• The Cycling News forum is looking to add some volunteer moderators with Red Rick's recent retirement. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

The 2018 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

Page 43 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
I am in the same boat. I had second, third and ninth in the Vuelta, scored over 1100 points and I still dropped a few spots.

It seems to me that the standard has been very high this year. I have made fewer mistakes than usual, picked a couple of crackers and I am still only 30th or so.
 
Update #37: Geraint has one more victory this year

It's a bit of a bridge week this week, with the Vuelta done and the Worlds to come (the 62 points offered to winners of the TTT this week was less than winning one of the 1.1 races this week), but a bunch of little races with similar fields could lead to a decent haul if you had a rider or two on form.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank Team Points this week
1 Geraint Too Fast 494
2 Vesica 486
3 DJW 399
4 JPettersen 377
5 rote_laterne 368

The namesake of the team may have ended his season already, but Geraint Too Fast pulls out a victory this week with a very respectable 494 points. Leading the charge on that team is Gianni Moscon, who adds 147 points to his 80 points last week, breathing some life into a disappointing season (as a CQ points earner as well as a human being; although he only gets CQ points redemption this week). Also adding to the points haul is 4-time-TTT winner Nikki Terpstra in one of his last races with QuickStep, as well as 60 points from David Gaudu (who is also having a rather disappointing season). Add in some contributions from Bardet, Welten, Van Schip and a couple of the Sunweb TTTers and you've got a winning formula. Vesica comes oh so close but has to settle for second, unsurprisingly with Moscon leading the way as well, but also with a few other 'steppers in De Plus and Schachmann, and the very fast and very young Jasper Philipsen. DJW is a little bit behind in third, with a similar but less robust slate of riders as the top two.

This Week's High Movers

Rank Team Up/down
1 Vesica (+7)
2 rote_laterne (+6)
2 scrooll07 (+6)
4 Geraint Too Fast (+5)
4 WKA311 (+5)

Not a lot of spots to move around by the end of the season. Vesica does one better on this chart, getting the weekly win for moving up seven spots. rote_laterne and scrooll07 tie for second, bettering their 5th and 6th on the other chart (interesting note - scrooll is the highest non-Mosconite this week, instead being powered by 140 points from unique pick Mads Pedersen).

Green Jersey Competition

Rank Team Total
1 Squire 240
2 archieboy 221
3 Eric10 218
4 greenedge 203
5 zlev11 186

A relatively quiet week - Eric10 gets 4 points for 14th on the week to inch up closer to the top, but no other real gains of note at the top.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Up/down Team Points
1 (-) ruvu75 15106
2 (-) Squire 14720
3 (-) TheArt 14108
4 (-) trackstand 13896
5 (-) Gigs_98 13683
6 (+1) LosBrolin 13142
7 (+1) Total Package 13125
8 (-2) Eyeballs Out 13119
9 (+2) MADRAZO 13092
10 (-) Manafana 12999

There is a somewhat anticlimactic stratification at the top, but of course at the end of the season all it takes is one rider that others don't have to have a good run in some big races. ruvu75 gains 201 points on Squire this week, scoring 316 to Squire's 115. Squire does have a few possibilities, like Woods for the Worlds/Lombardia and Ciccone for the hilly Italian races, but perhaps a more likely scenario is that they both get points when Alaphilippe wins everything in the next few weeks. TheArt is still on the podium by a couple of hundred, but trackstand closes the gap a bit with some Moscon points. The top 5 seems pretty set in some order, but spots 6 through 10 are still quite close. MADRAZO swaps places with Wallenquist to move into the top 10 while the latter moves out.

Who's gonna score big at the Worlds? The TT seems fairly minimal impact in that if the Dennis/Dumoulin combo takes the top 2 as expected, there won't be tons of points in this game, but the RR has some intrigue. If it all goes according to 'the best duke it out' then it could definitely be a Alaphilippe romp, with some hope for those who have Valverde and possibly Moscon. But if the favourites mark each other, a punchy underrated rider could take a flier, or if they watch each other too much it could come back together for the Sagans and Van Avermaets of the world. Or some Colombians, or Kwiatko, or whatever. We shall see!

