The 2017 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[DFA123]

Re: Re:

He had an injury and missed 1-2 months of racing + he focused on track, so even if he doesn't improve he will easily beat his score of last year. Plus I think a lot of people underestimate his position in the team, if you watched quickstep races last season you would know he already was one of their leaders everytime they raced. Gaviria is probably going to be their leader in most of the cobbled classics except RVV and PR this year because he can get over cobbles and is their fastest man. It's not like he has to fight for leadership with Stybar or Terpstra - he doesn't have to attack, just wait for the last 20 km and if he's still there, quickstep will try to bring him to the finish.

I take your point, but I'm not sure that it's so straight forward that he will race more and get a load more points. He had I think 45 racing days last year - which for a 21/22 year old riding specializing in hard classics is already quite a lot. Say he manages to do 50-55 days this year, he'll have to match his results from last year and be pretty much top sprinter in the Giro to even improve by 300 hundred or so points. To come close to doubling his score he has to match his results from last year, be one of the best sprinters in the Giro, top 10 in a couple of monuments and do something at the worlds. He's got the talent to make it possible, but I think it's too early for him to reach that kind of consistency.

 

[Hakkie2]

Re: Re:

[quote="]Hugo KobletInteresting. Which players' teams did you use for comparison?[/quote]

In alphabetical order:

Abbulf (3rd CQ game 2016)
GeraintTooFast (best average placing CQ game 2010-2016)
Jeroenk (runner-up CQ game 2016)
Kazistuta (2nd overall CQ game 2010-2016)
Ludwigzgz (winner Emerging Riders CQ game 2014-2016)
Skidmark (winner CQ game 2016)
Squire (4th CQ game 2016)
Togo95 (5th CQ game 2016)
Vladimir (combined winner Classics+Giro+Tour+Vuelta CQ game 2016)
Wallenquist (winner Youth CQ game 2016)

 

[Hakkie2]

Lots of people here seem to think riders have to double their 2016 score in order to be good picks.
That's not true. It's more that riders have to add 250 points to their 2016 score in order to be good picks.

Malori costs 2 CQ. He needs to score 252 CQ, not 4 CQ, to be a good pick.
Ewan costs 552 CQ. He needs to score 802 CQ, not 1104 CQ, to be a good pick.

At least, that's how I picked my team ;-)

 

[Gigs_98]

Re:

Lots of people here seem to think riders have to double their 2016 score in order to be good picks.
That's not true. It's more that riders have to add 250 points to their 2016 score in order to be good picks.

Malori costs 2 CQ. He needs to score 252 CQ, not 4 CQ, to be a good pick.
Ewan costs 552 CQ. He needs to score 802 CQ, not 1104 CQ, to be a good pick.

At least, that's how I picked my team ;-)

I disagree, it's all about percentages. Many very cheap picks don't even really have the potential to make 250 points. Malori is simply an exception. Meanwhile I'd be disappointed if degenkolb makes only 250 points more than last year.

 

[Jancouver]

Re:

Lots of people here seem to think riders have to double their 2016 score in order to be good picks.
That's not true. It's more that riders have to add 250 points to their 2016 score in order to be good picks.

Malori costs 2 CQ. He needs to score 252 CQ, not 4 CQ, to be a good pick.
Ewan costs 552 CQ. He needs to score 802 CQ, not 1104 CQ, to be a good pick.

At least, that's how I picked my team ;-)

Not a good formula because if you have 33 cheap riders each scoring 250 points, you may not even hit 10K.

Would you pick Sagan if he could score extra 250 points?

Your formula would only work if each of your riders scored at least 477 points. That's why I always ask myself if the rider can double his points. If not, he is out ... unless he is one of the few I just want to have on my team regardless

 

[LaFlorecita]

Expensive riders don't have to double their score as long as some of your cheaper riders triple or quadruple their score.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re: Re:

Lots of people here seem to think riders have to double their 2016 score in order to be good picks.
That's not true. It's more that riders have to add 250 points to their 2016 score in order to be good picks.

