Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the show.
Speaker: It's great to be back.
Speaker: And today I'm with Red from Redmond Smokehouse.
Speaker: Red, thanks for coming on to the show, mate.
Speaker: How are you doing?
Speaker: Good, mate.
Speaker: It's a nice Saturday night here in Australia.
Speaker: Playing some Zed.
Speaker: You know how it is.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: Getting crushed in one versus ones today.
Speaker: That's the story of the 17th of March, 2023.
Speaker: How about yourself?
Speaker: You've been dominating in one-on-ones today, Red?
Speaker: No, it's not happening.
Speaker: I can't even win a double up at the moment.
Speaker: It's just one of those days.
Speaker: It's been a good couple of days previous, but today is not the day.
Speaker: Day is not the day.
Speaker: It's interesting, for posterity's sake, today they released the open beta of Diablo 4.
Speaker: So I have spent a couple of hours in Sanctuary today.
Speaker: That's neither here nor there.
Speaker: But hey, Red, just very curious, mate.
Speaker: Obviously, with everyone that comes onto the show, tell us a little bit about your backstory, mate.
Speaker: How did you get into Zed?
Speaker: When did you start playing Zed?
Speaker: Like many people that came over from Top Shot.
Speaker: I think I started Top Shot in about... I was pretty early in Top Shot.
Speaker: Maybe October, November 2020, which is a bit earlier than most other people.
Speaker: And made a good bit of coin in there.
Speaker: And I was in a whole bunch of discords.
Speaker: And I think it was one with Wade's, if anyone knows who Wade's is.
Speaker: And yeah, saw Top Shot, saw Zed and jumped on over.
Speaker: It wasn't until about mid-2021.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And did the usual stuff, you know, do the research, watch the Poseidon videos, you know, like everybody else.
Speaker: It was exactly the same story, really.
Speaker: You know, jumping in there, buying something that I probably shouldn't have based on color.
Speaker: I liked the blue color and I wanted to buy the blue horse.
Speaker: It was a rare coat.
Speaker: I thought, oh, it's a rare coat.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: It's probably going to be worth something at some point.
Speaker: But, nah, that was not the story.
Speaker: I like what you're saying there.
Speaker: Like everyone else came in, burnt some worth in gas fees, bought a bad horse for too much money.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker: I mean, it actually wasn't that bad of a horse.
Speaker: I think, I thought I was onto a great thing because I'd read all the, you know, the literature, the videos that were out there at the time, you know.
Speaker: If you're getting like a four to sort of, you know, eight odds horse, you're pretty good to go.
Speaker: Like, you've got a good horse.
Speaker: You run your Griffey and...
Speaker: I got a six, like I got like 6.2 odds in my Griffey.
Speaker: And I was like, holy smokes, I've got a great horse.
Speaker: Nah, it was not.
Speaker: It was just a weak Griffey.
Speaker: Now I know that, but at the time that was not the case.
Speaker: So that first blue horse, what was its name?
Speaker: Can you remember?
Speaker: Yeah, I remember the name.
Speaker: I've still got it.
Speaker: Varys Dreams.
Speaker: Um, it's never really done a whole lot.
Speaker: It's, it's okay.
Speaker: It's bred a couple of okay horses, but I always keep that horse.
Speaker: Like I basically haven't sold a single horse the whole time I've been in Zed.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's kind of.
Speaker: You're another Zed hoarder.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm a hoarder.
Speaker: I was a hoarder before Zed and I'll be a hoarder afterwards.
Speaker: Collector.
Speaker: I like to call it collector.
Speaker: Fair play to you.
Speaker: Collector it is.
Speaker: It's interesting talking to a bunch of different stable owners.
Speaker: Obviously, some people try to go for the flips.
Speaker: And there are a lot of people I talk to just hang on to them.
Speaker: My reason for hanging on to most of my horses is I just can't bear selling them for what I'd have to sell them for.
Speaker: Um, given that, you know, they often cost significantly more to breed, um, liking to breed knackers myself.
Speaker: So, but then others just get attached to them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: It just went such on a downturn when it came to selling that it just became, what's the point?
Speaker: Why would I bother selling it?
Speaker: I'll just keep it for breed stock.
Speaker: Maybe I can use it at some point.
Speaker: That was always my thought process of like, it's not that bad, but maybe something in the game changes and it's worth something, at least to me.
Speaker: So something in the game did change since then, obviously rather significantly.
Speaker: Um, when you say you dusted this horse off and, and you've been running it recently.
Speaker: Is it?
Speaker: I actually don't even have, I don't even have it in my stable at the moment.
Speaker: I, it was one of those horses that I lent out to a friend.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Because when you're trying to get people into the game, like before there was lending, you kind of just had to send it to them.
Speaker: So I'd sent him this horse.
Speaker: I need to get onto him actually and say, hey, can you send my horse back?
Speaker: Because it's a legendary Finney like Z9 or Z11.
Speaker: So it wasn't even a bad horse.
Speaker: I paid through the nose and well, not really through the nose because it was a little bit earlier, but...
Speaker: it was still way more than you would ever pay for one now.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's an interesting, um, approach there.
Speaker: Your friend that's got that horse, is he, is he running it or is he not in the game anymore?
Speaker: Um, he tried running it for maybe a month and,
Speaker: the game at that point was still the old game of the down class and the free.
Speaker: Like it was trying to explain that to him was near on impossible.
Speaker: Hey, you've got to run, you know, five or six races and try and win.
Speaker: And if you do win, please take a pause and go in the opposite distance for a while.
Speaker: It was ridiculous.
