The 2014 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Jancouver]

I believe I anticipated and disposed of both criticisms: must-pick riders who are on just about every team happen anyway, and teams of 33 that share one rider ubiquitously still compete through the 32 man composition of the remainder of the team.

Hey Chair, it was not a criticism but just an opinion.

As you said, since there are already so many must have picks adding another doper rider to every team would be pointless.

 

[LaFlorecita]

I think I would propose scrapping the returning dopers rule.

It is not for us to sanction riders (not that being omitted from teams in a fantasy league is any sanction) or to impose some sort of ethical standard. There are many reasons why a rider might have under-performed last year: injury, tactical deployment, suspension with subsequent exoneration, head "not in the right place", etc. Why would we make one reason a limit on selection and not the others? If the game is a test of knowledge, then knowledge of returning dopers is just as valid as any other.

At worse, it means that some riders, some years, become almost universal picks: that happens anyway (eg with Schleck in 2013 with Boonen in this year's edition): at worst, it simply means that the competition is effectively between squads of 32 rather than 33. There is still a call to be made: will rider X who can return in August find any team to take him on at that stage and what form will he have, and might up and coming youngster Y, with a new contract in an established team and a whole season's racing ahead of him, be a better pick?

Good suggestion. I agree.

And if we continue with the returning dopers rule, we must make it more strict: any rider that didn't race because of a (provisional) ban the season before, isn't eligible for that cost, but for their score of their last full season. That way we avoid a Remy di Gregorio situation in which a rider was provisionally suspended for the entire season but got cleared, and is thus eligible. Like I argued back then, the goal of the returning dopers rule isn't to punish dopers (if you got banned for reals, you won't get to be a good pick the next season in the CN CQ game, that should teach you!) but to avoid any very obvious, very good picks.

But then again that is bound to happen either way. There are also riders returning from injuries, like Chaves in 2013 and 2014. Many already picked him in 2013 but he got injured badly and scored 0 points. In 2014 he scored almost 500 points. Why is it an issue if something like that happens because the rider wasn't injured, but banned the season before?

Playing the devil's advocate, it might be interesting to pick 10 returning dopers in your team, as they're bound to score better, which would be a tad boring and easy.

 

[Hugo87]

Yeah, go to "subrankings" -> "compose your own subranking" and you'll get to this page: http://www.cqranking.com/men/asp/gen/cqSubrankingRider.asp. Once you're here, choose year = 2014 and CQ value = 0 and press search. Voila!

Thanks, but even with that tool I can't find a good "0" pointer.

 

[skidmark]

re: dopers, I get what Armchair is saying - the thing in the past has been, at least from what I gathered (Hugo was the one in charge when the current rules came into place), that some people are just against picking former dopers as a matter of moral preference. The current rules were put in place, in my read, as a compromise so that those people weren't just told 'too bad, you should be more tactical' in this game. It's definitely a bit more complicated from my standpoint to shuffle through former dopers and have different scores and different rules, and it's complicated for people picking the teams. But these compromises have developed over a few years of conversation, so they can change over time. It's too late this year, as I think it was for the questions of budget and rider size. So, everyone wondering, the rules will be the same as last year for everything, pretty much. The only difference is that I want to tweak the end-of-season rules a bit, and I want to try to institute this 'weekly points ranking' cumulative competition that was mentioned a few weeks ago. Everything else will be the same. Officially sanctioned riders (like, currently sanctioned ones, not ones who were provisionally sanctioned and then cleared/overturned; also, not ones who were suspended by their team for internal investigation but never investigated by an ADA or the UCI) will cost the same as their last full season, unless they scored more in a shortened season since then. That has been the rule and will continue to be.

What I can offer is to, at the very least, answer a query as to what a rider's cost is if you're not sure (PM me), or if we want to be transparent, I can publish a list of sanctioned dopers in 2014 and their 2015 game cost. I am hesitant on the latter as that's a bit of a 'spoiler', but at least will be clear. The former just requires participants to be diligent about their picks, which I'm fine with. So unless I hear compelling arguments to the contrary, I'll just say 'ask me if you're not sure about a rider's cost'.

I'm sensitive to the timeline as well, and hope that delaying it a week (last year it started on the 11th; this year will be about the 18th) won't reduce the number of teams. But from last year's experience, I don't think it will. I got a glut of teams at the start from keeners who had obviously had them ready anyway, and I got most of them in the final week. I expect delaying it a week will add a few more teams to the initial glut but not really affect anything else. Anyway, I'm working on a 2015 template and a reworked main post, and that's my goal to get up as soon as I have more than a few minutes at a time to work on it. The doper's list will be in place soon after, so I just want to counsel a bit of extra patience. We'll be running smooth soon enough.

 

[asdfgh101]

It's a shame to miss Aussie Nats.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Officially sanctioned riders (like, currently sanctioned ones, not ones who were provisionally sanctioned and then cleared/overturned; also, not ones who were suspended by their team for internal investigation but never investigated by an ADA or the UCI) will cost the same as their last full season,

Pffff.... Better find this season's Remy di Gregorio then.... Boring. Still don't understand why that is a rule. Confusing. Does anyone have a list of all provisionally suspended riders?

 

[search]

the key is "and then cleared"

As far as I can see, that's only the case for the two Clenbuterol guys this year. Unless a certain Italian gets cleared in the hearing next week - but I doubt that will happen before the start of the game (if at all), so he should still cost his 2013 score

 

[PeterB]

It's a shame to miss Aussie Nats.

