Welcome back to the Tribe!
Today we continue with post #8 in our series where we ask the BEST stables in Zed Run questions and get to post the answers here for you to learn from!
Our eighth post of this series will be on the owners of the infamous DEZ – ON THE TRACK with ALHAMBREN BLOODSTOCK!
For those curious, here is a list of questions we will be asking Alhambren Bloodstock:
- What Is Your Stable Name?
- What Are Your Stable’s Stats?
- When Did You Start In Zed?
- What Is Your Proudest Achievement In ZED?
- What Is Your Primary Focus In ZED? Breeding, Racing, or Selling?
- How Many Hours A Week Do You Dedicate To ZED?
- What Is Your Favorite Horse You Own And Why Do You Love It?
- What Advice Would You Give To Someone Starting A ZED Stable Now?
- Who Is Someone In The ZED Community That You Respect And Try To Learn From?
- What Are Your Thoughts About The Blood Tool And Why Did You Buy it?
- Where Will ZED Be 24 Months From Today?
- If You Could Change One Thing About Zed What Would It Be And Why?
- What Is One Secret You Hate To Give Away But Will Tell Us About Your ZED Strategy?
- Any Last Comments?
- How Can People Follow Your Zed Journey Or Contact You?
Nothing should be considered investment or financial advice. Enjoy the ride!
ON THE TRACK WITH ALHAMBREN BLOODSTOCK
On Monday we got in touch with another top stable, Alhambren Bloodstock! They shot us plenty of information about their stable and some of their secrets to share on our blog!
Here is the interview!
Q – What Is Your Stable Name?
My main stable is Alhambren Bloodstock.
Alhambren is a my original online gaming name which is actually a derivative of an old sports club I played for. It is also a name after the city of Alhambra in Spain!
Besides our main stable, we have two training stables which can be found here and here.
In addition, we also have our premiere lineages stable which are not for sale and most have been retired from racing. That stable can be found here.
In time we will create a premier sales stable where we will put up premier horses for sale unraced and unbred.
However, I would like to get to the point where our breed consistency is tighter before the end of 2021 for that stable.
Q – What Are Your Stable’s Stats?
Currently, I have over 150 horses spread across five stables. We focus heavily on Nakamoto and Szabo bloodlines.
To date (10/13/21), we have won 398 races in our main stable alone.
In addition, we have placed second 453 times and third 457 times for a total of 1,308 races shown in that same stable.
This puts us at around a 9.29% win rate!
Q – When Did You Start In Zed?
I got started into Zed early in 2021.
My background is from venture capital, hence I’ve been thinking about DAO’s, gaming and the intersection with NFT’s since 2017.
Zed was the first time I’d seen all the pieces starting to come together in a way I felt could work at scale.
My proudest achievements to date are:
- Surpassing >100 Paid Class 1 wins
- Establishing training relationships and proving the training model will scale profitably
- Breeding multiple Class 1 winning horses
- Syndicating and tokenizing ownership in a Z1 Stallion (Hendrix Houdini) and proving that model will scale
- Taking DEZ through to be the 12th horse in history to >100 Paid Class 1 wins solo
Q – What Is Your Primary Focus In ZED? Breeding, Racing, or Selling?
I think about the game in multiple ways.
I want to go over each focus of mine individually.
Creation of Top 2% horses
Statistically, a horse with profit >0.05 ETH is in the Top 2% of earning horses in the game, and a horse with >0.1 ETH is in the Top 1%.
One of the aim’s of my stable is to consistently create those top 1% horses.
Specifically, those horses which can be run by a formula to produce consistent cashflows. They make up the base for what is given to the trainers to run.
I take great pleasure in having other people either train or own horses I have bred that meet this criteria.
Profit Sharing and Training
I believe that similar to Axie Infinity, a profit share model is the way forward. To that end we have two trainers who we work with who consistently produce profit from our horses.
The aim is to have over 50 of these trainers running concurrently. However, the trust architecture to do this does not exist yet in Zed Run. It will in time and we have already shown it will scale.
The way our training model works currently is this. We introduce race capital of 0.1 ETH and set up a separate Metamask account.
We usually transfer 3 horses to begin with, usually with one being a proven Top 1-2%. The other two will usually require some discovery.
We do the breaking of the horse in house for 10-15 races to establish our own baselines.
We leave the trainers to manage the horses as they please and try to interfere as little as possible. After the first two weeks we check in and the trainer is free to ask for replacement of any horse.
We then replace any horses as necessary and leave the trainer for a following two weeks. After that two weeks, we again check in and look at horse performances and earnings.
We pay a first dividend at the conclusion of the first month and split all profit 50/50 with the trainer. If the trainer is producing good numbers we introduce as many more horses as they would like.
Similarly if there is non performance, we scale back. We then pay dividends monthly.
I believe this model will be the future of the game at scale and will have many differing permutations and developments, likely including the usage and management of bots, which are already widespread in the game.
I think banning bots is a misnomer akin to ‘whack-a-mole’.
Breeding Class 1 winning horses.
The epitome of the game for me is breeding C1 winners and watching them win, either by our trainers or other top stables.