Malori costs 2 CQ. He needs to score 252 CQ, not 4 CQ, to be a good pick.
Ewan costs 552 CQ. He needs to score 802 CQ, not 1104 CQ, to be a good pick.

At least, that's how I picked my team ;-)

Not a good formula because if you have 33 cheap riders each scoring 250 points, you may not even hit 10K.

Of course for the idea to work your team has to be at least close to the budget, but how many people send in a team that is several hundred points below budget?
If you spend 7500 on 33 riders and all 33 score 250 points more, you'll have 15,750 points and that's normally more than enough to score a really good result.

Would you pick Sagan if he could score extra 250 points?

If you can find 32 riders for 4200 points who will all score 250 points more than their original cost, why not? In the end it doesn't matter.

 

[Squire]

Re:

Lots of people here seem to think riders have to double their 2016 score in order to be good picks.
That's not true. It's more that riders have to add 250 points to their 2016 score in order to be good picks.

Malori costs 2 CQ. He needs to score 252 CQ, not 4 CQ, to be a good pick.
Ewan costs 552 CQ. He needs to score 802 CQ, not 1104 CQ, to be a good pick.

At least, that's how I picked my team ;-)

This is absolutely right. I've been trying to dispel the "double the score" myth for a year now without much success, but it seems I'm getting some help here.

 

[Netserk]

You cannot put a number on it a priori, absolute or relative (just take the hypothetical scenario where every rider scores exactly the same as the year before). You're average rider will cost 227. If the (average) return for many of the best picks around that price is 400, then the value of a rider costing 0 with a return of 100 will depend on how larger the return (in absolute measures) of a more expensive pick is than that of the average rider. In this case, you only have to find a single rider with a cost of 454 (or less) and a return of more than 700 for the swap to be good. If there's two above average priced riders, they will have to have a combined cost of 681 (or less) and a return of more than 1100 for the swap (of three average riders with the cheap rider and the two more expensive riders) to be favorable.

In a year with many good very low cost riders, the expensive riders will not have to be as good as in other years, and vice versa, just like if the return of an average cost rider is high, more of those will be able to out-perform a more diverse selection.

So in short, both relative and absolute return is important for all picks, and the market decides how those two needs to be combined for a pick to be good.

*Sometime, I will take a closer look on last year's game and the market of the most picked riders (probably top-100) and analyze how good picks they/(some of them) were, or rather how much of a return a rider would have to have in the different price ranges to be a contributing factor for a top team.

 

[Jancouver]

Re:

Expensive riders don't have to double their score as long as some of your cheaper riders triple or quadruple their score.

That is true and you know that better than any else because just last year Alberto didn't even match his points from 2015 and you still made Top 20.

On the other hand, by selecting Alberto, it probably cost you a podium, or maybe even winning the game because I'm sure you would do better with several cheaper riders gaining those extra 250 from each. And you also knew that there is no way that Berto will double his points.

 

[Squire]

Re:

You cannot put a number on it a priori, absolute or relative (just take the hypothetical scenario where every rider scores exactly the same as the year before). You're average rider will cost 227. If the (average) return for many of the best picks around that price is 400, then the value of a rider costing 0 with a return of 100 will depend on how larger the return (in absolute measures) of a more expensive pick is than that of the average rider. In this case, you only have to find a single rider with a cost of 454 (or less) and a return of more than 700 for the swap to be good. If there's two above average priced riders, they will have to have a combined cost of 681 (or less) and a return of more than 1100 for the swap (of three average riders with the cheap rider and the two more expensive riders) to be favorable.

In a year with many good very low cost riders, the expensive riders will not have to be as good as in other years, and vice versa, just like if the return of an average cost rider is high, more of those will be able to out-perform a more diverse selection.

So in short, both relative and absolute return is important for all picks, and the market decides how those two needs to be combined for a pick to be good.

