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The 2020 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

Page 26 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
I'm not sure exactly what I think about what should be done for next year, but there's plenty of time to figure it out and plenty of scenarios that could play out before then. Some initial thoughts that I have:

  • if there are literally no more races until the end of the year, I'd prefer to go with just 2019 scores than do a 'highest of' thing. Manually programming a spreadsheet with the higher of two year's scores for hundreds of riders is something I'm absolutely not interested in doing, and I can't imagine how many teams would be submitted incorrectly that I'd have to manually check and back-and-forth message about if they are over budget due to having a rider score wrong because of the convoluted structure. Just from an administrative standpoint, that's my worst nightmare.
  • if there are some races but a significant number of races cancelled, I'd lean towards running the game with 2020 scores but a team score that's weighted based on where 7500 is now relative to the average ProTour team. That is, team cost this year was 7500, mean PT team score was 8716. So, team maximum score would be tailored to roughly 86% of the average PT team score that ends up with however many races are raced this year.

The second option is more likely, I thiiiink (but of course this situation is as uncertain as it is unprecedented), and sure some riders would be cheap even relative to this if they had a short window to get points, and injuries would have more impact if you miss basically the whole truncated season. But that's similar to the year-to-year vagaries of this game, and having a lot of 'cheap' good riders to choose from is in line with the element of skill necessary in this game anyway.

So those are my initial thoughts, totally open to discussion.
 
FWIW, my thinking for the Tour/Vuelta/Giro games when and if they are to go ahead is to go with the price as the year up to the start, as usual. It will mean that there are a huge number of bargains, and no need for lightweights who will do little or nothing for our scores; it will make the scores this time around an unfair comparison with any other edition, but it will be a unique chance for a different set of selection tactics and balances. Yeah, there will be a high number of universal picks, but the skill of selections at the margins will still be a valid test of insight/cycling knowledge/luck.
 
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Thanks for the updates skidmark. It's hard to discuss what to do concerning next year's game until we see what races are actually going to be held this year but I pretty much agree with everything you said. If we get anything remotely close to a normal end of season calendar I would much rather have a lower budget than use some combination of 2019 and 2020 scores. Beyond the logistical complication of combining scores from multiples years, I feel like the lower budget fits better with the original idea of the game (which was pitched as trying to outperform the average World Tour team by the biggest margin). I'd be interested to hear Hugo Koblet's thoughts on the subject. If there's anyway we can avoid recycling 2019 scores it's also fairer to people that discussed their teams extensively after the reveal: that way people won't consciously or subconsciouslybe swayed by those analyses when building next year's team.
 
I've thought about this a great deal, and the way I see it there are three possible outcomes - though it can be hard to distinguish between them.

1. There are no more races this year (or very few). In this scenario, I lean towards skidmark's suggestion of using the 2019 scores. Sure, teams have now been published, discussions have been going on, and people have changed their minds about riders they did or did not include based on this information. But in the end, I don't think it will matter that much. I think we will still see a lot of dissimilarity between the teams for several reasons: People have riders they support and cheer for and will be more likely to pick these than others (and conversely, some will neglect to pick certain riders for the opposite reason); the 2020 season was "cancelled" early on, and we still don't have that much information about whether our trusted picks or our omissions were good or bad; although there has now been a lot of discussion on certain riders, people will still have their own opinion.

2. Everything goes back to normal in, say, June, and perhaps even some of the cancelled races will be held at another time. In this scenario, I lean towards using the 2020 scores with no modification of the purchase power (still using 7500 points). Whether we choose to modify the purchase power or not, the 2021 season will be a strange one and hard to compare with the previous editions of the race. I like to still use 7500 points because of the simplicity and because even if the spring races have been cancelled or postponed, riders will set themselves new targets and their scores, while lower, might not be that much different than in a normal year.

3. The third scenario is the one, or, rather, the many, possible outcomes in between the first two, in which a significant number of races are cancelled but some still take place. In this scenario, I again lean towards skidmark's suggestion of using the 2020 scores, but with a puchase power adjusted the way skidmark suggests. The reason is that if a lot of races are cancelled, many riders, and especially certain types of riders, will be very cheap and the 2021 team scores will be very, very high. Of course in this scenario, some riders will still be very underpriced, but that's just the way it is, and I think it's the best way to go about it still.