Spreadsheet at dropbox
 
Re:

Squire said:
A podium seems pretty secure for my team now, which would make me happy. It would of course be great to win it, but I need something special to overtake Ruvu75. This week was quite frustrating in that regard. Whenever I had a Taaramäe in 2nd place, Ruvu had a Gasparotto in 3rd.
Something special like Woods' ride yesterday? :)

Should be a very close final.
 
Well, that was an exciting worlds. Despite my team's utter mediocrity this year, being able to cheer for Vavlerde without the slightest back-of-my-mind thought that well, if he doesn't win, maybe one of my CQ guys can get points, was a highlight of the year.

Re: the game, this is an important update, but CQ doesn't have it up yet (9:30am in Canada) and I've gotta teach two 3-hour classes today, then a meeting, then an evening engagement. So the update will have to come tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing how things shake out.
 
Re: Re:

fauniera said:
Squire said:
A podium seems pretty secure for my team now, which would make me happy. It would of course be great to win it, but I need something special to overtake Ruvu75. This week was quite frustrating in that regard. Whenever I had a Taaramäe in 2nd place, Ruvu had a Gasparotto in 3rd.
Something special like Woods' ride yesterday? :)

Should be a very close final.
Something exactly like that. :D

I'm still a bit off 1st place, though. I think I'll beat ruvu by roughly the same amount of points as they beat me with last week, so we're back to how it was two weeks ago. But Woods' ride gives me hope that he can score some more points in the upcoming Italian races, so even though I'm still a bit behind, I feel like I have a chance afterall.
 
Update #38: Worlds points tightens things at the top

The biggest single-race points on offer were the 400 points for the Worlds Road Race, which were handed out this week. Winner Valverde has been a factor in this game, although fellow favourite and CQ game essential Alaphilippe only got 8th place points (which are still somewhat substantial), and with the other top 10 riders mostly rare or non-picked riders, it's going to be an interesting week.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank Team Points this week
1 Giallo 752
2 Geraint Too Fast 658
3 will10 651
4 Kryvo 627
5 fauniera 618

Giallo's top-heavy team strategy pays off this week, as they are the only team with Valverde (15 teams), Alaphilippe (59 teams) and Moscon (21 teams) - if Sagan had had a better day, their team's point total would have been stratospheric. That's most of the scoring though - other than a few points here and there (Navardauskus randomly wins a 2.2 race for 33 points, rare pick Milan Menten picks up the same amount), that's more than enough to win the week by almost 100 points. Second place this week is last week's winner Geraint Too Fast, who actually doesn't have Valverde, but is one of the two teams with second place Bardet, as well as Moscon and Alaphilippe (and contributing points from Oomen, Taaramae and the aforementioned Milan Menten, who I have never heard of before this post). Rounding out the top 3 is will10, with another interesting non-Valverde mix of Michael Woods (9 teams), Victor Campanaerts (4 teams) and David Villella (5 teams), who got 141 points in Kazakhstan this week. Also popping up at the bottom of this week's top 5 is last year's winner fauniera, whose bold Valverde-Alaphilippe strategy paid off this week.

This Week's High Movers

Rank Team Up/down
1 Kryvo (+12)
2 Giallo (+11)
3 Koronin (+8)
3 Akuryo (+8)
3 search (+8)

Kryvo, who was 4th in the last chart and missed the podium by 24 points, takes top spot over Giallo here, moving up 12 points on the strength of double World Champion picks Valverde and Marc Hirschi. There's a 3-way tie for 3rd, with Koronin, Akuryo, and search each leaping 8 points in the standings.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank Team Total
1 Squire 240
2 archieboy 221
3 Eric10 218
4 greenedge 203
5 Kryvo 193

No movement at the very top - leader Squire ends up in 16th place for the week, just out of the points. Kryvo jumps into the top 5 with the 26 points their team got on the week, and further down in the top 10 we have Geraint Too Fast, Giallo and fauniera jumping in on the strength of big weeks. Still, only the top 4 are within a weekly win of first place.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Up/down Team Points Points this week
1 (-) ruvu75 15377 271
2 (-) Squire 15240 520
3 (-) TheArt 14457 349
4 (-) trackstand 14393 497
5 (-) Gigs_98 14005 322
6 (+3) MADRAZO 13536 444
7 (-1) LosBrolin 13448 306
8 (+5) kabete 13412 488
9 (-1) Eyeballs Out 13389 270
10 (+1) Wallenquist 13319 325

