The 2020 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[Hakkie2]

No, he was CT last year as well.

I thought he was still Caja Rural last year.
Looks like I was lucky in this case.

 

[christopherrowe]

My team scored points this past week with Simmons, Paret-Peintre, Asgreen, Jorgenson (if seventh in a TTT actually nets points), Steimle (same situation as Jorgenson, except DQS got second), Higuita, and Hodeg.

This week, I have two riders starting in the Algarve (Pöstleberger and Arndt), five in Andalucia (Molenaar, Mas, Vanhoucke, McNulty, and “just race him everywhere” Simmons), and one at the Faune-Ardèche Classic (Paret-Peintre).

 

[bminchow]

My team scored points this past week with Simmons, Paret-Peintre, Asgreen, Jorgenson (if seventh in a TTT actually nets points), Steimle (same situation as Jorgenson, except DQS got second), Higuita, and Hodeg.

This week, I have two riders starting in the Algarve (Pöstleberger and Arndt), five in Andalucia (Molenaar, Mas, Vanhoucke, McNulty, and “just race him everywhere” Simmons), and one at the Faune-Ardèche Classic (Paret-Peintre).

Not too bad. Yes, i actually picked Simmons because i saw he was entered in a race almost every week. Even as a youngster i thought there might be points. Hopefully he is learning a lot for the second half.

 

[bminchow]

Early in the season but not loving my team. Mostly because I didn't have the guts to pick Evenepoel or Pogacar. They might rule this game. Also missed on Bagioli. I didn;t even consider him. I had him last year and didn;t really see this coming. I should have known when DQT picked him up. All I need is to have Ciccone (unique pick) win every race he enters this year (one for one) and I have a shot. Good start but we'll see how he goes when racing with Nibali.

 

[Salvarani]

Early in the season but not loving my team. Mostly because I didn't have the guts to pick Evenepoel or Pogacar. They might rule this game. Also missed on Bagioli. I didn;t even consider him. I had him last year and didn;t really see this coming. I should have known when DQT picked him up. All I need is to have Ciccone (unique pick) win every race he enters this year (one for one) and I have a shot. Good start but we'll see how he goes when racing with Nibali.

Ciccone should be good in UAE Tour, and if he does well you might already be up 50% on him.

 

[BlueRoads]

I think this week went kind of well for me. Dani Martinez and George Bennett scored nice points, Kämna some, others added a few. Bagioli and Garrison looked good, Oomen and Aru good enough.

For next week I have Kämna, Geniets and Kwiatkowski, Simmons, Konychev, Ravasi and Affini, and then quite a lot of riders for the Tour du Var: Pinot, Cosnefroy, Godon, Lopez, Hirschi, Ooomen, but of course they will all be smashed by the mighty Quintana 4.0, so I can't expect too much. At least Astana isn't there.

 

[skidmark]

Update #6: HelgeBlendet Puts it all Together

February continues apace with the appetizer races leading up to Opening Weekend, Paris-Nice and everything after, and we are starting to see some riders really come into their own, taking a good chunk out of or even surpassing totals from last year. One team this week stood above the rest, however.

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this week
1	HelgeBlendet	600
2	Hakkie2	464
3	Mayomaniac	457
4	Northerner	447
5	DJ Sprtsch	432

HelgeBlendet scores an even 600 points in a week where no one else even topped 500, the effects of which (spoiler alert) you will see further down the table. This wasn't due to a solitary pick hitting it big, either - this was accomplished by committee, with 9 riders scoring between 40 and 89 points for their team. These are (deep breath): Jonathan Caciedo (89 points, 3 teams), Hugh Carthy (88, 5), Wilco Kelderman (85, 26), Diego Rosa (66, 5), Lennard Kamna (66, 46), George Bennett (54, 9), Esteban Chaves (40, 14) and Louis Meintjes (40, 21). Very impressive! Meanwhile, Hakkie2 wasn't content with the overall lead and wanted another notch in the belt, so their team gets second with 464 points. Danilo Celano (197 points, 3 teams) leads the way there, with unique pick Pierpaolo Ficara (83 points) also contributing a significant amount. Mayomaniac nabs the final podium spot thanks as well to Celano and a fantastic showing from young Biniam Hailu (78 points, 7 teams).