*Sometime, I will take a closer look on last year's game and the market of the most picked riders (probably top-100) and analyze how good picks they/(some of them) were, or rather how much of a return a rider would have to have in the different price ranges to be a contributing factor for a top team.

Yes, to put it in a more simple way: For any N amount of riders you have (in practice I work with pairs or trios, for simplicity), you need to be sure that there is not another combination of N riders at the same price which together will score a higher (probable) amount of CQ points (in absolute measures). Which is what I wrote last year. Then of course you need to weigh the points ceiling/floor for a rider against his average expected score (if he rode an infinite amount of seasons) and decide how much risk you want to take. I think hakkie2's theory is much closer to this than the notion that every rider needs to double his points.

On another note; you seem to take an interest in this game, so it's a pity you didn't submit a team. I'm sure you would've done well.

Edit: Oh, and about the analysis for last year that you're planning. I remember Skibby once did an analysis on the optimal team for one of the years, and calculated the "penalty" for not including each rider, i.e. how much less points the optimal team without that rider would score. That's kind of what you're thinking about, isn't it?

 

[Netserk]

Not exactly, instead of analyzing what the very best (theoretical) team would have to be, it'd be a (simple) model over how big a return a good pick (a pick that wouldn't harm the winning team) would have to bring for the different prices. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention that when we talk about how much a rider needs to score to be a good pick, we often forget that we are talking about averages. In reality, a few picks will obviously be more than just good, and a rider like Kittel last year meant that the average of the other riders on the team wouldn't have to be as big. So for the last places in your team (which theoretically should be the weakest picks) the riders don't really have to score as much as the average of your whole team. And all that before we talk risk etc., because just like there will always be extremely good picks, there will also be bad picks on even the best team.

Regarding this year's participation, I would have liked to do so, for sure, but only really if I thought I could make a good enough team to be in the better end, which I didn't think I'd manage this year, since I haven't had much time before Christmas nor really followed/investigated the youth circuit as much as I'd have liked. Regardless, I think it's a great and fascinating game in it's simplicity and depth; and it's a good framework to think about cycling.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

The 8 people who have SCOTSON Miles will be pleased. Impressive display of power.

 

[del1962]

Good pick by them, he made my youth team but not main team

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

The 8 people who have SCOTSON Miles will be pleased. Impressive display of power.

Incredible!

 

[Tigerion]

Re:

The 8 people who have SCOTSON Miles will be pleased. Impressive display of power.

Was a great attack no doubt. Looked like the rest of the group sat on Durbridge who was already knackered. In part because everybody expect Greenedge to keep it together due to being the strongest team.
Then the counter attacks were too little too late

 

[skidmark]

Update: there is no update!

CQ hasn't put out a post-Aussie nats update, although they usually do, so I'm going to hold out hope that one is coming.

In the meantime, I've cleaned up the spreadsheet, got it up to the official 131 participants on the front page (Gotland was the other team that had its own tab but I forgot to include on the front page), and erased all the non-participant pages. Take a look through the file here.

I also updated the final official popularity standings, for riders and teams - had to change two teams that were entered in error and add one more team I messed up on and missed. Here's the final list of team popularity:

Rank Team score
1 fauniera 1633
2 Vesica 1631
3 Shawnm4747 1616
4 minessa 1612
5 freshman 1589
6 Kazistuta 1585
7 Wallenquist 1565
8 MADRAZO 1551
9 PeterB 1549
10 Popchu 1547
11 snccdcno 1546
12 skidmark 1528
13 the asian 1527
13 the attacking vikings 1527
15 Total Package 1526
16 del1962 1522
17 adamski101 1520
18 DJ Sprtsch 1508
18 Kryvo 1508
20 SafeBet 1506
21 will10 1492
22 kabete 1490
23 Hugo Koblet 1482
24 postmanhat 1474
25 Roubaix 1472
26 search 1464
27 CraZyCaLL 1463
28 laarsland 1462
29 HelgeBlendet 1453
30 nuvolablu 1435
31 lenissart 1433
32 karaev 1421
33 Joelsim 1417
33 LaFlorecita 1417
35 GP Blanco 1409
36 jeroenk 1406
37 Polliwop 1403
38 shalgo 1400
39 abbulf 1388
40 togo95 1378
41 simple 1362
42 AlyKaptan 1361
43 Maaaaaaaarten 1360
44 Jancouver 1344
45 Armchair cyclist 1341
46 Crevaison 1340
47 Eric10 1339
48 Schleckamagurky 1333
48 torcia_86 1333
50 vladimir 1330
51 Hakkie2 1326
52 vroome.exe 1308
53 Hugo87 1305
54 DFA123 1297
54 Kjellus 1297
56 Pentacycle 1288
57 Mellow Velo 1285
58 LightBing 1278
59 ansimi 1275
59 Gotland 1275
61 Brullnux 1270
62 greenedge 1261
63 Gigs_98 1260
64 rote_laterne 1257
65 trackstand 1254
66 comodoro 1247
67 Squire 1243
68 Martin 1236
69 Eyeballs Out 1222
70 EvansIsTheBest 1218
71 18-Valve. (pithy) 1217
72 Blues in the bottle 1215
73 oliveira 1213
74 Geraint Too Fast 1212
75 tom_jelte 1193
76 Yellow Knight 1182
77 Object 1177
78 Googolplex 1169
79 Bicycle_Boy 1165
80 Russell23 1147
81 sublimit 1144
82 Falze 1142
83 Sneekes 1123
84 Ludwigzgz 1122
85 Pantani1 1113
86 Ferminal 1102
87 merengues 1072
88 AupaPyama 1060
89 Spice_Girls 1043
90 R_O_Shipman 1017
91 Jpettersen 1012
92 Pirrewiet 1010
93 Jakob747 1008
94 barmaher 997
95 PunchingRouleur 992
96 escartin 988
96 zlev11 988
98 DJW 985
99 Londonpat 979
100 PremierAndrew 967
101 bminchow 965
102 bort 958
103 WKA311 941
104 al_pacino 928
105 just some guy 924
106 sodak_za 915
107 Tigerion 906
108 ItalianGigolo 899
109 Manafana 893
110 scrooll07 882
111 Poles & Co. 877
112 LukasCPH 871
113 LosBrolin 828
114 Nicosix 801
115 yoyokt 737
116 VeloRooms 735
117 ThePirate81 729
118 Tych23 653
119 archieboy 640
120 Roar Like A Mouse 625
121 CQmanager 604
122 armchairclimber 543
123 Guybrush 519
124 Carlo_Algatrensig 458
125 Josedin 454
126 Slapshot 450
127 Trudgin 414
128 Leadbelly 399
129 Guigsteam 313
130 ChrisDK 292
131 Magnumpti 219

 

[fauniera]

Okay, i won. Nice game that.

 

[Gotland]

I did a big fail and put Rolland in twice

Good that you saw it Skidmark. Looks I have given all of you a little bit of a headstart

 

[greenedge]

Thanks for the responses @ Jancouver, La Flo and Squire! My thoughts to each are below.

With Richie I think he was worth the risk in terms of being an unpopular pick, and the fact he didn't ride at all after the Olympics. He's had better springs than he did last year and he could have placed higher at the Dauphinie and the TDF, so this year i'm hoping all the stars align for him.

With Haas I definitely did pick him with some Aussie bias, but also think he can benefit by being DD's only rider really suited to the hilly races. With his Nationals performance i'm hopeful he can ride great at the TDU. A bit more worried now about Van Der Sande and Guldhammer (their low scoring pasts/ not being on a Continental team in 2015), but hopefully they can still go well!