I added the "Points this week" column so you can see for yourselves how it's playing out at the top. ruvu75 still leads, but it's a lead that's drastically slashed. I mentioned last week that a good performance by Woods at the Worlds could pull Squire back from the deficit their team faced, and indeed the gap has closed to 137 points, which is 249 points closer than last week. TheArt is a distant third, and being closed on by trackstand, who is now within 64 points of the podium after another solid week. Down a bit farther, kabete and Wallenquist jump into the top 10, while Total Package and Manafana fall out.

spreadsheet at dropbox
 
With Bala and Ala I thought I'd climb far more than I did this week. I scored more than Koronin, but only moved up 4 places to her 8. Having said that, 8th overall on the week isn't bad. I had wanted to be in the top half of the table by season's end so I'm at least heading in the right direction.
 
Decent week for me. I'm kinda in no man's land between 4th and 6th with a few hundred points buffer on both sides. I guess theoretically I could still move a few spots but at this rate I expect to at least stay in the top 10 (although ofc still everything can happen) and as that has been my goal I'm happy.
 
Kwiatkowski into profit. Well, who'd've thought that after the Ardennes were over? Valverde would've been the better option in hindsight for the amount of points but since he was a rare pick I am still grateful he got more points than last year!
 
Re:

Akuryo said:
Kwiatkowski into profit. Well, who'd've thought that after the Ardennes were over? Valverde would've been the better option in hindsight for the amount of points but since he was a rare pick I am still grateful he got more points than last year!


Well remember before the season started no one really knew how good Valverde would be this year when he came back from the injury. So those of us that took him, did take a chance and I think are mostly also big fans of his.
 
Re: Re:

fauniera said:
Kazistuta said:
giphy.gif

This. :D

Thank you skidmark.

To Valverde or not to Valverde, that is the question. I have a team with him and one without, now i just have to decide...

tumblr_ojkjfs0EIk1qaedvuo6_250.gif

Hope you picked Valverde :D

This looks like fun. I might join up for this next season.
 
This game can never get enough Klödist participants, Greg :D A pity I never got to pick the great Andreas for the CQ game.

So Valverde turned out to be a good, but not essential pick. And picking him meant that you probably missed out on even better picks like Alaphilippe and Thomas, because Lopez and Chaves had higher priority for most players.
I wonder how fauniera's Valverde-less team would've done. It probably would've needed Geraint Thomas in order to do significantly better.
 
Re:

Squire said:
This game can never get enough Klödist participants, Greg :D A pity I never got to pick the great Andreas for the CQ game.

So Valverde turned out to be a good, but not essential pick. And picking him meant that you probably missed out on even better picks like Alaphilippe and Thomas, because Lopez and Chaves had higher priority for most players.
I wonder how fauniera's Valverde-less team would've done. It probably would've needed Geraint Thomas in order to do significantly better.

Yeah, he would have been very good to have had in the game in 2011!

A weird question: Do we also have a game on here - or elsewhere - where everyone's team is picked via a draft system? So that you cannot have the same rider as someone else?

Obviously this sort of a game would be restricted to only 22 teams or so, but I'm interested to hear if there is such a game. I think that sort of stuff is pretty popular in other sports, like NBA basketball.

If we did it on here then we would want to make it realistic, so one or a few teams would need to have much larger budgets than the rest :D
 
Update #39: Ruvu75 puts a stamp on the season

It was the in-between week, sandwiched by the Worlds and Lombardia, after which there are a few trickle-off races left in the season, but it's about the time where things can really tighten up or be put out of reach. Let's see how it went, shall we?