Of course it's hard to tell when we're in scenario 2 or in scenario 3, but we'll have to look at that and make a decision when we know more.

Edit: In short, I support skidmark's suggestions, but would like to keep open the option to just use the 7500 purchase power if the season gets underway again quickly. Let's do some calculations and look at the numbers if it comes to that.

Sorry for my bad English in this post - I'm not feeling well (hopefully it's just a flu) and for some reason that effects my written language lol - but hopefully you all understand it anyway :)
 
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Well, now's as good a time as any to blow the dust off this thread and start talking about the rest of the season!

So... who's got Slovenian riders? Assuming CQ points are given out for the National Championships as per usual, we are going to (very slowly and minimally) get back up and running here in a week or so! Then some fits and starts, as I'd imagine not many teams here have riders that will do the 1.2 Turkish races that seem to be in early-mid July, but then (hopefully) with Burgos and the Romanian race in just over a month, we'll have a wild mad dash of a season.

What do you guys think about the changed chances of your teams with the new schedule? Will it help some riders on your team and hurt others? Could the week ending October 25th be the highest CQ scoring week ever?

I'm very excited for the season to get going again. The last discussion in the thread was on what to do about next year's points total, and if you want to read the comments directly above this one, I think what I outlined (and what Hugo suggested) is probably what we're gonna go with. But we can check in when the season's underway again to see how that might look.

Hope everyone has stayed safe and healthy.
 
Bless you, for this post! 3 months with noting remotely exciting going on, binge-watching Netflix until insanity. I am one “telenovela,” away from a meltdown - Anyway, I hope everyone here is keeping themselves safe and healthy throughout this challenging period.

I honestly don't even remember my full CQ-roster anymore - I gotta download the spreadsheet one of the next days to get myself updated again. Slowly but surely.

Anyway, its gonna be a wired edition this year with the new calendar and all. Everything is turned upside down. Momentum is out the window and we now depend on who has had the best possible training opportunities (and training-drive during lock-down) I feel determination and especially work-ethic are the deciding x-factors in this year's game and depending on how many "smaller races" actually will go on, probably will end up being the deciding factor.

I am just happy cycling-races seem to have a legit possibility of happening from now on and this pandemic fuc"ks off quick so everything goes back to normal sooner than later!
 
Well, now's as good a time as any to blow the dust off this thread and start talking about the rest of the season!

So... who's got Slovenian riders? Assuming CQ points are given out for the National Championships as per usual, we are going to (very slowly and minimally) get back up and running here in a week or so! Then some fits and starts, as I'd imagine not many teams here have riders that will do the 1.2 Turkish races that seem to be in early-mid July, but then (hopefully) with Burgos and the Romanian race in just over a month, we'll have a wild mad dash of a season.

What do you guys think about the changed chances of your teams with the new schedule? Will it help some riders on your team and hurt others? Could the week ending October 25th be the highest CQ scoring week ever?

I'm very excited for the season to get going again. The last discussion in the thread was on what to do about next year's points total, and if you want to read the comments directly above this one, I think what I outlined (and what Hugo suggested) is probably what we're gonna go with. But we can check in when the season's underway again to see how that might look.

Hope everyone has stayed safe and healthy.

It's great to see racing coming back even if it took only one race for Jakob to kick me off the top spot.

Obviously, there's still a lot of uncertainty around the new schedule and whether lower tier races are going to happen so it's a little early to know who will or will not be hampered by the circumstances. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the pandemic in the US and most of South America is going to slow down anytime soon so I'm guessing that riders from those countries might struggle to travel to Europe for the rest of the season. Regarding my team, I probably wouldn't have picked Bardet if I had known he would ride the Tour instead of Giro/Vuelta as planned initially but for the most part I don't pay too much attention to the riders' schedule when putting together my team. I just try (and usually fail) to put together as much talent as the budget allows and then I trust it'll find a way to shine through.

Good luck to everyone for the second part of the season and most importantly stay safe and healthy.
 
