The 2015 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[skidmark]

Update #1: In With the Old, In With the New

Well, here we are again in our first official update for the CQ Ranking Manager Game, and what better way to remind ourselves that this is a new season of the game where anyone can win than to have a tie for first place between a newcomer and the first winner of this game? Both newcomer Kjellus and 2011 winner ingsve had a fortuitous first week, with both the Aussie Road and TT champs on their team. Haussler was the highest scorer at 100 points, and so it's no surprise that the top 21 teams all have him (the highest without is the sceptic with a team of more than a few aussies and a kiwi scoring points). What gives our top 2 an advantage over Lortnoc in 3rd is the 4 (he's already got 4 more towards next update) points scored by Italian sprinting prospect Jakub Mareczko in the Vuelta al Tachira, the first time by my memory that a race other than Aus/NZ champs has affected the first week of the game.

So newcomer and vet share top spot, returning player Lortnoc holds down third (all had Haussler, Ewan, Porte, and an already-broke-even Flakemore), newcomer trackstand holds down fourth (Haussler, Ewan, Porte, Dennis, Howson - also a sidenote, trackstand is a friend I worked with as a bike courier who I convinced to give the game a try this year, so good first showing pal), and returning player Object holds down fifth. A good mix!

This week holds the rest of the 2.2 Tachira and the 2.2 Tour of Egypt, but the big boys come out and play at the 2.1 San Luis and WT Tour Down Under starting right at the end of the update, so this week may see a bit of a holding pattern, unlike last year when we had the Tropicale Amissa Bongo. Regardless, the game is afoot, and it's always fun to see the points pile up. Best of luck everyone!

Top 10:

1. Kjellus 268
1. ingsve 268
3. Lortnoc 264
4. trackstand 257
5. Object 251
6. ItalianGigolo 247
7. PeterB 240
8. Geraint Too Fast 225
9. (tie) Ruvu75, Multispeed, MADRAZO 214

Full spreadsheet at dropbox

(note on spreadsheet - I haven't cleaned up all of the tabs yet but this is the first update so the Rankings tab should have all you need. Also, I defaulted the Popular Picks teams and any late teams disqualified from the official game as ranked 156th; you can see them at the bottom of the rankings page and figure out where they would end up.)

 

[LaFlorecita]

I must have missed something...? Panda is disqualified from the real game?? For the love of god, because of 2 members getting their knickers in a twist Panda can't fully participate?

 

[Roude Leiw]

This is even more fun than i thought! Was thinking that i scored quite ok considering the races, but end up 122

 

[Jancouver]

Thanks for the update! This may be the only update I will find my team in the upper half

 

[NairoQ]

I must have missed something...? Panda is disqualified from the real game?? For the love of god, because of 2 members getting their knickers in a twist Panda can't fully participate?

If so, I propose organising a weekly Panda-update.

 

[cineteq]

Panda is participating, he is just not ranked. You'll find him at the bottom of list along with 2 PopTeams

 

[LaFlorecita]

If so, I propose organising a weekly Panda-update.

Yes we need this skidmark

 

[skidmark]

I must have missed something...? Panda is disqualified from the real game?? For the love of god, because of 2 members getting their knickers in a twist Panda can't fully participate?

I had decided they could participate in the game, and then there was some discussion about it, which included a post by PC that said they were fine with having an 'asterisk'. Since the member themselves conveyed that, I decided to go along with it, which I mentioned explicitly in this thread two days ago. I really haven't had time to think about how to apply this status on the spreadsheet, so I just ranked them 156. I'm sure there could be other ways to address that, feel free to suggest them to me via PM anyone. I really don't want to talk about this anymore on this thread - if anyone has any questions or wants to tell me they are annoyed at how I'm running this game, feel free to send me a PM, I promise I will respond. If not, I ask that you please respect decisions that are made about the game and focus the thread on talking about the players, the season, your team, etc.

