Hawku ZED Horse Filter Glossary

Hawku helps make it easy for you to find your next great horse by providing you with a large number of filters.  These include both values at Mint and values from racing.

The minted values:

• Z-Value:  Z value  is known as the genotype of the horse. In general the lower the z#, the better the horse’s base ability.  Z-values go from Z1 (the premium top-tier horses) to Z268.  ZED created Z1-Z10 genesis horses and when players breed the child horse’s z-value equals the sum of its parents
• Breed-type:  This usually refers to the generation of the horse.  Original horses are “Genesis”.  When two genesis breed they make a “Legendary”.  It then goes down the line to “Exclusive”, “Elite”, “Cross” and “Pacer”.  In general - but not always - the further the horse is from genesis, the lower it’s base ability quality.  You can see a breed type chart here.
  
• Bloodline - ZED has 4 different bloodlines - Nakamoto, Szabo, Finney and Buterin.  Bloodlines come from the genesis horses (Z1 & Z2 horses are Nakamoto, Z3 & Z4 are Szabo, Z5-7 are Finney,  and Z8-10 are Buterin).  The child of two horses will take the lower bloodline of its two parents.  It has been debated whether bloodline has an impact on horse-racing ability.  Some have shown data that it has an impact on the performance of the horse, while others have shown data that a bloodline does not matter if you account for other factors
• Color - the color of the horse.  Some colors are more rare than others and some people prefer certain horse colors.  In Hawku you can specify either color or rarity.  You can also check for a supercoat which is a unique coating in children that can occasionally happen when two parents with the exact same color mate.

Race-based filters.

NOTE: Hawku intentionally filters its key race data to only paid races.  Free races are far easier to win and paid races will be much more indicative of a horse’s future success. (Without this filter, sellers can stage a 6% losing horse as a 15% winner by just racing in free races).  Our research has shown the best purchasers in ZED limit their data to only paid races. With that in mind,  Hawku still allows you to explore include free race data both on a listings page and an individual horse’s page.

The following filters and information are based on the horse’s races.

Win Rate: This is the % of races a horse has won. A horse usually makes 5.5X-6X the entry fee when it wins, so having a high win rate is the best way to a profitable horse.  

Show Rate: This is the % of races a horse has placed 1st, 2nd or third. The Show rate is important as only horses that have placed 1st-3rd in a race receive prizes.  Show rates have also been important for qualifying for ZED tournaments (with prize pools ranging from $75K-$400K)

Number of Paid and Free Races:  These allow you to filter by the number of paid races (including the Griffin race) or free races a horse has run.  It is one of the most used filters. Some people like to search for horses without many races, some like to search for horses with a lot of races (as other metrics become more accurate with more races), and some like to search for completely unraced horses.

Rating: The current rating of a horse. A horse moves up in ratings each time they are in the top 3 places and move down each time they are in the bottom 6 (currently).  As a horse moves up in ratings, they are placed into higher and higher classes where they face more and more difficult horses.  In general, the higher a horse’s rating is, the more ability that horse has.

Overall Fire%:  Fire, which some people incorrectly call flames,  is a ZED-specific attribute.  Before a race, ZED computes which 3 horses in a race are most likely to finish in the top 3 places and gives them a fire icon.  Hawku aggregates this across all (paid) races to give an overall fire % as well as fire by distance amounts.

Distance preferences:  Horses in ZED have different distance preferences. Some are sprinters and prefer races like the 1000M and 1200M, some are mid-distance and prefer the 1600M and some are distance specialists or marathoners and prefer races at 2200M and 2400M,

Advanced Filters

Average Race Class: Average race class aggregates which class a horse has been racing. The average Race class will be 1 if a horse has only been raced in class one and 5 if only in class 5.  Horses that have succeeded in class 1,2,3 generally are stronger horses than those that only perform well in class 5.

Average Race Fee: The average fee spent per race (ranges from 2.50 to 500).  Smaller pool races tend to have lower quality races so horses that have succeeded in $2.50 pot races may not succeed in more expensive races.

Sprint, Mid Distance, Marathon Fire %: These parameters allow you to filter based on the percent chance a horse received fire in Sprint (1000M-1400M), Mid-distance (1600M-2000M) and marathon(2200M-2600M) races.  Horses that have strong distance preferences tend to have more fire icons in their preferred distances.  

Class Points Per Race (CPR): The CPR metric tells you on average how many class points or ratings points a horse increases by per race.  Currently ZED increases a horse’s rating by 6 points for a 1st place finish, 4 points for a second place finish, 2 points for a 3rd place finish and -2 point for a finish between 7th and 12.  After every 20 ratings points a horse will change classes and face tougher competition.

CPR is an average of how many points a horse would have gained or lost per race historically based on all of their races.  One strategy is to look for a  CPR of 0 where a horse finishes first and last with just enough frequency so that they never change classes.

Average Place 7-12: The percent of time a horse finishes 7th-12th.  This is important as a finish 7-12 reduces class points by 2.  A horse that can balance finishing first 20% of the time with many finishes in 7-12 would end up in the same class and therefore face inferior competition.

Odds (old Data):   Until Aug 23, 2021, ZED used to provide odds for each horse per race.  This filter allows people to search based on the average odds of the horse.  Please note: This is no longer updating as no new odds are appearing, and also average odds are computed by averaging the inverse (i.e. the expected win %) and then re-inversing at the end in order to have an accurate average.  Searching by average odds is a good way to sometimes find gems in older horses.