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I don't even remember my team anymore, although it was the reason I started to post here.
I remember I had Pinot and van Aert as my most expensive picks... and I think I had George Bennett which would be a bad pick now that he's going to the Tour as a helper.
Well, I wasn't doing well anyway, so I suppose I'll just forget about this season and try again next year...
 
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the pandemic in the US and most of South America is going to slow down anytime soon so I'm guessing that riders from those countries might struggle to travel to Europe for the rest of the season.

Today the highest number of casualties was recorded here in Colombia since the Pandemic broke out (163 deaths) - so technically everything could be up in the air. I am pretty sure they get the OK to travel through - although I guess you never really know.

Egan Bernal is putting in some monstrous training rides - fully living up to the word of his insane work ethic. Various 7 hour + "apocalyptic" sessions.

Sergio Higuita was recorded sprinting the final meters uphill on Alto Matasanos with 48kmh today. He looks ready to go, gotta be one of the big favorites in 3 months' time (Flèche Wallonne).

Matasanos is not particularly steep and it flattens especially towards the top, however, Higuitas accelerations are elite level and he will be a handful for anyone in the hilly one-day events.

View: https://youtu.be/tYOJnL-lQIs


MATASANOS+por+Girardota.jpg
 
Update #11: Slovenia gives a few bites of CQ action, flips the standings at the top

Hey everyone, welcome back! I've been doing my regular remote spring/summer work here in Canada and the accompanying limited internet, so I am a bit late with this mini-update. Plus I decided to wait until the Slovenian TT championships were over because otherwise I'd have two weeks of virtually identical updates. So, this update covers the two CQ weeks that were covered by those championships, the first CQ points scored since Paris-Nice. Seventeen teams in the CQ Ranking Manager Game scored points in Slovenia.

This Week's Top Scorers

Three teams picked Pogacar, and he scored 110 points. That's your podium here. Pogacar picks up right where he left off in the early season, already reclaiming 531 of his 1519 cost. Obviously it'll be tougher to score much higher than that in a reduced calendar, but he can be pretty great value nonetheless. Mohoric (14 teams) had 50 points, and yoyokt had 31 on top of that from unique pick Tratnik.

(A couple of notes on the spreadsheet that I noticed - due to rider name spelling changes, Popchu, Leadbelly and Blue Roads got some negative points on their teams this week. I haven't corrected that on this sheet yet because that would give them back those points this week. I will be correcting those before the next update, but if you see any other teams with these issues please let me know.)

This Week's High Movers

RankTeamUp/down
1Marek(+15)
2Jon_Ezeitza(+10)
3Popchu(+7)
3PremierAndrew(+7)
5del1962(+6)
5greenedge(+6)

Two of the three teams with Pogacar moved up double digit spots; it's weird to see such moves on this few points in June, but of course this is just update 11 so it's essentially as if it were early March. The other team with Pogacar we will get to in a sec.

Green Jersey Competition


RankTeamTotal
1Jakob747190.7
2Hakkie2116
3EvansIsTheBest113
4Leadbelly80
5ChrisDK79

A reminder explanation of this competition, how it works in general, and how it works in specific situation of ties and limited scoring weeks. So this is based off of the Green Jersey in the Tour, and points are awarded every week as they would be in stages for the Tour, ie for the top 15 finishers. We adopted these rules when the Tour stages were in their mid-2010s point iterations, 45 for 1st, then 35 for 2nd, 30 for 3rd, and then 26-22-20-18-16-14-12-10-8-6-4-2. This has stuck even though the Tour has changed to a more top-heavy system.

When there is a tie, I average the scores that are covered by the tie, and if the average is not an integer value, round to the nearest tenth. So, because there was a three way tie at the top, the 45-35-30 for 1st through 3rd is 110 points in total divided by 3 teams, 36.666 per team (rounded to 36.7). The teams that tie for 5th this week get 10.1 points each.

Just barely more than 15 teams scored this week, so full points were awarded - there is a different system when there are less than 15 teams scoring. All that is to say that the teams that won this week got lucky in being awarded full points in a reduced week, and benefiting quite a bit was Jakob747, who was already in the lead of this competition. But them's the rules, what can I say, it's been a weird year. Blame Covid.