This Week's High Movers

Rank	Team	Up/down
1	DJ Sprtsch	(+30)
2	Sneekes	(+28)
3	bminchow	(+27)
4	BlueRoads	(+25)
5	CQPlayer7373	(+24)

Quite a different top 5 here, as lots of the top scorers were already quite high on the standings. DJ Sprtsch takes the honors here, moving up thirty places thanks to Dani Martinez's 108 points leading the way. Sneekes is close behind (shoutout to the 139 points provided by an opportunistic Xandro Meurisse), while bminchow lands in third (as mentioned upthread, unique pick Ciccone got 130 for winning Laigueglia).

Green Jersey Competition

Rank	Team	Total
1	Jakob747	87
2	Hakkie2	86
3	will10	69
4	EvansIsTheBest	56
5	Fivezzz	55

Hakkie2 isn't crushing absolutely everything in the early season, but is coming close, scoring 35 points in this competition to lesson Jakob747's lead to 1 point. No one else in the top 5 overall scores this week; 69 teams have scored at least a point in this competition so far.

Top 10 Overall

Rank	Up/down	Team	Points
1	(-)	Hakkie2	1802
2	(+17)	HelgeBlendet	1594
3	(-)	Jakob747	1550
4	(-2)	EvansIsTheBest	1521
5	(+5)	Squire	1502
6	(+2)	Object	1493
7	(+2)	sodak_za	1476
8	(-4)	zaka_fan	1441
9	(+6)	skidmark	1424
10	(-4)	18-Valve. (pithy)	1401

No surprise here, as Hakkie2's lead gets extended to over 200 points overall. HelgeBlendet rockets up the standings after a dominant week, but was starting about 350 points behind, and so must settle for a still quite impressive second. HelgeBlendet and good ol' team skidmark slip into the top 10, while western grebe and Marek tumble out.

The traditional European early season is in full swing this week, with Algarve, Andalucia and Haut Var punctuating a stage-race heavy week, with the newly 2.1 Tour of Antalya offering some good CQ points as well. No Oman, but it's still a pretty big week.

Spreadsheet at dropbox

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

It’s been a quiet week for me. I didn’t have too many guys racing and the ones that did race usually picked up a few points (Kämna, Pinot, Bouhanni…) without lighting the world on fire. I expected to drop more than a couple places. I guess I spent too much time looking at Hakkie’s and Jakob’s team and that gave me unrealistic expectations of the teams in the competition.

Algarve
Evenepoel and Kämna for GC. The others aren’t going to do much.
KÄMNA Lennard
EVENEPOEL Remco
ALMEIDA João
BRUNEL Alexys
BJERG Mikkel
MODOLO Sacha

Andalucia
Expecting solid GC placings from Latour, McNulty and Soler. Would feel much better about Konychev if he could show something (anything) during the week.
KONYCHEV Alexander
LATOUR Pierre
MCNULTY Brandon
SOLER Marc

Antalya
Nobody

Haut Var
Pinot, Bardet and Oomen for the GC. Relatively subpar starts for Pinot and Bardet so they need to be better this time around. Otherwise my team has no chance. Lopez to serve as domestique to Porte in the mountains until the end of times apparently. Levasseur and De Bie for the flatter stages (any points are a bonus).
PINOT Thibaut
BARDET Romain
LÓPEZ Juan Pedro
OOMEN Sam
LEVASSEUR Jordan
DE BIE Sean

Any news about Soren Kragh Andersen? I didn’t love the pick when I made it, now I’m just hoping there won’t be a big zero next to his name in October.

 

[tobydawq]

Haut Var
Levasseur and De Bie for the flatter stages (any points are a bonus)

I would check the profiles if I were you

 

[Jakob747]

Any news about Soren Kragh Andersen? I didn’t love the pick when I made it, now I’m just hoping there won’t be a big zero next to his name in October.

He's been training on Tenerife together with Tiesj Benoot. Both of them down to ride Het Nieuwsblad.

 

[Mayomaniac]

3rd this week and back in the top 20 overall, nice!

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

I get a mention, nice. One of the benefits of having scored very little in the first weeks is that it gets easier to become a 'high mover'.
Anyway, like many others I have Pinot, Bardet, Oomen, McNulty, Kämna, Kwiatkowksi.
And a few others. Curious to see what Mohoric will do. I expect him to score no less than 1000 points this year. Also, thank you to Jacob747 for the update on S. Kragh Andersen.

 

[fuiers]

Im just here to observe with my team made in less than an hour. My top guys MVDP, S.Bennett and Groenewegen all in action this week. Don't know why I did not pick more GC guys. "Mistakes were made". Still expecting couple of wins from the weekly races.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Miraculously, I climbed 4 spots last week and 3 spots this week even though I felt both weeks went quite poorly. Next week doesn't look too great again, but who knows.

