The 2018 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[repre]

Update #6: Winning is a Fine Art

**note: I'm looking for people to take on the posting of the updates for the following months: May, June, July. If you are interested, please let me know either here or by PM, thanks!**

I have very limited time this week, so this update will be a little lower level of detail than normal. But a big week, with 3 2.HC and a 2.1 race, and even more riders getting their seasons underway.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank Team Points this week
1 TheArt 661
2 PeterB 592
3 archieboy 555
4 zaka_fan 533
5 ruvu75 519

Big week this week for TheArt, being one of only 2 teams with Lutsenko, one of 24 with Geraint Thomas, and one of many with Lopez. That mix of rare to popular riders was a winner this week, breaking 600 points. PeterB has Kruijswijk and Fuglsang in place of Lutsenko, and with the other two riders it's enough for second. archieboy rounds out the podium.

This Week's High Movers

Rank Team Up/down
1 TheArt (+81)
2 PeterB (+52)
3 ruvu75 (+51)
4 zaka_fan (+50)
5 Object (+49)

Similar table here, with the incredibly notable jump of EIGHTY ONE spots by our weekly winner, nearly 2/3 of the table in one fell swoop. PeterB gets second here, and their jump is notable because it's into the top ten! Quite the move this week. ruvu75 is very close behind in third.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank Team Total
1 Jon_Ezeitza 90
2 ChrisDK 72
3 PeterB 57
4 Nathanptz 54
5 18-Valve. (pithy) 52

A weekly win of 45 points will no longer get you in the top 5 overall; this competition is starting to flesh out. PeterB and Nathanptz score to leap into the top 5, the others were already there last week.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Up/down Team Points
1 (+1) Nathanptz 1841
2 (+11) Popchu 1706
3 (+6) l'velo 1680
4 (-3) bminchow 1658
4 (+8) LosBrolin 1658
6 (+22) Squire 1649
7 (-4) abbulf 1646
8 (+52) PeterB 1599
9 (+13) DJ Sprtsch 1574
10 (-2) CQmanager 1552

Some big moves in the top 10 this week! bminchow slides down after a week on top, and last week's runner up Nathanptz takes over with a pretty decent lead over 2nd. Popchu leaps into the top 10 right up to second, and l'velo bounces back after sliding a bit and regains the podium. Popchu, LosBrolin, Squire, PeterB and DJ Sprtsch all jump into the top 10 overall this week.
Spreadsheet at dropbox

Thanks for update, but wrong link to the spreadshit.

 

[Koronin]

Abu Dhabi

Gianluca Brambia
Davide Formolo
Neilson Powless
Alvero Hodeg
Lawson Craddock
Mark Cavendish
Stephen Cummigs
Alejandro Valverde
Jasha Sütterlin

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad

Alberto Bettiol
Zdenek Stybar
Niki Terpstra
Owain Doull

La Drome Classic

Maximilian Schachmann

Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne

Owain Doull
Niki Terpstra
Alberto Bettiol
Logan Owen

 

[Jspear]

Hmmm...some more recognizable names starting to pop into the top ranks....soon this is where the pro's start to show their mettle.

 

[fauniera]

Update #6: Winning is a Fine Art

[...]

Spreadsheet at dropbox

Spreadsheet is update #5, from last week.

(I'm fine with that, last week was really bad for me.)

 

[Nathanptz]

Highest ever position, now the question is to what position i'll drop?

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

Thanks again for the update, Skidmark.
I'm in the top ten - and Valverde didn't even race.
Incredible!

 

[Salvarani]

Anyone have the correct link to update?

 

[skidmark]

argh, what the frig? Okay here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s7tru60x90rki1l/CQ%202018%20update%206.xlsx?dl=0

 

[Koronin]

Wow, I moved up a few spots and have a rider in green. (well actually 2, but one of those started with 0 points). That's awesome.

 

[MADRAZO]

Very good news to the 1 team that dared to gamle with Juan Jose Lobato, with him now signing for Nippo. That is perhaps the best team of all for him to score high, and likely much better than one of the 3 smaller spansih pro-conti teams that very probably seen as the most likely destinations. When the fairly similar but a bit slower Canola could score 905 points with Nippo last year, Lobato could well match that and become a very good pick now if he gets back to his best form. I am glad he is only on 1 team, but nice pick by that team for sure.