Top 10 Overall

RankUp/downTeamPoints
1(+1)2796
2(-1)EvansIsTheBest2733
3(-)Hakkie22407
4(-)Squire2250
5(-)Object2218
6(-)western_grebe2186
7(-)skidmark2094
8(+4)search2090
9(-1)LaFlorecita2073
10(-1)18-Valve. (pithy)2065

It may not have been a big week, but it was enough to flip the table at the top! Pogacar blasts Jakob747 over EvansIsTheBest, breaking several months at the top for EITB. Search got 50 points for Mohoric and jumped into the top 10; nobody else in the top 10 got points.

Coming up, I will be keeping an eye on the 2.2 races that are supposed to be happening in Turkey and Poland, but if nobody in this game scores points, I won't do an update. So long as the tentative plans hold, we should resume around the Sibiu Tour on the 23rd, Burgos on the 28th, then three months of madness to the end of the season. It's good to be back.

Spreadsheet at dropbox
 
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(mini) Update #12: Swiss TT champs sneak in there

I went to check the last week (July 12-19) on CQ to see if I needed to do an update, only to realize that the Swiss TT championships happened on the 12th and got it's own CQ spreadsheet update! To honor that, I need to give an update for the week of July 5-12 - even for the meagre amount of points on offer, we actually had half the field (55 teams) score at least a point on the week.

Top Scorers

RankTeamPoints this week
1Gigs_9826
1del196226
1LaFlorecita26
1Armchair cyclist26
1Riverside26
1karaev26
1mineralJ26
1Shawnm474726

39 teams had Silvan Diller (18 points for 2nd in the Swiss TT), 32 teams had Gino Mader (8 points for 6th place); these 8 teams had them both.

High Movers


Armchair Cyclist had the fortune to be in a bunched-up enough place in the standings to jump 4 spots with 26 points on the week, and gets a mention in the update. Congrats!

Green Jersey

RankTeamTotal
1Jakob747190.7
2Hakkie2116
3EvansIsTheBest113
4Leadbelly80
5ChrisDK79

No changes or weekly points in the top 5. The 8-way tie for first place meant each of those teams got 25.1 points for the shared win, but none of them were in the top of the standings to start the week.

Top 10 Overall

RankUp/downTeamPoints
1(-)2796
2(-)EvansIsTheBest2733
3(-)Hakkie22415
4(-)Squire2250
5(-)Object2236
6(-)western_grebe2186
7(+2)LaFlorecita2099
8(-1)skidmark2094
9(-1)search2090
10(-)18-Valve. (pithy)2073

LaFlorecita manages a two spot jump this week! No movement in and out of the top 10 this week though. Jakob747 holds onto the lead.

I'll give update #13 later this week (for July 12-19 week), then this week (July 19-26) should have some points from the Sibiu Tour, even though the teams pulling out and rising covid cases are a very inauspicious sign for the resumption of racing. Fingers crossed the restart goes okay and we'll be swimming in CQ points very soon!

spreadsheet at dropbox
 
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For once I had a chance to see my name in the top spot, since I have both Mäder and Dillier on my team, but for some odd reason I'm not included.... why, Skidmark, why?:eek:;)
Because the spreadsheet dropped the 23 points of Michael Valgren since CQ now has him (temporarily, surely) as VALGREN HUNDAHL (ANDERSEN) Michael . Nine other teams will be similarly affected.

And if that costs me my place at the top of a table, I'll be so angry I could punch a puppy.
 
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How do you see the rest of the season going for your team?

It's mainly Pro races and below that have been cancelled, and the ones that remain are now fuller than usual with WT teams. This was where most of my rarer picks were hopefully going to do well, so it's difficult to see the following gaining too many more points: Chernetskiy, Osorio, Cepeda, Restrepo, Vanendert, Modolo, Strakhov, Hanninen, Van Poppel and Vermaerke.

Bouhanni, Steimle and Fernandez could still pick up something.

On the plus side, the likes of Hayter, Gallopin and Mader could do comparatively well due to coming back from injury/not being in the Olympics.

Apart from that, my team is mostly popular WT riders, plus a few I've almost given up on already. Currently 90th, so would be happy finishing in the top half, given the circumstances.