Speaker: Like you can't, you can't do that.
Speaker: You,
Speaker: you can't bring people into the game.
Speaker: And I'm glad that the game has changed the way that it's not like that anymore.
Speaker: Run for your heart's content.
Speaker: And if you're winning, awesome.
Speaker: Like just go for gold.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's interesting, right?
Speaker: Like everyone's running to win every single time now, which is so important for this game.
Speaker: Like it's all a racing game.
Speaker: You want to win.
Speaker: I think for all the,
Speaker: You know, the edges and the FUD that's around and obviously everyone's got their own opinions on what works and what doesn't work in the game.
Speaker: I think we can all kind of universally agree that that's the change that needed to be made, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, 100%.
Speaker: I mean, I had a whole bunch of horses that I expected to be top of sort of class two that did not land in top of class two and
Speaker: You know, I was disappointed at that point.
Speaker: It probably took me a week or two to sort of move past it.
Speaker: It really did.
Speaker: It took me like a week or two to move past it and then start digging through the stable.
Speaker: We have so many horses between, that's a different story altogether, but we probably have like four or five hundred horses.
Speaker: And going back through and then looking at these horses that at the time, most of them were meant to be well bred and they kind of competed, but they didn't.
Speaker: And now I look at them now and go, oh, okay, they can compete, you know, or at least at a level that I'm happy to run them at, at least in freeze for the while.
Speaker: It's interesting.
Speaker: So you mentioned you got sort of 400 horses, obviously across a couple of stables.
Speaker: Um, how many are you running today?
Speaker: Daily in pades is probably, it ranges from one, which is like the go-to horse.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: to probably eight, nine, 10 paid runners.
Speaker: The rest are just free race, you know, just trying to get some levels on them, having some fun, seeing what they're about.
Speaker: And then maybe another five or six across every couple of days we'll run just to get some data on just because they're so old and you don't quite know where they're at now in this new structure.
Speaker: Cause it's just a lot of horses to get through to, to really get an idea.
Speaker: And have you found, have you found anything in the old horses?
Speaker: Like, have you found anything that sort of popped out a bit of a diamond in the rough and it's actually.
Speaker: There has been a couple, there has actually been a couple, um,
Speaker: We were actually running in the Dan Shan Speed Madness.
Speaker: If you, if you play along with any of those and one of those horses we're actually using in that, it just ran today, a couple of hours ago.
Speaker: And yeah, it's, it was before like the ugly duckling,
Speaker: of the breeds that we did.
Speaker: It was a repeat breed of another breed that we did that was making decent amounts of money.
Speaker: And it just never did anything.
Speaker: It just sort of, it was okay.
Speaker: It could flame, but it couldn't really do much.
Speaker: It just wasn't as elite as the other breed.
Speaker: But now the sister is in class one.
Speaker: And this one's in class two and it's a nice stable breed with some distance preference, which is exactly what you want in this meta, you know?
Speaker: So it turns out that it's, yeah, what we thought was not so great, held onto it and now it's all right.
Speaker: It turns out it has value.
Speaker: Interestingly enough there, you sort of, you just talked about what adds value in this meta and you mentioned stability with distance preference.
Speaker: A lot of people talk about variance in the meta.
Speaker: And I'm curious to get your thoughts on where do you see that edge with the stability and distance preference over a variance horse?
Speaker: And how do you run it to leverage that advantage?
Speaker: I mean, I love variance.
Speaker: The thrill, the rush, the variance.
Speaker: Love, hate.
Speaker: Yeah, the pain, but the joy as well of variants.
Speaker: Everyone that's owned a variants horse is, yeah, they know that.
Speaker: They know that feeling where you go on a, you know, an eight losing streak and then go on a three winning streak, but the wins are so incredible that everything else is wiped away.
Speaker: But variants...
Speaker: I mean, it just depends on, it's kind of like when I talk to my friend and I was trying to get him into the game, I was trying to explain to him that you're sort of targeting what you want to run.
Speaker: It all depends on your plan.
Speaker: And Zed is very much about your planning more than anything else, I feel.
Speaker: is what sort of a stable are you?
Speaker: What sort of races do you want to run?
Speaker: If you want to run double ups and potentially 1v1s, if you've got something good enough, then you probably want it on the lower variance end and higher DP.
Speaker: But if you want to,
Speaker: risk it all and have some fun, then maybe variance is where you want to go.
Speaker: You know, running those winner take alls, those top twos, it all comes down to your preference and risk profile.
Speaker: So just to double click on that a little bit, Red, like where does tournament running fit into all that?
Speaker: Like I understand –
Speaker: Today, with the new Maiden starting, it seems to be perfectly apparent.
Speaker: You sort of breed for variants or you breed for double-ups and you run them in those Maidens.
Speaker: But when there are sort of the standard tournaments, I guess, if we see those anymore, what do you think?
Speaker: Like, is...
Speaker: Is that distance preference stability more likely to cash in tournaments and be more positive?
Speaker: Or is there going to be enough variance horses in there that you'll probably get done every time come quarter five?
Speaker: You kind of want something smack back in the middle.
Speaker: Like, you don't want those extreme variance horses in tournaments.
Speaker: I mean, we own...
Speaker: A fair few of those.
Speaker: And it was a nightmare.
Speaker: I just gave up.
Speaker: Like they just went on the shelf.
Speaker: All those 1.0s that we had, they just went on the shelf.
Speaker: They just, that was it.
Speaker: It wasn't until this new racing system that they actually came back out again.
Speaker: And I was basically only running just so I could run them because I love them.