 

[Koronin]

Re:

Very good news to the 1 team that dared to gamle with Juan Jose Lobato, with him now signing for Nippo. That is perhaps the best team of all for him to score high, and likely much better than one of the 3 smaller spansih pro-conti teams that very probably seen as the most likely destinations. When the fairly similar but a bit slower Canola could score 905 points with Nippo last year, Lobato could well match that and become a very good pick now if he gets back to his best form. I am glad he is only on 1 team, but nice pick by that team for sure.

Yeah, not on my team, but I'm glad he's found a team to sign with. I do happen to like him.

 

[jsem94]

Very nice that Valgren and Sep took some points in Omloop.

 

[manafana]

Dylan Gron is going prove a steal, has taken another step up it seems

 

[Gigs_98]

I should be really happy about the Abu Dhabi GC having 3 riders from the top 6 in my team, but the simple fact that Valverde is so freakin good starts to worry me. Before the game I thought picking him is foolish since anyone who picked him was just assuming he would make much more points than last year because of his injury. While that seems to make sense, simply assuming Valverde will replicate the best spring he's ever had, after that horrible injury, at this age seemed like a bet with very bad odds. But now he isn't only replicating his last spring, so far he is even better. He rode more stage races than last year, he won both of them, one of them is WT, and since his next race will probably be Catalunya again, there is also a long enough pause between these two races that riding more this year probably won't cause a worse result in Catalunya. Valverde has 550 points so far and the season has hardly started. If he keeps going like this, where is his ceiling? 4000 points? For sure clearly more than 3000.

 

[Gigs_98]

Re:

Dylan Gron is going prove a steal, has taken another step up it seems

I just looked at the spreadsheet and it seems like nobody picked him

 

[Koronin]

I should be really happy about the Abu Dhabi GC having 3 riders from the top 6 in my team, but the simple fact that Valverde is so freakin good starts to worry me. Before the game I thought picking him is foolish since anyone who picked him was just assuming he would make much more points than last year because of his injury. While that seems to make sense, simply assuming Valverde will replicate the best spring he's ever had, after that horrible injury, at this age seemed like a bet with very bad odds. But now he isn't only replicating his last spring, so far he is even better. He rode more stage races than last year, he won both of them, one of them is WT, and since his next race will probably be Catalunya again, there is also a long enough pause between these two races that riding more this year probably won't cause a worse result in Catalunya. Valverde has 550 points so far and the season has hardly started. If he keeps going like this, where is his ceiling? 4000 points? For sure clearly more than 3000.

At least a handful of us being fans of his choose to put on our teams because we figured even if he wasn't as good as last year (which I most of us expected him to not be as strong at least to start with) that he'd still put up more points in a full season than he did last year. I think many us thought it was likely he'd again be challenging for the WT points title, which has won 4 times and is usually right there. Plus he has a habit of points racing as well. There have been races that if he can't win a stage he'll still go hunting WT points.

 

[Akuryo]

I went with Kwiatkowski/Alaphilippe instead of Valverde and that seems to be also not the worst choice of expensive riders so far.
It's always a gamble with these picks cause they scored good last season and have to do even better in the following 12 month. Just like with the Valverde case I am hoping for an injury free season of Alaphilippe and if Froome gets banned I hope Sky will support Kwiatek even more. But without that he seems on a good path with Algarve already under his belt. Also a big fan of those two. After the retirement of Boonen, Kwiatkowski might be my favorite active rider in the peloton.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Valverde has 550 points so far and the season has hardly started. If he keeps going like this, where is his ceiling? 4000 points? For sure clearly more than 3000.

Calm down he'll slow down at some point

 

[Gigs_98]

I should be really happy about the Abu Dhabi GC having 3 riders from the top 6 in my team, but the simple fact that Valverde is so freakin good starts to worry me. Before the game I thought picking him is foolish since anyone who picked him was just assuming he would make much more points than last year because of his injury. While that seems to make sense, simply assuming Valverde will replicate the best spring he's ever had, after that horrible injury, at this age seemed like a bet with very bad odds. But now he isn't only replicating his last spring, so far he is even better. He rode more stage races than last year, he won both of them, one of them is WT, and since his next race will probably be Catalunya again, there is also a long enough pause between these two races that riding more this year probably won't cause a worse result in Catalunya. Valverde has 550 points so far and the season has hardly started. If he keeps going like this, where is his ceiling? 4000 points? For sure clearly more than 3000.