With Jay McCarthy over Haas I agree to an extent, but I decided to pick a new Aussie for fun this year. With Porsev you're right and hopefully his absence doesn't come back to bite me. Schachmann wise I think he'll perform solidly throughout the year and has pretty good climbing ability so that was my other consideration to go with the ITT. Furthermore EQS' riders always seem to perform strongly and I think he has a big chance of being in their WC TTT squad who I think will edge out BMC, Movistar and Katusha (they're my dark horses for the event) so he'll get some points there.

Regarding Gaviria @DFA123 my thinking went along the lines of: consistent points being brought in year round; his track focus of 2016; his hugely impressive P-T; and lastly in regards to the Giro uncertainty as to who can challenge him. With no Kittel there and my suspiscion that Greipel may not ride so he can replicate his 2015 TDF I don't know who would be able to challenge him.

Your guys teams all look very solid as well, hopefully I can be in a position to contest against them high up in the leaderboard.

With regards to Scotson, starting off like this is a great start and should give him increased confidence for the year ahead. I picked Edmonson over him just because I thought he'd have a better chance to score points due to his sprinting ability but looks like he's staring off on the back foot.

 

[Squire]

I had a quick look at the popularity lists for this year. Here's how they've affected the overall CQ game statistics:

We have a new leader in overall picks across the years! Dombrowski moves past Phinney & Goss to take first place as the most picked rider ever. Aru enters the top 10.

1 DOMBROWSKI Joseph Lloyd 325
2 PHINNEY Taylor 316
3 BETANCUR GOMEZ Carlos Alberto 296
4 GOSS Matthew 289
5 MOSER Moreno 270
6 SCHLECK Andy 257
7 BOONEN Tom 252
8 EWAN Caleb 248
9 ARU Fabio 236
10 HENAO MONTOYA Sergio Luis 215

Degenkolb enters the list of most popular picks per year by being in 88,5% of all 2017 teams.

1 BOONEN Tom 92,0 % 2014
2 KITTEL Marcel 91,7 % 2016
3 SCHLECK Andy 90,2 % 2013
4 HUSHOVD Thor 89,4 % 2013
5 DEGENKOLB John 88,5 % 2017

As some players have already suspected, 2017 is indeed a very "unique" year, only surpassed by the first year of the game, 2011. This is decided by an admittedly very crude calculation: Amount of different riders picked divided by number of teams participating. There are of course a number of ways by which this number can be skewed, but it's an indicator at least. 2011's "uniqueness number" is 5,9; 2017's number is 4,8. The "least unique" year was 2013 with a "uniqueness number" of 4,0.

The amount of riders that have been picked at least once every year has almost halved from last year. 31 remain of last year's 59. This is the first year nobody has picked Sagan, Anton or Goss ( ) among others.

Three of the ever-present players were lost this year, so among the 2017 participants there are now only 16 people who have played the CQ game every year.

 

[18-Valve. (pithy)]

^ Interesting. Thanks for the analysis. I wonder what will happen to next year's edition's "uniqueness number," if the most popular team wins this "very unique" edition, though. If it will have hardly any effect at all, or if significantly more people will go for a similar strategy as Fauniera went for this time.

 

[skidmark]

Just a note for the CQ Game stats trackers and aggregators out there (I know Squire is one, but I believe there are others) - two teams changed their names this year that I know of, although there may be others. The team "Poles & Co." played as "WheelsuckersPL" the last few years, and "Guigsteam" was "Roda_na_Frente" in the past. If anyone else changed their team name that I forgot or don't know of, feel free to post that info here.

 

[skidmark]

Re:

I'm finally back home and back in my life so I can catch up with this thread a bit. Comments are about a week outdated now, but whatever. I'll be weighing in with my thoughts on things, and talking about my own team in a bit, because I love the discussion and it's a pretty dead period in the game still.

Here's my team. I won't go into detail on every single rider, but I'll post a few comments here and there. I think that I should say first that I don't think that my team in any way is optimal and perhaps not even very good. I decided that I wanted to pick some riders that I would like to follow this season even if it meant leaving out some obvious good picks. This means that I've left out riders like König, Ponzi and Trofimov to make room for less obvious, and probably less good, picks.