Speaker: And that was the only reason.
Speaker: Like you can't make money in tournaments with those various sorts.
Speaker: I mean, it's pretty unlikely.
Speaker: Pretty unlikely.
Speaker: Yeah, you've got to kind of get three good rolls in a row.
Speaker: Yeah, which is like near on impossible.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But anything with high bar, anything with high bar is not going to do that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I've got a couple of horses.
Speaker: Two are kind of mid-90 variants, like 94 and like a 97, I think.
Speaker: And they were 1.0 horses.
Speaker: I could, I'd often qualify, but the amount of times I just spent running to quarterfinals and I'd even stopped watching the quarterfinals with those two horses.
Speaker: Um, I think I won one quarterfinal once, but getting back to the, you're not going to get the role every time you need, especially if you've had four or five good roles to get your qualification.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And you would end up having to race maybe 15, 20 times.
Speaker: just to try and get in and average the points out.
Speaker: If you did get a good roll on the first couple, like you were racing a lot to try and get them in.
Speaker: And it just, and that, that was when we still had the, what are they, what do they actually call it?
Speaker: The stupid system for points.
Speaker: The ELO system.
Speaker: The ELO, which wasn't a true ELO.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you know, you hit those rolls, but you're not losing enough.
Speaker: So you end up going up a class and it was just like, you ended up dead.
Speaker: It was terrible, absolutely terrible.
Speaker: If we could wipe one part of Zed, that would be it.
Speaker: That Elo was shocking.
Speaker: It's fascinating though, right?
Speaker: I remember the day they released it and everyone had to re-qualify and they introduced Discovery.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I remember sitting there trying to go into Discovery and horses just you couldn't
Speaker: You couldn't get a horse in a race.
Speaker: It was just going ridiculously.
Speaker: It was popping so hard.
Speaker: It was kind of exciting.
Speaker: You also had, this is not casting in shade or anything, but you had people like, um,
Speaker: You had people like PK and bot lady and, um, I can't remember the stable that had all those buterans that were just flipping them on open sea, but they had like thousands of like, you legs to paces and they were jumping in there and they would just slap them in because you were winning money at that point.
Speaker: It didn't matter.
Speaker: It didn't matter where you landed.
Speaker: They were just churning over, like make it, making X amount of dollars from, from nothing.
Speaker: Like I understand why they canned that too because it was just throwing it away.
Speaker: Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
Speaker: Some of the things that have evolved over the past sort of 18 months.
Speaker: What do you think though, I guess, looking forward in the game, something else from a recent change that I've kind of been watching today around the stamina meters?
Speaker: I haven't seen any impact in me running my horses less.
Speaker: Like I figured with like, cause I just, I don't run free races anymore.
Speaker: I just try and just run pades.
Speaker: And the way that the pades fill, I don't think I could get eight horses, eight races in a 10 hour period.
Speaker: Are you noticing, like, are you running your horses to empty?
Speaker: Are you running out of stamina or?
Speaker: I'm,
Speaker: I'm actually running the one horse, the sort of staple paid runner, more than I've ever run it before.
Speaker: It's almost like a challenge now.
Speaker: And I would go to sleep and I wouldn't know if the race would run if I was in stamina.
Speaker: I couldn't just like preload, I couldn't preload races and wait for them to fill.
Speaker: Whereas now you can sort of like preload races and you know, Oh, I've got three bars left.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Preload the three, go to sleep, wake up in the morning.
Speaker: How many bars do I have left?
Speaker: You know, it's, you can actually run for me, who's not up 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, like a lot of these stables,
Speaker: Um, I can just load it up and then I wake up in the morning.
Speaker: Oh, I've got four bars left.
Speaker: Sweet.
Speaker: I've got four bars to run.
Speaker: I've got another one for two and a half hours.
Speaker: You know, I actually like it.
Speaker: It's a bit of a challenge.
Speaker: Oh, can I clear off that stab in it before I go to bed tonight?
Speaker: You know, that.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: But have you seen anything in, like in the fields?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Have you seen in the weakening in the fields or thinning in the fields?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I think you basically need to half it from where it is now.
Speaker: Half it again, you think?
Speaker: I think.
Speaker: Well, it's no different.
Speaker: I'm running 16 races.
Speaker: I'm actually running more races.
Speaker: You can run 16 races in a day.
Speaker: In a 24-hour period.
Speaker: In a 24-hour period.
Speaker: You kind of needed a half that to be a true eight in 24 hours.
Speaker: If you want to make a difference.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: So I, as I say, no real change for me other than I like the UI and to your point, I like the, there's no chance you're going to run accidentally in a paid race while you're.
Speaker: I like that more than anything.
Speaker: More than anything, the amount of times that I've entered a race and even a high dollar race and I've not realized and it's filled and I've gone, oh, or the UI didn't update properly.
Speaker: where it said you had like 92 and you're like, oh, I've got one race left in me and then updates and she's sitting at like 88.
Speaker: Are you kidding me?
Speaker: And you're in the race.
Speaker: And I'm in the race and it's like a $25.50 race, which is reasonable for me.
Speaker: Like, oh God.
Speaker: Yeah, I hear that.
Speaker: I've done that a couple of times.
Speaker: I think my way it happened to me usually was I'd forget I'd put it in the first race.
Speaker: Like I'd put it in a $10 or $20 race at the first one and just get bored.
Speaker: And while I'm waiting for it to fill, so I'll go and race a horse in a couple of other races.
Speaker: So this is why, like, for me personally, I am just absolutely screaming for volume in Z. The amount of times –
Speaker: Like I lose so many times just because I'm bored.