At least a handful of us being fans of his choose to put on our teams because we figured even if he wasn't as good as last year (which I most of us expected him to not be as strong at least to start with) that he'd still put up more points in a full season than he did last year. I think many us thought it was likely he'd again be challenging for the WT points title, which has won 4 times and is usually right there. Plus he has a habit of points racing as well. There have been races that if he can't win a stage he'll still go hunting WT points.

Well, getting as many points as last year imo shouldn't be the goal though. If valverde only gets 1800 points I would see him as a bad pick since his cost really limits your potential final points. Actually I'd say anything below 2500 points isn't really good, but at this points it doesn't look like that will be a problem

 

[Valv.Piti]

I have no clue of what I am doing, but it seems to be working fine for now. Lets get that #1 spot, at least just for a week, that will be enough for me!

 

[Koronin]

Re:

I have no clue of what I am doing, but it seems to be working fine for now. Lets get that #1 spot, at least just for a week, that will be enough for me!

I'm in the same boat as you with having no idea what I'm doing. However, you're doing a lot better than I am.

 

[skidmark]

Okay, a week of travel and being on remote sites for me, so I did a binge watch of all the week's highlights in various airports today. Pretty happy with my week! Abu Dhabi is of course the biggest one with Valverde looking imperious and Lopez doing just fine. And the first Valv-Alaphilippe showdown of the year, Valv gets 238 points, Alaphilippe 118... I'll take a 2-to-1 for that, for sure, that seems about right for both their values in this game. We will see what happens when the rubber hits the road in MSR and the Ardennes, as they're a ton of points and Ala could win any/all of them. And Valv has been dominant, but it's not even Paris-Nice yet, so I have to dial back my optimism to 'cautious'. Definitely better than him starting the season looking like a hurt old man.

Elsewhere in Abu Dhabi, too bad Enric Mas didn't do much and too bad Craddock lost time on that early stage or he might have been up there after the TT and been up there in the peloton instead of in the break on the last day. But his TT result is encouraging and he's cheap as dirt.

Opening weekend was not a points parade for me, but it wasn't for that many others either. Valgren is on 4 teams, Wisniowski on none, Vanmarcke on 13, etc... my highest finisher was one of my rarest picks Owain Doull, whose 11th place/30 points is nothing to throw a party about by itself, but is a solid result of the type I was/am expecting for him this year. I figure if he gets those kinds of finishes and maybe once a late attack sticks, he can end the season with some decent points. KBK was a big nothingburger for me, and of the French 1.1 races I only scored in the first one, where I got over 20 points from Gaudu and Latour, and Kangert got on the board. In other news (ie. guys not on my team that I seriously thought about and now wish I had), damn Narvaez looks friggin' good! His record from last year was tantalizing and he's looking like he's not missing a beat turning pro.

Looking forward to doing the update!

 

[fauniera]

Valverde has 550 points so far and the season has hardly started. If he keeps going like this, where is his ceiling? 4000 points? For sure clearly more than 3000.

Calm down he'll slow down at some point

In October.

Not sure which year.

 

[SafeBet]

Another rider who looks like an excellent pick is Narvaez.

 

[Maaaaaaaarten]

Meh I'd hoped for a good week with Alaphilippe and Izagirre in Dubai, unfortunately Izagirre didn't earn too much.

Another week, another chance to move up.

Le Samyn
CAPIOT Amaury

Strade Bianche
MOSER Moreno
GASPAROTTO Enrico
BENNETT George
KÄMNA Lennard
BRAMBILLA Gianluca

GP Industria & Artigianato
KÖNIG Leopold
CICCONE Giulio

Dwars door West-Vlaanderen
COQUARD Bryan

Paris-Nice
OOMEN Sam
KENNAUGH Peter
IZAGIRRE Ion
TAARAMÄE Rein
ALAPHILIPPE Julian
CHAVES Johan Esteban
EDMONDSON Alexander

Hopefully Alaphilippe, Izagirre and Oomen will earn a ton of GC points between them in PN.