Why should they be missed? I understand that game will start before 7th January. The delay skidmark refers to is only with respect to opening of new thread, or?

 

[Maaaaaaaarten]

the key is "and then cleared"

As far as I can see, that's only the case for the two Clenbuterol guys this year. Unless a certain Italian gets cleared in the hearing next week - but I doubt that will happen before the start of the game (if at all), so he should still cost his 2013 score

I'm not up to date with the clinical issues, but to my knowledge there's another rider who has been provisionally sidelined and then got cleared by his national authorities and we're still awaiting the appeal of UCI and WADA.

Maybe, I'm missing something - as I've said, I'm not up to date at all on these type of issues; maybe it's obvious that he will be banned or something - but this rider could potentially be quite influential in the game if he's fully cleared and rides a full and good season for his standards.

 

[search]

you are right, yes, there's no final decision to be expected before February or March anyway though, don't know how many people will take that gamble.

 

[search]

di Gregorio this year set a precedent though, before that, riders banned by a governing body at any time of the year were not available for the points they scored during that year, no matter if cleared later on or not (Sinkewitz at least was not for 2013, and his case was the same as di Gregorio's)

maybe it would be better to go back to that old interpretation (officially banned at any point = only available for the price of the last full season) of the rules to avoid confusion?!

edit: thinking about it, although even then, I could not say what the correct price for that certain Italian rider mentioned up there would be...

 

[Netserk]

you are right, yes, there's no final decision to be expected before February or March anyway though, don't know how many people will take that gamble.

Similar to Ballan this year. Some will gamble, others won't.

 

[Roude Leiw]

Not convinced here about these arguments. There are several riders who were sidelined part of the season and hence did not score. It is, at least to me, a big difference between a low cost rider due to injury, where you don't know at what level he comes back then a sidelined one, who trained but did not race and now costs like 100 points with history of 600+ on a consistent basis.

In my opinion, this should be about good cycling knowledge, finding talents and underrated riders, top riders having even better seasons, and not the one where the reward lies by combing through the cq list for hours to find the henao/ di gregorio etc of this world

So for me it is not about ethics, but having a good game

 

[search]

Similar to Ballan this year. Some will gamble, others won't.

well, I know every spot can be decisive, but there's still quite a difference between gambling on a zero pointer and risk losing ~500 points because it's likely he won't race at all

 

[Netserk]

well, I know every spot can be decisive, but there's still quite a difference between gambling on a zero pointer and risk losing ~500 points because it's likely he won't race at all

Surely it's quite likely that he'll ride for all of March and the time before that, no? As long as CQ doesn't strip him of his results before the game ends, he'd have the chance to at least make up half of his cost. And then if he is cleared, he'd probably make a very nice profit.

However I think it'll mostly depend on when he'll stop racing and if he'll get stripped before the game ends, as it's almost a given that he'll be banned.

 

[skidmark]

Okay, well after some thought, here's what I'm going to do for clarity's sake.

This is a list of provisionally suspended riders by the UCI. None of them are available for the 2015 game, at all. If you pick them, I will ask you to submit a replacement pick, or if you don't get back to me before the deadline, they will simply be removed with no replacement.
This is a list of riders that are/were recently suspended by the UCI. They are available for the price of their last full year before the suspension started.

That should make it simple. One thing I am not certain about is how far back this second list goes - like, the UCI list says it's riders who are 'currently serving a period of ineligibility' but lists riders whose suspensions ended even early in 2014. I believe, at least from double-checking this wikipedia page, that it is a comprehensive list of all riders that should have their scores adjusted according to this game. But if you know of others, please PM me.

And yes, this means that riders that have been sanctioned by their national ADAs but for some reason not by UCI (good news for Ballan lovers) are available for their 2014 price. And yes, this means that two prominent, high-scoring 'ambiguous case' riders are available at their 2014 price. Riders on the UCI list with an 'N/A' that had their suspensions rescinded are available at 2014 price. Everything is a risk in this game, including guessing whether a case that's up in the air will result in suspension. From my perspective, you have to draw the line somewhere, and I am choosing to draw it in a place of at least relative clarity.

 

[skidmark]

To quickly address a couple of other things in the thread:

- we are not going to miss Aussie Nats, I was only referring to my opening of this thread, which I had intended for last week. I am still in transit but have a few hours today and hope to have the first post up in a few hours, if all goes well. If not, Thursday for sure.

- aside from compromising for those who have moral opposition to picking dopers, I neglected to mention that a practical reason for instituting the doping rules is to avoid a scenario where a doping suspension makes a rider a blindingly obvious pick ala Valverde in 2012, as his suspension ended on Dec. 31st and so his 'last year' price would have been 0. Punishing people a couple of thousand points for overlooking an obvious rider is as unfun to me as rewarding people for navigating an arcane set of rules to find loopholes. It's my hope that with a UCI list to provide everyone, we're all on the same playing field, using our cycling knowledge to know who is going to have a good season.

 

[fauniera]

Official End of Season Update

final spreadsheet at dropbox

The link doesn't work. Can i see the final results somewhere? (I know i'm late, but my season was a disaster.)

 

[skidmark]

The link doesn't work. Can i see the final results somewhere? (I know i'm late, but my season was a disaster.)

Right, I cleaned up my dropbox folders and moved that file into a folder without thinking of the consequences. This should work.