 

[Jancouver]

I had decided they could participate in the game, and then there was some discussion about it, which included a post by PC that said they were fine with having an 'asterisk'. Since the member themselves conveyed that, I decided to go along with it, which I mentioned explicitly in this thread two days ago. I really haven't had time to think about how to apply this status on the spreadsheet, so I just ranked them 156. I'm sure there could be other ways to address that, feel free to suggest them to me via PM anyone. I really don't want to talk about this anymore on this thread - if anyone has any questions or wants to tell me they are annoyed at how I'm running this game, feel free to send me a PM, I promise I will respond. If not, I ask that you please respect decisions that are made about the game and focus the thread on talking about the players, the season, your team, etc.

Very well said! I dont blame you. I did not response to LaFlo direct insult as I also did not want to talk about it and will respect whatever you decide to do.

 

[rote_laterne]

thanks for the update. I hope until the end of the game I will slightly improve, I don't have much hope though, especially for the next two weeks. After a quick glance I don't think I have any riders participating in the TDU. I do hope dayer quintana performs in san luis.

 

[Netserk]

Now we're really started!

When I mentioned an asterisk, I just thought that PC would be mentioned as Panda Claws*, nothing more dramatic than that. Either way, I just want to say thank you for taking up the main responsibility to run this game (again this year)!

 

[Panda Claws]

I must have missed something...? Panda is disqualified from the real game?? For the love of god, because of 2 members getting their knickers in a twist Panda can't fully participate?

I do appreciate this , but at least I can track my results now. I also expected to simply be called 'Panda Claws*', but I will not make any demands or even state what I think should be done.

Especially Skidmark since I do not know how difficult it is to implement that in the spreadsheet (since my team does not count for the most popular team either, right?) and I appreciate you vouched for me. Another organizer might have simply said 'no' when I sent my team to you.

Perhaps people will remember to put my name in there between brackets or something if I do make it into an update otherwise I'll just say so myself.

That being said.

Is there no-one running an all-Australian team this year?

Also, is anyone else having a bit of trouble with the spreadsheet? I run Microsoft Excel 2010 and when I click someone's name it does not refer to their team page but gives me an error instead.

 

[LaFlorecita]

I will certainly remember to do a frequent Panda update PM sent to skidmark. I really do appreciate the hard work he puts into organizing this game but I am annoyed two members are trying to spoil the fun for another member.

 

[Panda Claws]

I will certainly remember to do a frequent Panda update PM sent to skidmark. I really do appreciate the hard work he puts into organizing this game but I am annoyed two members are trying to spoil the fun for another member.

Nah, I cannot imagine they are doing it to spoil my fun.
And thank you, but I think we should let im be, lest we discourage Skidmark from organizing this game again.

He has already gotten some slack for not being hard on enough on me, so I do not think you should do the same in my defence while I do appreciate it.

This is only the first update anyway and as he said, he has not had the time yet to consider how to put me into the bracket. I must say I was really hoping for other 'ghosts' to show up.

 

[skidmark]

Now we're really started!

When I mentioned an asterisk, I just thought that PC would be mentioned as Panda Claws*, nothing more dramatic than that. Either way, I just want to say thank you for taking up the main responsibility to run this game (again this year)!

Cheers netserk. For sure, I get what you're saying I'll think about how to write it in the future, and as long as we all know what the official ruling on it is, it should be fine if it is how it is now, or if it's a ranked team with an asterisk that everyone knows about, or so I hope. It's definitely impossible to come up with a decision that 150+ people are all okay with, so I just want to listen and do my best. My request for PMs is based partially on not wanting to clog up the thread, and partially because I prefer discussion there. I don't want to discourage feedback by any means, I just prefer direct discussion.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Nah, I cannot imagine they are doing it to spoil my fun.
And thank you, but I think we should let im be, lest we discourage Skidmark from organizing this game again.