It is difficult to win C1 and it is extremely difficult to do consistently. Breeding championship C1 winning horses is the aim of Alhambren Bloodstock.
Everything else we do flows from this aim. Our success in my own mind is the number of C1 wins we have that flow from our lineages. Nothing else matters.
Stable Structure
Last but not least, we focus on stable structure.
We structure our stables in the following ways. We have a sales yard where we place all horses who don’t meet our criteria as likely to make C1.
This does not mean they will not be Top 1-2% horses profit wise, but I am happy to let these go to market and in fact we want these to go to market.
I’m not interested in playing within the C4/C5 market. We try and focus on C1/2/3. Typically that cut off point is around Z9 depending on lineages.
We only run the best lineages at Z9-Z10. The rest we sell unraced or very lightly raced.
We also put our pruned stock for sale which is a way for others to pick up championship lines.
This sales yard can be found here for those interested.
Q – How Many Hours A Week Do You Dedicate To ZED?
I spend easily between 30-50 hours a week on Zed.
I spend over that if there are events or something that requires more of my time.
Q – What Is Your Favorite Horse You Own And Why Do You Love It?
My favorite racing horse is by far DEZ.
He’s one of the most iconic horses in the game and was the 12th horse in the history of the game to pass 100 paid Class 1 wins solo.
I got him well into his career but had lost many many races to him before he came to us.
My favorite breeders are A Bit Of Bonza and Blinding Diamond.
The horses that are flowing from those two are top tier racers.
Q – What Advice Would You Give To Someone Starting A ZED Stable Now?
Start with a cheap breeding pair of horses and get 250-500 races under your belt.
You will understand the game a lot better and also how the breeding and bloodstock sales markets work.
Then set your goal in what you want to achieve in the game and slowly move toward it as your budget allows.
Q – Who Is Someone You Respect In The Zed Community And Why?
Most of the top stables using the blood tools are much more recognizable, experienced and proficient at the game than I am.
I try and learn as much as I can by bouncing things off all of them. The dream is to be the best breeding stable in the world.
Q – What Are Your Thoughts About The Blood Tool And Why Did You Buy it?
It is an absolutely crucial set of tools that I use every day. There is a very good reason many of the top stables in the world use it.
The insights are actionable and immediately obvious.
To do a quick check on its efficacy, go through the stables of the users and look at the number of Top 2% horses which reside within the cohort using the tools. It is undeniably skewed.
Our purchase of DEZ was made purely off the intelligence we were getting from the early versions of the tools.
We knew the horse was being raced at the wrong distances and in the wrong money lines. We also knew he was being poorly bred.
It is no knock on the previous owners, we just had better information and the decision was an easy one. The performance of the horse both on the track and in the barn since then is also undeniable.
I also think that there will be many competing tool sets in this space in time, and I look forward to becoming a customer of many of them.
Q – Where Will ZED Be 24 Months From Today?
That’s a complicated question.
I think it will either self implode or be enormous.
There really is not any a middle ground to me. I obviously hope for the latter!
Q – If You Could Change One Thing About Zed What Would It Be And Why?
I think they need to introduce the DEZ token and figure out the incentive chains that will bind the game together, similar to Axie Infinity.
I’ve been very vocal in the past and will continue to be about where I think the game needs to head.
Q – What Is One Secret You Hate To Give Away But Will Tell Us About Your ZED Strategy?
Horse stats that are handed down from breeding are not based purely on base ability and RNG. The bloodline of the horse matters.
We focus heavily on acquiring all top bloodlines, as close to Genesis/Genesis as possible.
Where we start a new root-stock, we give it an Alhambren branding, as much as anything to remind me which ones are the roots. For example, Slander Unlimited and A Bit Of Bonza made Alhambren Dragon Queen.
Jack at GBR shared an interesting insight with me which was that he believed the most valued lines in time will be hot blood with completely ROI+ lines, and so I focus now on building those down to Z6-8 in Nakamoto blood where possible.
We then tend to parlay that into Szabo and there are a lot of lovely runners who have come from similar construction. I have also found it is not profitable to continue with Nakamoto breeding past around Nak Z9 Elite.
The drop off in performance is pronounced and proven by the data.
For example, of the 649 horses to come from Nak Elite Mares, only 3 have been able to make C1/2 (0.46%), whereas from Nak Excl Mares, 105 of 2390 have made C1/C2 (4.4%).
These are the sort of cliffs and data points we look for to guide our breeding programs.
Q – Any Last Comments?
The end game success for Alhambren Bloodstock looks like a top money race with over half the horses having come straight from our lines.
This may seem counterintuitive, but to me, if it came from my stable and it wins C1’s I’m doing my job well. C1 wins trump everything.
Q – How Can People Follow Your Zed Journey Or Contact You?
You find find us on Twitter here!
You can also reach out to us on Discord at: Alhambren Bloodstock#3709
Alhambren Bloodstock
Thanks for reading our interview post of On The Track With Alhambren Bloodstock!
We are going to continue to post these interviews from the top stables around the community, so make sure to subscribe to not miss your chance at learning their secrets!
We’ll see you on the track!
Cheers