Speaker: And like the horse I want to run, there's a race here.
Speaker: It's got zero out of six.
Speaker: It's not filling.
Speaker: And I'm like, ah, there's one in its next distance or whatever.
Speaker: Maybe not in the right format.
Speaker: And I'm a degenerate punter, so I'll be like, yeah, sure.
Speaker: Give it a go.
Speaker: This is how...
Speaker: This is probably not a good statement about myself, but even today I threw in a one-in-one versus Wagme.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, Wagme's in that.
Speaker: What's he doing in class three?
Speaker: Have a go.
Speaker: I mean, anyway, it was a predictable outcome, right?
Speaker: But it was like halfway down the track.
Speaker: I'm like, what are you doing?
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: It happens.
Speaker: It happens.
Speaker: Especially when you see someone who's just beat you in another race and you're like, oh, they just beat me in like a 2400 and I see them in a sprint.
Speaker: I'm like, I'm definitely better than them in a sprint.
Speaker: And then you go and try and take the money back off, but it doesn't work out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You got to try and limit yourself from that kind of, but it's fun.
Speaker: It is fun.
Speaker: It is fun.
Speaker: Um, so getting back, I guess, to, to your stable and like, how do you run these things?
Speaker: Do you have, um, an overall strategy you mentioned before about having a strategy and sticking to a plan?
Speaker: What's the plan for your stable?
Speaker: How do you go about racing the horses?
Speaker: Uh, so.
Speaker: I was originally in my own stable by myself.
Speaker: Um, and then it was probably, it was early 2022.
Speaker: Um, I met another bloke, Mike, um, from Herocraft, if you know who he, who he is.
Speaker: Um, and we ended up joining forces through that whole sort of 2022 period of time when there was 20 races and,
Speaker: It was, yeah, everyone knows it was madness.
Speaker: There was a lot of money to be made in free racing and free tournaments and that.
Speaker: And we ended up joining forces and because he's in the US, we were kind of going back to back at that point in time.
Speaker: Yeah, you're playing the time zone.
Speaker: Playing the time zones.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he was doing a lot of downclassing because it was heavier volume.
Speaker: Then I was doing a lot of paid racing because it was generally weaker around that time in, in Australia to like later, late America.
Speaker: But now the strategy is more just like play with what we have.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: you know, we were generating decent income.
Speaker: So we were able to breed possibly stuff that we probably shouldn't have bred or take more risks, I should say, is because there was money for time.
Speaker: But now that's not the case.
Speaker: So if the money's not coming in, then we're not breeding.
Speaker: And we've got to strategize around what we have and
Speaker: potentially just building up what we do have which is interesting if this xp stuff accelerates to the point where they're talking about where a lot of these ones that are quite low down that'll take forever will not take as long
Speaker: And we'll be able to start running them in pads.
Speaker: And so you're talking about what, I guess, what Fekundo's hinted at, which is once aging comes in, we'll start leveling up a little faster.
Speaker: Or are you talking about the tradable XP that people have been talking about as well?
Speaker: A bit of both.
Speaker: A bit of both.
Speaker: And I think with a lot of stables that have been around for a while, if they find some good horses, like the tradable XP thing is going to be massive.
Speaker: You know, if you've got all these horses, you just run and freeze the whole time.
Speaker: You don't really care about the horses too much.
Speaker: If they come in second to sort of third, getting decent XP every time, you know, it becomes something that they can funnel into their other horses or they can sell on the market.
Speaker: And maybe it provides a bit of liquidity for them for breeding at that point.
Speaker: You know, maybe that stimulates the breeding side of things.
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker: I like the concept.
Speaker: Just the bots are going to have a field day.
Speaker: Like it's just that's a, if you can race for XP and trade XP, that's a scenario made for bots.
Speaker: I think the tokenomics behind it is going to have to be well thought out and there's probably going to be about 200 changes to it after they release it.
Speaker: Cause you're right, they will, but I almost feel like a utilization of the Z token would be good at that point where you, you can't just trade your XP in like the, the XP goes to something else.
Speaker: Like you're not just getting direct like Weath or Zed token.
Speaker: Like it has to be traded to something else and that something else then has to be used in game.
Speaker: And it's like you kind of have to travel across this sort of a couple of different steps.
Speaker: So it spreads across the whole ecosystem.
Speaker: Like there needs to be an ecosystem there.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: You can't generate Z token without a sink, without having somewhere to put it or just like if there's ever going to be value in Z token from a token moment's point of view.
Speaker: Yeah, well, almost even not even a burn, but like the XP has to be traded.
Speaker: like you get the X, you sell the XP, but then to unlock it, you have to have X amount of Z token that you send back to Z or something.
Speaker: I don't know, like a system where, you know, it's costing you a little something to get the value out.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe.
Speaker: I mean, it's certainly an interesting spot to watch.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like the idea of breeding catalysts, but.
Speaker: Yeah, every time I think of, you know, something like swapping for breeding catalysts or whatever, like it'll be exploited.
Speaker: There'll be people out that exploit and do every change they make.
Speaker: Someone figures it out.
Speaker: We were talking about it today on Hale's Twitch stream.
Speaker: It was Hale, Avon and Dan Shan.
Speaker: The amount of things when it comes to passers, like you could do something with passers,
Speaker: where it's, and also adding onto that, like Genesis.
Speaker: Genesis, there's other games out there
Speaker: where their genesis earns a percent call it one percent of all breed fees go into a pool and then all genesis get you know a dividend basically for owning a genesis even if your garbage genesis never breeds in its life it's still getting a it's still getting a portion of those great genesis that are breeding i think that i'm all for that because you just described my genesis i
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, we've all got them, right?