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank Team Points this week
1 MADRAZO 587
2 ruvu75 546
3 Geraint Too Fast 479
4 GP Blanco 420
5 scrooll07 397

MADRAZO takes the win this week with a very respectable-for-a-non-WT-week 587 points, on the back of two rare picks winning 1.HC races in Walscheid (9 teams) and SK Andersen (11 teams); as well, Woods, Terprstra, Van Poppel, Coquard and Sbaragli help out with some more points. In second is - yep - overall leader ruvu75, with a clutch week at the most opportune time. Andersen gets a bunch of points but almost as many come from Valentin Madouas (134 this week), who, at a cost of 33 and a season total of 561, is a gem for the 4 teams that picked him. Geraint Too Fast continues a remarkable run, capping a first two weeks ago and second last week with a complete set of podium places, finishing third with Andersen and still more points from Moscon and Bardet (and 32 more from that Milan Menten fellow).

This Week's High Movers

Rank Team Up/down
1 Geraint Too Fast (+7)
1 18-Valve. (pithy) (+7)
1 GP Blanco (+7)
1 torcia_86 (+7)
1 Eric10 (+7)

It's too late in the season for much change in the standings, so everyone ties for first! Well, no, just these five teams tied for first, but they're all moving up.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank Team Total
1 Squire 240
2 Eric10 224
3 archieboy 221
4 Geraint Too Fast 212
5 greenedge 203

There is some movement at the top here - Eric10 scores 6 points to leapfrog archieboy into 2nd place and draw a bit closer to Squire's lead, and GTF's aforementioned fantastic three-week run sees their team leap into the top 5. All members of the top 5 are within a weekly win of the overall title.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Up/down Team Points
1 (-) ruvu75 15923
2 (-) Squire 15512
3 (-) TheArt 14833
4 (-) trackstand 14786
5 (-) Gigs_98 14159
6 (-) MADRAZO 14123
7 (+2) Eyeballs Out 13770
8 (-) kabete 13647
9 (-2) LosBrolin 13640
10 (+1) Total Package 13588

The placings haven't changed much but the underlying numbers are telling. If you read the weekly top scorers, you'll likely have intuited that the overall leader of the game getting 2nd on the week is likely to be a bad sign for everyone else. Indeed, ruvu75 outscores their only realistic competitor - Squire - 546-272 this week. This puts the lead, at this late in the season, for all intents and purposes out of reach. Squire would need something like Mike Woods winning Milano-Torino and Il Lombardia, and then some luck on top of that. Still mathematically possible, but as unlikely as Chris Froome's chances of winning the Giro going into stage 19. The battle for the last podium spot stays close, with trackstand gaining 16 points on TheArt to pull within 50. MADRAZO's weekly win doesn't gain them a single spot (interestingly, I wonder if this is the first time that the top 2 weekly scorers didn't move up at all in the standings) but has brought them within 40 points of a top 5. Further down, Total Package moves back into the top 10 while Wallenquist falls out.

Let's see what the rest of the Italian races and Turkey have to offer us!

spreadsheet at dropbox
 
Thanks for another great update. Dropped one place, even though I had Kragh Andersen. But then again, I had nothing much else.
Today I had ten starters in Tre Valli Varesine, and thought I could get closer to the top twenty I am aimingfor (only 200 points ahead). The race gave me 37 points. I'm not impressed by my team today.
 
Thanks for the update. I lost one spot, not bad. I had Terpstra and Madouas who did well this week, but that was it (well they scared all but 5 points for me this week, those other 5 points were from Sutterlin whom I expected more from this year). The rest of my team either didn't race or didn't do anything. One conclusion for next year's team: Terpstra is going to be way too expensive and no way he has this good of a season next year.
 
Thanks for the update Skidmark!

@Squire in terms of picking Geraint and Alaphilippe they weren't that much better picks than Lopez- they got more profits but Lopez got a higher % return than either of the other two and was probably essential to be up there challenging (as you know of course).

@Gregrowlerson, an idea for a game like that with a draft would be good, it could even be adjusted to the CQ format to ensure not going over 7500 or whatever parameters (team size/ how many play, or just the points total at the end of the year) as you'd want. I think even basing it off the WT rankings (forcing teams to pick from the top 22 or however many riders match up with teams then allowing for free rein as to who is picked) could work.
 

TRENDING THREADS