Algarve
Kämna
Danny van Poppel
Kwiatkowski

Andalucia
Soler
Oldani
Dillier
Canola

Antalya
Lonardi

Haut Var
Pinot
Juanpe Lopez
Ries
Oomen
Vichot
De Bie

 

[Koronin]

How my team climbed instead of fell on this update I will never know.

 

[postmanhat]

Algarve - Unless Kwiatkowski is riding for GC, then Van Poppel is most likely source of points, and maybe Modolo

Haut Var - Hopefully Pinot and Oomen will show some more progression. Not expecting too much from Valgren or De Bie

Antalya - No one. Hope this isn't the race I start to regret dumping Rickaert

Andalucia - Expecting a good points haul from Soler, Fernandez and maybe even Vanendert. Plus Padun is back!

 

[skidmark]

Oof, this is a thin week.

Algarve

Michal Kwiatkowski
Nils Eekhoff
Sacha Modolo
Danny Van Poppel

Hmm, one popular rider who's usually good in this race but was lacking a few weeks ago, one guy in his first pro race, one guy who will likely be supporting MvdP, and Danny van Poppel, who can challenge for two stages. Minimal returns.

Andalucia

Marc Soler
Marco Canola

I guess if Soler does well I will gain points on a few dozen teams who don't have him.

Antalya

nobody

Haut Var

Thibaut Pinot
Arthur Vichot
Sam Oomen
Sean De Bie

Well if Vichot is getting back to his old form, this is a race he won twice so I could get a few points, and of course Pinot/Oomen can keep my head above water enough if they do well. On a personal note, hope Oomen is on the upswing.

Best hope is to tread water and have better weeks coming up.

 

[HelgeBlendet]

Amazing week for me and I couldn't watch/follow any of it and only just realised it now. Looking at the composition of my team I feel it'll be a lot of ups and downs for me this year. I never had so many rare-ish picks before which helps for weeks like that, but could be disaster on many others. I'm really not confident in some of my riders, but just wanted to have them on my team. Still, this week partially made up for the pains of switching from Dainese to Padun in the last minute, just so I could land on 7500 flat while being equally unsure about both of them.

Anyway... Next up I'll have

Andalucia
Soler
Padun

Soler leading might be good. but he's on a lot of teams. Padun will probably help Landa and nothing more, but you never know... pls do something...

Algarve
Kämna

... and a lot of guys who where and one point on my team, but didn't make the final cut... sigh

Haut Var
Peters
Guerreiro
Oomen
Zimmerman
Rosa

As mentioned above, I have quite some rare-ish picks which are mainly on my team because I'd hate for them to be actually successful and not having them. Well, have of them are here in France hopefully having fun and getting good results. Peters is probably my absolute max risk pick and will be one of the 5-6 guys who makes or breaks my season. (I'm not confident...) and Haut Var will make or break my week.

 

[Salvarani]

Well if Vichot is getting back to his old form, this is a race he won twice so I could get a few points.

3 times actually

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

I would check the profiles if I were you

Good point, there's no way they can survive those finishes (I assumed the first stage would be flattish).

He's been training on Tenerife together with Tiesj Benoot. Both of them down to ride Het Nieuwsblad.

Thanks, appreciate the news. Hopefully he can hit the grouns running.

 

[fauniera]

Next weeks Tour de Algarve will be very interesting for this game.
It will give us the first indication whether the game will be won by one of the 26 players who went for Evenepoel.
If it will be, you could become my main opponent.

If Evenepoel fails to live up to the hype, it's game over for both of us.

Alright then. Now we know.

 

[repre]

Kwiatkovski is a bust

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Kwiatkovski is a bust

I know we all love to over-analyze early races in this game but let’s not bury a guy after a mediocre day in mid-February especially when he has spent almost all of the last decade as a world class rider. I mean it’s still so early in the season that Ben Swift is outclimbing Geraint Thomas, I wouldn't worry too much yet.

With that being said please let me overanalyze Almeida’s and Evenpoel’s ride in peace

 

[repre]

I know we all love to over-analyze early races in this game but let’s not bury a guy after a mediocre day in mid-February especially when he has spent almost all of the last decade as a world class rider. I mean it’s still so early in the season that Ben Swift is outclimbing Geraint Thomas, I wouldn't worry too much yet.

With that being said please let me overanalyze Almeida’s and Evenpoel’s ride in peace

To overanalyze something you need to analyze first...

 

[tobydawq]

Modolo is alive!