Speaker: But they shouldn't be zero value.
Speaker: And people say, oh, you know, like the Genesis, they've still got value in some form.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, but where?
Speaker: Yeah, I think there's a lot of us waiting for that value.
Speaker: Like there's a lot of glue Genesis out there, like a lot.
Speaker: I even tried running mine.
Speaker: I had two.
Speaker: I ended up selling one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But the other one I hang on to, but I even tried to level it up when it came leveling because I'm like, oh, maybe if I put 500 levels into this thing, it'll do something.
Speaker: But that got old really quickly.
Speaker: No, glue is glue.
Speaker: Glue is glue.
Speaker: Like if it just doesn't have the stats, it just doesn't have the stats.
Speaker: That's just how it is.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So getting back to your racing strategy there, Red, like are you guys running –
Speaker: I guess in a specific class, are you targeting specific classes or are you kind of just, you know, are you, are you staying away from C1?
Speaker: Like what's the plan for the smokehouse?
Speaker: Um, so we have some C1 horses, but originally I was going for the strategy of I'll level them up while running page.
Speaker: They're decent enough.
Speaker: They should be able to run page, but that got really bad really quickly.
Speaker: So now all the class one horses, they're just free racing.
Speaker: Like you get a decent amount of XP, you can run some free races, you know, get it in now before aging starts.
Speaker: Basically is the thought process there.
Speaker: Just run free races.
Speaker: Doesn't cost you anything except, you know, some clicks.
Speaker: And then see what sort of pops out of that, you know, maybe those levels do make a difference eventually Maybe you get like they just added those new level segmentations.
Speaker: Maybe there's another level segmentation you end up falling into for a week or two and Then just sort of playing it by ear in class one because it is hard.
Speaker: It is really hard and
Speaker: As it should be.
Speaker: Yeah, it should be.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: It's class one.
Speaker: I won't go into it now, but we'll touch on that again.
Speaker: But in class two, it's much, much the same.
Speaker: There's the staple horses that we have.
Speaker: We'll race them in Pates.
Speaker: Then we'll...
Speaker: basically separating them out and just trying to focus on a couple of them, trying to do some levels, get some data.
Speaker: And then just moving down through the classes, exactly the same process.
Speaker: You know, there's some that run paid, some don't.
Speaker: Maybe the mood changes in what the fields are and you pull some out, put some other ones in.
Speaker: But other than that, you know, just running through the classes.
Speaker: And just repeating the process.
Speaker: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that into some detail.
Speaker: Like if I'm going to set, let's assume hypothetically I'm going to send you a Z8 NACA exclusive, unraced.
Speaker: Talk me through, you know, how do you get this horse in your stable?
Speaker: How do you understand what it does?
Speaker: How do you run it?
Speaker: How do you discover it?
Speaker: to find a spot in your stable.
Speaker: How would you walk?
Speaker: Tell me about that.
Speaker: It's a brand new horse or has it been raced before?
Speaker: Brand new, God Zero, unraced.
Speaker: Unraced.
Speaker: Okay, is it bred now?
Speaker: Like is it 3.0, 2.0, 1.0?
Speaker: Yep, 3.0.
Speaker: 3.0.
Speaker: It's a brand new, fresh.
Speaker: It's the same as the current.
Speaker: Brand new, wrapped for this maiden.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Oh, lovely.
Speaker: Well, first thing I would do is look at the parents.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: what are the parents?
Speaker: You know, I got Blood Tool.
Speaker: It makes it fairly easy.
Speaker: I think Zedge is fairly similar in how it can break down parents.
Speaker: I've never used it, but I assume it's fairly similar, pretty easy to use.
Speaker: And then, you know, that kind of gives me an idea of where it should be in terms of where I want to start.
Speaker: Um, and you mean like in terms of funnel at this po int, in terms of funnel.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In terms of funnel, that'll give me a good idea.
Speaker: And also the variance of the two parents, you know, how much variance is it?
Speaker: Am I looking at sort of like a variance horse that maybe is going to throw me off a little bit here, or is it, is it more of a stable horse?
Speaker: Um, then I'll just sort of run through the motions, you know, throw in that Griffey.
Speaker: the best the best amount best uh experience ever sometimes sometimes it's terrible see that starting level and then i think depending on where what you've bred for the starting level is a real teller of how much ability it has right off the get-go yeah so let's talk a little bit about that um
Speaker: And I'll walk you through something that I bred for the last maiden.
Speaker: So I bred a horse called Breeding the Lute that had two class two parents.
Speaker: Let me just pull this up.
Speaker: Okay, so it had two class two parents.
Speaker: I got a Z3 Legendary Knacker called Hide the Loot, which had some decent stats on it, which is why I bought it.
Speaker: And then another horse that I bought off Arbitrage, actually, in one of their UUs called Bread Better.
Speaker: Hide the Loot had 442 starting level.
Speaker: Bread Better had 414, the Mare.
Speaker: And they both had sort of medium variants, I guess.
Speaker: But this breeding the loot came out at 432 of those, so kind of high end close to the stallion.
Speaker: How do you think, like, I know Facundo talks about, I guess, the size of the cup, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So would you then assume from that that the size of the car, it kind of got mostly in the starting level, got close to the highest of its parents.
Speaker: Would you then say, okay, run that out as a stability horse?
Speaker: Like that might be what it has because it's not going to have a DP, it's not going to have a variance.