ZAKARIN Ilnur: 867

You know when you make an impulse purchase at checkout desk? Well, my most expensive rider was my impulse purchase. I honestly never even considered Zakarin before January 1st when I send in my team. It might have been the hangovers that made me pick him but I really like him and I do think that he can turn out to be a good pick. He showed last year that he's the rare kind of rider that can be competitive from March until the Giro ends which is a good recipe for scoring many points. This year his Giro-Vuelta schedule is much better than last year as well, so I have some hopes that he will turn out to be a good and pretty rare pick.

GAVIRIA RENDON Fernando: 833
ARU Fabio: 777
MOSCON Gianni: 622
KWIATKOWSKI Michal: 611
BENOOT Tiesj: 588
DEGENKOLB John: 550
LANDA MEANA Mikel: 479

The backbone of my team. I've already commented briefly on those, but the thing I like the most about my team is that I managed to include all of these riders in my team. I think the real value of the game lies here, so I'm pretty happy about that.

VIVIANI Elia: 275
INTXAUSTI ELORRIAGA Beñat: 79

Obvious picks whom I couldn't and wouldn't leave out of my team.

BEVIN Patrick: 203

I'm surprised that he has only been picked 5 times. He showed last year that he's a pretty good puncheur and prologue rider which is a great recipe for scoring points in this game. He also had much of his 2016 ruined by injuries so he should be able to do much better than last year. I wouldn't be surprised if he was one of the revelations of 2017, though I might be getting my hopes up too high.

I'll stop there because I don't need to go through your whole team, but I'd like to make a few observations.

- Zakarin is a risky, but probably decent and possibly very good, choice. I had him on my first long list until my process of repeatedly vetting my list and paring it down got him off on the second pass. Rodriguez is gone so the team is his; he dropped out of a top-5 GT placing literally with one day to go so there's no question he can do it; he's proven his worth in the 1-week races. He's solid, aggressive, young and hungry. I see no reason other than injury that he won't at least match his score. That said, he still had a pretty good year, and maybe if he did top 5 the Giro he wouldn't have gotten those other 165 or so points he got in the Tour. Still, let's say Giro-Vuelta and a smattering of 1-week results, 13-1500 isn't out of the question with his talent.

- that middle/high-price lineup is certainly the key to this game. I obviously chose a strategy with Nibali, some select picks from the middle group, and a bunch of lower-priced picks. You've got Benoot, Gaviria and Moscon that I don't have from there, and I'll talk about Gaviria another time, but Benoot is poised to have a bounceback year for sure. I considered him for awhile, but in the end found it too hard to hang my hat on a rider whose season depends so much on classics. I guess he's shown he can score in a variety of types of race, so he's more likely to cover than, say, a Paris-Roubaix specialist, but I just didn't quite see enough in him. Moscon I didn't even consider - my thought would be that he's shown aptitude above expectations in his first year, so Sky are gonna start using him on higher-level races, where points are bigger but competition is tougher. I have trouble seeing him improving his score by more than 1-200.

- I think Bevin could be quite a good pick. I have trouble guessing who's going to break out at Cannondale, as they have so much relatively young stage-racing talent that it's hard to guess who's going to have a good year and who is mostly going to work for others. Aside from Bevin there's Canty, Craddock, Carthy, Dombrowski, Formolo, Villella, Michael Woods... and that's aside from the leadership (Talansky, Uran, Rolland). I went with Dombrowski because his ceiling is high and Vaughters has a personal liking for him, but I really just don't know, so I preferred to stay away from the rest.

 

[Jakob747]

Re: Re:

I'm finally back home and back in my life so I can catch up with this thread a bit. Comments are about a week outdated now, but whatever. I'll be weighing in with my thoughts on things, and talking about my own team in a bit, because I love the discussion and it's a pretty dead period in the game still.

I am curious to know if you at some point considered adding Richard Carapaz this year? What's your reasoning for leaving him out of your squad. Don't you rate him?