He has already gotten some slack for not being hard on enough on me, so I do not think you should do the same in my defence while I do appreciate it.

This is only the first update anyway and as he said, he has not had the time yet to consider how to put me into the bracket. I must say I was really hoping for other 'ghosts' to show up.

No slack for skid from me! Where would we be without him

 

[the sceptic]

Mareczko the next great italian sprinter wins again

 

[Roderick]

For those itching for some CQ action, I manually entered the results of the Aussie TT into the spreadsheets and here are some rankings:

1. Roderick 111 (Porte, Dennis, Durbridge, Hepburn)
2. Handbrake 108 (Porte, Dennis, Howson, Hepburn)
3. npetalactone 105 (the podium)
4. trackstand 97
5. ansimi 94
5. Blues in the bottle 94
5. Vesica 94
8. sublimit 92
9. Armchair cyclist 91
9. Object 91
11. The Amateur 87
12. Jancouver 84
12. Martin 84
12. the sceptic 84
15. Peter B, skidmark, theyoungest, tom-jelte, Yellow Knight with 80

Official update after Sunday, this is just for those of us who are raring to go. There are only 16 teams who don't have a point yet from this one day of racing - more interestingly, there are 12 teams who have between 1 and 49 points (well, 11 and 39 to be exact), meaning they don't have the near-ubiquitous Porte but have picked other riders that scored.

Although this wasn't a real update, I'm still counting this as a win

 

[skidmark]

Okay, back to game-related things:

we had briefly talked at the end of season last year about having a 'green jersey' type competition, to give people who are out of the overall something else to be interested in. The idea was that teams would get weekly points based on how they finished in certain weeks, much as riders at stage races get points for stage finishes. With all the team entry to take care of, I didn't get time to really work out how this would work for this year, but I think it would be fun to try.

I was thinking that every week we could assign points for teams based on the rank of their weekly finish, and then add those up over the year. The basic points system I was thinking of would be:

1st on the week - 30 points
2nd - 25
3rd - 22
4th - 19
5th - 17
6th - 15
7th-20th would be down increments of 1 point per place, so 14 points for 7th through 1 point for 20th.

This type of competition might reward people for getting unique picks that give them advantages in certain weeks, or for 'risking big' with expensive riders that might end up injured and hurt someone's overall chances, or who might not improve a ton from the previous year enough to really benefit your team, but are more likely to score big in a week. There are lots of possibilities, but I think it'd be a way of giving people something more than the overall to be interested in.

I had thoughts about weighting the weeks differently, like more points for a week where a GT ends than for something like next week that has 2.2 races and a stage of a 2.1 race. But not only is that too complicated, I think it'd take away from the competition - like, if you do well on the last week of a GT when all the GC points are awarded, you're probably doing quite well in the overall too, so maybe you don't really need to be doubly rewarded. At any rate, there's no real knowing how it'd shake out other than to try it, so I think I want to try it this year, just with equal points for each week, regardless of what kind of races are going on. Someone who wins next week would be someone who gets lucky with a couple of unique picks in small races - this would be akin to a breakaway getting lucky in a stage of a GT.

I can vaguely imagine that this could be tracked automatically on the spreadsheet, but to be cumulative we'd have to probably create something like the 'last week' sheet that someone would copy the cumulative rankings onto before a new update, and then another sheet with some formulas to calculate the weekly rankings. For now, I'm happily to collect, track and report on it separately. Does that sound pretty good?

 

[Jancouver]

Okay, back to game-related things:

we had briefly talked at the end of season last year about having a 'green jersey' type competition, to give people who are out of the overall something else to be interested in. The idea was that teams would get weekly points based on how they finished in certain weeks, much as riders at stage races get points for stage finishes. With all the team entry to take care of, I didn't get time to really work out how this would work for this year, but I think it would be fun to try.