Speaker: I would say based on what I'm looking at here, it's a stability horse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of interesting that hide the loot.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: Are you looking at the blood tool?
Speaker: Yeah, I am.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Offline screenshot hide the loot for me, will you?
Speaker: Send me its stats.
Speaker: Because if you forget about... If you completely forget about what you've run before with Hide the Loot... Is that yours?
Speaker: It is yours, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And then... I bought it recently.
Speaker: And then you use Z-Lead and go Z2.0 only in the Horseshoe.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I'm finding a lot of horses that...
Speaker: were thousand benders or 1200s or whatever we thought they were previously actually have changed completely because they're not running against the same competition anymore.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So Scott, if you look at it now compared, like if you, if you get rid of the Z 2.0 and then just look at it before, it looks like it's a thousand meter runner.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes, it does.
Speaker: But if he goes Z 2.0, it's not a thousand metre runner at all.
Speaker: No, and I haven't really, as I said, I didn't buy it to run it.
Speaker: I bought it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I'm just saying when it comes to the breeding and looking at like where it's come from, what it is, like what can I expect from this, it's very...
Speaker: different if you start digging into Z2.0 stuff.
Speaker: Like if it's been run in Z2, like that's more of a mid to me.
Speaker: 14, 16.
Speaker: So then red better is a thousand ish.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thousand, 1200 ish.
Speaker: So then you would kind of expect it to maybe be pushing to 14, 16.
Speaker: but it's shown as a 12.
Speaker: So Red Badder must have been a decent, decent, decent little reader.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That came out of arbitrage.
Speaker: So as a UU, so they've got it stacked with all the DP.
Speaker: But that's very interesting.
Speaker: Like the whole point, one of the Bella from Rockefeller Racing in one of the earlier episodes, I was talking to her and she was,
Speaker: really driving home the point of when you're racing, think about what other people are thinking about as well.
Speaker: Getting back to you, the competition has changed.
Speaker: Um, cause I've seen, I, in my own stable, a lot of horses run differently.
Speaker: Um, and I've heard a lot of people talk about, it's funny how people talk about it, right?
Speaker: They go, Oh, well, my horse has changed.
Speaker: And it's like, I don't think it has.
Speaker: It's the same horse.
Speaker: What Dan Chan said to me a while back, there's a lot of horses that look like, what was the exact wording?
Speaker: I don't want to misquote him.
Speaker: But basically, people try and force what they think they know.
Speaker: So like you've bred to what you think is sprinters together.
Speaker: So it should be a sprinter.
Speaker: So they try and force it, but they lose and they tell it, they say, oh, it's just a garbage breed, but no, it's not a garbage breed.
Speaker: It just wasn't a sprinter.
Speaker: Like, and then they just give up on it.
Speaker: Like, and that's why you see a lot of these thousand meters in, in like maidens, they aren't really thousand meter horses.
Speaker: They shouldn't even be running there.
Speaker: They're probably a 14, um,
Speaker: or something, something along those lines, you know, they're weaker, slightly weaker fields because they just shouldn't be running there because they bred it for that.
Speaker: So that's what it should be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, and it's, it's an interesting thing to do in a griffin too, because you're like, you breed it or you're going to run it for what you're targeting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But if you don't know, because again, that hide the loot's a really good example, right?
Speaker: Because, so I actually, the way I found this horse was using Zedge.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Looking for a set of stats that I want for some breeding and to put into my stable at the Naka legendary level.
Speaker: So that looked what I wanted.
Speaker: But the thing to be very, I guess, aware of is particularly in Zedge is it only gets stats from where you run it.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's only knowing what it knows.
Speaker: Like, that's it.
Speaker: It tries to normalize out across everything, but it only has data on where you've run it to start with.
Speaker: And a lot of those older horses which had higher BA would win regardless because they were running against competition that they should never have been running against.
Speaker: Maybe they did like 30 races and they went straight to class one.
Speaker: You know, they started in maybe C3, then ran straight all the way up to class one.
Speaker: But that's because they just had so much BA that they had to.
Speaker: Like, they didn't have a choice.
Speaker: They couldn't down class.
Speaker: This is true.
Speaker: This is true.
Speaker: It's very, very fascinating stuff here, Red.
Speaker: But you sound like a man that loves a good Zed conspiracy.
Speaker: Is that a fair statement?
Speaker: I wouldn't say I like a conspiracy, but, you know.
Speaker: I don't mind getting amongst it.
Speaker: So let's get amongst my favourite one.
Speaker: Honeymoon periods on horses.
Speaker: Why do they do it?
Speaker: Why do horses, you breed a horse, it runs really well, and I've had horses do this forever.
Speaker: I've had horses do this since I started.
Speaker: I've had at least half a dozen horses where I thought, hang on, I've got the next RSB here.
Speaker: This is brilliant.
Speaker: only to get like 30 races in and just fall off a cliff.
Speaker: I guarantee you there's an auto nerf in the back end somewhere and it's set to pink colts for Dan Shan and 30 races for me.
Speaker: I think after some of my videos, I think I've got the nerf one now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that goes back to like drawdown, what Dan Shan talks about drawdown and also, in my opinion, competition.
Speaker: If you're racing in a maiden, you're going against all brand new horses who have no idea what they are.
Speaker: So you might be, you might've actually picked your right distance, but then as soon as you go out in the open world where the horses run a hundred, 200 or 300 races, or you start moving into paid a week after the maiden, but you're
Speaker: during the maiden people are testing their horses in pads and they don't quite know, you know, you got to think about the other sort of aspects of what the outside influences to why you're winning.
