it's named after an English village that's the way I will always spell it even if every bit catalogue in the rest of the world spells it Kimberwicke!) The mullen is such a kind mouthpiece for horses with big fat tongues; it can't poke a low palate nor pinch the tongue against the bars or the teeth.

I do use cheek rubbers inside the loose cheek Liverpool, because those cheeks can nip. I bought a bit that was a quarter inch wider than the ponies needed, to accommodate the rubber disks.

Curb chain settings are one of my bugbears as a judge. I've seen them so tight I wonder how on earth the groom or driver managed to hook them up. All you end up with is a horse you can't stop because no matter what he does he is never rewarded with a relaxation of pressure. I've also seen curb chains hanging so low that they caught under the horse's chin. If a horse doesn't need a curb then take the chain off or replace it with a light elastic or leather strap.

An interesting thought is that a curb bit doesn't have to be harsher than a snaffle. It can be gentler because (so long as your chain is not too tight) when you take up or change rein contact, the bit rotates, rises a little in the mouth and presses a little on the poll, before any other action happens. That's like touching a friend on the shoulder to warn him you need his attention. Quite different from the plain snaffle which pokes him in the ribs and immediately says, "Oi, get on with it."

Something to watch with a long-cheeked Liverpool (one with three slots in the cheeks) is that it doesn't get caught up on things. I saw a long cheeked Liverpool in use at a show last week where, when the driver asked the horse to reverse, the horse overbent and the cheeks caught in the bottom hame strap of the collar - luckily not permanently. If a driver is at all heavy handed or the horse overbends, it might be better to get a shorter cheeked bit or trim off the lower part of the cheeks.

The loose cheek Liverpool was designed for going straight down the road with a single horse, and not for the many bends and turns of competition, or for pairs work. The Military elbow bit or the Buxton then work better, or a fixed-cheek bit for a pair.

And of course no bit can be better than the hands behind it.