I was thinking that every week we could assign points for teams based on the rank of their weekly finish, and then add those up over the year. The basic points system I was thinking of would be:

1st on the week - 30 points
2nd - 25
3rd - 22
4th - 19
5th - 17
6th - 15
7th-20th would be down increments of 1 point per place, so 14 points for 7th through 1 point for 20th.

This type of competition might reward people for getting unique picks that give them advantages in certain weeks, or for 'risking big' with expensive riders that might end up injured and hurt someone's overall chances, or who might not improve a ton from the previous year enough to really benefit your team, but are more likely to score big in a week. There are lots of possibilities, but I think it'd be a way of giving people something more than the overall to be interested in.

I had thoughts about weighting the weeks differently, like more points for a week where a GT ends than for something like next week that has 2.2 races and a stage of a 2.1 race. But not only is that too complicated, I think it'd take away from the competition - like, if you do well on the last week of a GT when all the GC points are awarded, you're probably doing quite well in the overall too, so maybe you don't really need to be doubly rewarded. At any rate, there's no real knowing how it'd shake out other than to try it, so I think I want to try it this year, just with equal points for each week, regardless of what kind of races are going on. Someone who wins next week would be someone who gets lucky with a couple of unique picks in small races - this would be akin to a breakaway getting lucky in a stage of a GT.

I can vaguely imagine that this could be tracked automatically on the spreadsheet, but to be cumulative we'd have to probably create something like the 'last week' sheet that someone would copy the cumulative rankings onto before a new update, and then another sheet with some formulas to calculate the weekly rankings. For now, I'm happily to collect, track and report on it separately. Does that sound pretty good?

Sounds great. No extra points for grand tours needed IMO.

 

[Handbrake]

Although this wasn't a real update, I'm still counting this as a win

For those itching for some CQ action, I manually entered the results of the Aussie TT into the spreadsheets and here are some rankings:

1. Roderick 111 (Porte, Dennis, Durbridge, Hepburn)
2. Handbrake 108 (Porte, Dennis, Howson, Hepburn)
3. npetalactone 105 (the podium)
4. trackstand 97
5. ansimi 94
5. Blues in the bottle 94
5. Vesica 94
8. sublimit 92
9. Armchair cyclist 91
9. Object 91
11. The Amateur 87
12. Jancouver 84
12. Martin 84
12. the sceptic 84
15. Peter B, skidmark, theyoungest, tom-jelte, Yellow Knight with 80

Official update after Sunday, this is just for those of us who are raring to go. There are only 16 teams who don't have a point yet from this one day of racing - more interestingly, there are 12 teams who have between 1 and 49 points (well, 11 and 39 to be exact), meaning they don't have the near-ubiquitous Porte but have picked other riders that scored.

Well with my stuff up having Howson twice in my list would have had me in first place for the first an only time this year if I could use him as a wild card! Nice to have made one update for the year, even if it wasn't an official weekly update.

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Great with the first update already out! Kjellus isn't a newcomer though - he participated in the 2013 edition (and might have participated in earlier versions as well)

Regarding the green jersey, then I think it could be fun. As someone at the Velorooms forum suggested, I think that a more top heavy structure would be better though.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Mareczko the next great italian sprinter wins again

Wow

 

[Hugo Koblet]

Mareczko the next great italian sprinter wins again

I might regret not picking him for this game.. Luckily I have him in my youth team where I suspect he might be more important

 

[vladimir]

Great with the first update already out! Kjellus isn't a newcomer though - he participated in the 2013 edition (and might have participated in earlier versions as well)

Regarding the green jersey, then I think it could be fun. As someone at the Velorooms forum suggested, I think that a more top heavy structure would be better though.

I haven't read the discussions at Velorooms, but I think it would be better with a points systems that means that winning one week should be better than finishing 6th, 7th and 9th in three weeks. My proposal would be to limit to top 5 each week with points 10-5-3-2-1. Then it would be easier to climb fast if you get two very good weeks. But of course I will be happy with whatever Skidmark decides