Speaker: Like that's how I put it down to it.
Speaker: Because if you're doing it, if you're running it in a maiden, everyone's going to be doing the same thing.
Speaker: Absolutely everybody.
Speaker: I've had, I've had a couple of horses back in, um,
Speaker: the old meadow that actually ran, ran their discoveries, um, in average.
Speaker: And then I had one horse that came into class four, ran its first 25 races or 30 races at a wind clip of something like 30%.
Speaker: And then was just a dog ever since just,
Speaker: I don't know, I'm like this thing just went win, win, win, nothing.
Speaker: And again, as I say, I love a good Zed conspiracy, particularly the fact that Fakundo nerfs my stables.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: I didn't even do anything to him.
Speaker: It's all good.
Speaker: No, I don't.
Speaker: It happens though.
Speaker: It 100% happens.
Speaker: Especially, like I would never buy a horse that has less than 100 racers on it unless I'm just sort of buying it for whatever reason.
Speaker: Like if it's a legit like racer and I'm buying it for paid, there's no way I'm buying it if it's had less than 100.
Speaker: Yeah, 100, 150.
Speaker: Yeah, okay.
Speaker: And across multiple distances or?
Speaker: Uh, well,
Speaker: You can normally sort of channel it pretty quickly, you know, sort of like what, who was on there last saying about 20 races?
Speaker: Um, uh, basically 20 races I'm doing in freeze, seeing sort of my funnel, then rolling onto sort of page where I think it is getting an idea of speed and what, what it really is.
Speaker: Um, finished distribution.
Speaker: And after that,
Speaker: You know, you just got to roll with the punches at times.
Speaker: Yeah, you do.
Speaker: So it's interesting in that discovery process, right?
Speaker: I hear people say follow the flames.
Speaker: So the flames.
Speaker: So let's, yeah, let's talk about this for a second because flames seem to be a system that was designed for 12 horse races.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And now all the discovery frees are six horse races.
Speaker: And I think not flaming in six is better, seems to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I've even had horses where I was on the mantra of follow the flames and I did all right, but I moved away from following the flames and I did a lot better because everybody else was following the flames.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Getting back to think about zig when people are zagging.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's like, well, you know, you might have a 1,200, 1,400 runner, but it runs 1,200 metres and doesn't flame as often at least, maybe a 30% clip on flames.
Speaker: But at 1,400, you're getting 60%, 70% flames, but you're actually not getting that –
Speaker: getting that wind share.
Speaker: Like if you're not getting the wind share, then what's the point in having flames?
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: But if everybody else is doing the same thing, if you move to 1200, you're not getting flames, but you've got slightly higher BA, for example, or a little bit more variance than them, then who cares if you've got flames or not?
Speaker: It's all about winning.
Speaker: I'm running an experiment on one of my high VAR horses at the moment.
Speaker: Going through...
Speaker: some of the numbers in Zedge around average times versus, you know, what the winning percentiles is that he's published for each class and each distance.
Speaker: And I've run this horse at 1,000.
Speaker: I think it's super fast at 1,000.
Speaker: It's ranked in 90-day speeds at 1,000.
Speaker: It has been for ages.
Speaker: But the Zedge thing says 1,200.
Speaker: It'll actually be better.
Speaker: So I've just finished running 20 races at a thousand and now I'm going to run 20 at 1200 and we'll see.
Speaker: And the way it's shaping up, we'll see which bracket loses the most, the least money will be the way to go.
Speaker: It didn't have a good 20 talking about drawdown.
Speaker: And then it's the same deal.
Speaker: We go back to it again.
Speaker: Who's your competition?
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: who's running in those races, like actually looking at who's in the races too.
Speaker: Like, I don't understand how people can race without Stagnac's.
Speaker: Like, it's just reviewing what's in there, what sort of horses you're going up against, especially when we were running those paid tournaments and you'd see, you know, 80% of the field's variance horses.
Speaker: Well, those 80%...
Speaker: are going to run at a 30% click of winning.
Speaker: So if you're running a stable horse, you probably shouldn't.
Speaker: Maybe if there's, you know, if there's only two or three of them now, you're probably going to be rise to the top.
Speaker: But if it's 80% of them are, chances are same to none.
Speaker: One of those horses is going to get a rise.
Speaker: Yeah, they're all going to hit like, it's going to be maybe 25% that hit that roll and that's all that top positions.
Speaker: You're gone, you're done.
Speaker: So do you race for second?
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Who races for second?
Speaker: I race for sixth.
Speaker: I love double ups.
Speaker: I'll race for fifth and sixth any day.
Speaker: I'll take that $5 or $10 double up consistently over and over and over again.
Speaker: It's the name of the game, isn't it?
Speaker: Consistency.
Speaker: Like trying to get consistent and trying to be able to fund a breeding habit I think is the
Speaker: Yeah, or a degenerate race habit, you know, running those double ups to pay for maybe a winner take all on something else or going up to class one and, you know, racing against whatever horse it is, whether it's an RSB or someone, you know, you're probably going to donate, but.
Speaker: I feel attacked.
Speaker: No, I'm not attacking at all.
Speaker: It's just like, that's what we all do.
Speaker: It is what.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You want to get that win.
Speaker: Like you want to beat them.
Speaker: You want to have that little bit of personal glory.
Speaker: I had this horrible experience today and it was a great experience, but I can see that this is going to cost me a lot of money.
Speaker: I dusted off one of my old C1 horses and just, oh, I'll give it a run.
Speaker: I'll give it a run and one of its, and it won.
Speaker: I'm like, oh no.
Speaker: Oh no.
Speaker: Won like 30 bucks.
Speaker: You opened the door, they handed you some candy and you said, hmm, that looks delicious.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Please, sir, can I have some more?
Speaker: Oh, geez.
Speaker: I wonder how much that's going to cost me over the next week.
Speaker: I'll be like, I know this will win.
Speaker: This thing can win.
Speaker: It's all good.
Speaker: It's done it before.
Speaker: I'm sure I've been doing it again.
Speaker: And it's the first race it's ever won.
Speaker: It's just on a bad roll.
Speaker: It's all good.
Speaker: It'll turn around.
Speaker: That's just the way it is.
Speaker: It's all good.
Speaker: It's good chatting to you right about this, obviously.
Speaker: You understand.
Speaker: You understand a lot.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: One of the other strategy questions that's kind of been plaguing me for a while now, in the last couple of weeks, given the new format of like, hey, it just seems to be made in tournaments now.
Speaker: and the, the old tournaments don't exist anymore.
Speaker: And whether that's a, we'd said, who knows whether that's a temporary thing or a permanent thing, you know, it will be what it will be.
Speaker: Um, what does that do to all these horses that sort of go through that maiden experience?
Speaker: And then like, cause the only thing running in paid at the moment, outside of those maidens, you know, are the best of the best in every class.
Speaker: Um, they're all monsters.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: what do you think we do with these horses now?
Speaker: Like, is how do we, how do we go forward on this?
Speaker: Is it things like speed madness?
Speaker: Is it things like, you know, do we need to get zombie back on?
Speaker: And like, how do, how do we give some utility to your other 400 horses?
Speaker: I think it really highlights intention in breeding.
Speaker: Like I think it really highlights where you need to be going with,
Speaker: what you're doing, like what's your expectations?
Speaker: Where are you going to use it?
Speaker: Not just for the maiden, thinking outside of the maiden.
Speaker: The maiden's just like the cherry on top.
Speaker: Like what am I doing with this horse?
Speaker: What am I breeding it for?
Speaker: Is this just like another step in my plan?
Speaker: Am I just sort of moving down from like a legendary to an elite and then, you know, to a cross?
Speaker: Am I building towards something?
Speaker: Maybe if it makes some money along the way, that's great, but I'm sort of
Speaker: making my building blocks towards, you know, a cross army that, you know, runs in C3, C3.
Speaker: Yeah, potentially C3.
Speaker: But, you know, like, what am I trying to aim for here?
Speaker: Is it instant money back in the maiden and I'm going to spend a boatload and potentially lose it all?
Speaker: Or, you know, am I putting pieces in place, maybe buying off Hawku, you know, a mare that I think is...
Speaker: something that I can use for later on or use it now, then flip it off, just take the one breed, maybe take a little loss, but you've got your breed off of it.
Speaker: You know, there's all bits and pieces with breeding that doesn't have to be instant gratification of winning a maiden or making money right then and there.
Speaker: And they keep adding extra bits and pieces, you know, you've got those less than 11 races that you can run.
Speaker: You know, you might not have the best of the best.
Speaker: They are great.
Speaker: You might have a mediocre horse in the maiden.
Speaker: Stop running it.
Speaker: If you get like, you know, it's only five races.
Speaker: So you've got your maiden, you've got your Griffey and then five races.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm probably not going to make it.
Speaker: It's terrible.
Speaker: Stop.
Speaker: Don't keep going.
Speaker: Just stop.
Speaker: Wait for everyone else.
Speaker: Let them do their thing.
Speaker: You know, maybe 90% of that field.
Speaker: runs over that 11 races because they're trying to get in and then that next batch it's a half decent horse but it's not good enough to get in maiden you run it in the 11 you can make your money there you might even make you know 10 bucks 15 bucks whatever but you've paid off some of that breed like we we always had a plan of
Speaker: We want to make the breed cost back of the breed.
Speaker: That is it.
Speaker: That's the step forward.
Speaker: Every single horse, as best as you can, make the money back on the breed because that's what's costing you.
Speaker: And would it be sticking too many hot irons to your honour, Red, to ask you how you're doing with that?
Speaker: We've done pretty damn good.
Speaker: We've done pretty good.
Speaker: That is, I don't want to toot,
Speaker: Blood Tool's horn too much, but when we first joined together, we saved up, we bought Blood Tool because we knew that that was going to really change the game for us when it came to breeding and how we strategised and how we bred and the connections of people.
Speaker: Yeah, nice.
Speaker: It really, like it's, yeah, it opens up many doors, especially if you're looking differently.
Speaker: Like you can really picture what's going on.
Speaker: Like it helps to really picture things.
Speaker: It's not just the tool itself.
Speaker: It's, you know, how you decipher what you're looking at.
Speaker: Suitably cryptic, right?
Speaker: Suitably cryptic.
Speaker: Suitably cryptic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is gold.
Speaker: Some people it never helps.
Speaker: Shout out to JMO.
Speaker: Well, I guess we'll find out if JMO listens to the pod.
Speaker: Love you, JMO.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Hey, look, listen, Red, that's been fantastic, mate.
Speaker: I sort of keep these to an hour, so we're kind of close to time.
Speaker: Sweet as.
Speaker: A whole bunch of stuff I didn't get to talk about, but we did kind of wind it in through just that rambling conversation, so I certainly had a lot of fun.
Speaker: Listen, mate, as we say to everyone on the show, I guess I'll see you on the track.
Speaker: Sweet as, mate.
Speaker: I'll see you out there.
Speaker: Bye.