Am really regretting not selecting Van Der Poel now. Without The Olympics or cyclocross to distract him, he's going to go ballistic. Could be something similar with Van Aert now he's had more time to recover
 
My results are awful so far and it's not Corona's fault.
Anyway, for Burgos I am setting my hopes on Kämna and Bennett. Also Aru could help me out. A few others.
If van Aert could win Strade for me, that would be really nice of him... Or otherwise Kwiatkowski.

My team's badly picked, there's no denying that, but the fact that I have only WT-riders, I think, might help me a bit in this season. Well, let's just hope most of the races go ahead, then I'm content.
 
For once I had a chance to see my name in the top spot, since I have both Mäder and Dillier on my team, but for some odd reason I'm not included.... why, Skidmark, why?:eek:;)

Ack, sorry! I scoured the board last week to see the negative totals, but just blanked on update 12. I will redo and fix and the weekly standings will be reflected to sort that out. I have some catching up to do so here is what I intend:

Monday - restated update 12
Tuesday - update 13 (spoiler alert - only one team got points)
Wednesday - update 14 (this week's with the Sibiu Tour)

Thanks for pointing that out, and to AC for pinpointing what happened. Apologies again! Covid has made me rusty :D
 
Okay, revised results from week 12:

Top Scorers



That's 12 teams tied for first instead of 8 as originally reported - 4 of the 10 teams that got -23 points from Valgren's name change were actually tied for first before the accidental penalty.

High Movers

RankTeamUp/down
1Armchair cyclist(+3)
1postmanhat(+3)
3Shawnm4747(+2)
3mineralJ(+2)
3LaFlorecita(+2)
3Amis_Velo(+2)
3will10(+2)
3Riverside(+2)
3GP Blanco(+2)
3rote_laterne(+2)
3ruvu75(+2)

AC moves up only 3 instead of 4 spots, and therefore shares top spot with postmanhat instead of being alone on top.

Green Jersey top 5 are the same as reported - although for the week, a 12-way tie instead of an 8-way tie changes the math. Teams tied for first split the points, 21.3 each rather than the 25.1 it was when it was an 8-way tie.

Top 10 overall remains the same. Link to spreadsheet in previous post should be linked to the updated sheet.

Okay, update 13 to follow tomorrow, then update 14 with our first actual 2.1 race in the Sibiu Tour!
 
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(mini) Update #13: Leadbelly sings a happy tune

There was some racing on the week of July 12-19; not much of relevance to the CQ manager game. But the 2.2 Dookola Mazowsza, the 1.2, uh.... Puchar Ministra Obrony Narodowej (I pray I never have to attempt to say that aloud), and the Croatian nationals happened. As it goes, the only riders picked in this game to score were two unique picks, Daniel Turek who got 20 points and Rait Arm who got 1. And, as it happens, both were picked uniquely by the same team! So that means one team scored points this week.

This Week's Top Scorers

RankTeamPoints this week
1Leadbelly21

Congrats Leadbelly, you get your time alone in the sun! Those unique picks certainly can come in handy some weeks in this game.

This Week's High Movers

RankTeamUp/down
1Leadbelly(+2)

It was enough to move up two spots, so again, Leadbelly's name is in lights!

Green Jersey Competition - same as last week. Since Leadbelly is the only team to score, small-score week points come into play. The long-standing rule is that if fewer than 15 teams score on the week, I give out points in reverse from (normal week) 15th place points up to the number of teams that scored. So since one team scored, they got 1 point, which is what a normal 15th place team would get. Leadbelly is in 4th overall in that competition, but didn't change any places with that point.

Top 10 Overall is unchanged - Leadbelly is actually less than 100 points from the top 10, but the two point jump was from 19th to 17th. Jakob747 stays in first place as we move back towards a real cycling calendar.

Spreadsheet at dropbox
 
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Update #14: Jakob Keeps Rolling

"Real" racing is back! After a few appetizer nibbles in national championships for a few small countries and some .2 diversions, top teams returned (well, 2 WT teams at least) at the Sibiu Cycling Tour in Romania. And while the tenativeness and withdrawals of teams and riders gave us a glimpse into the fragility of post-covid racing, the CQ points are still the same as they were for a .1 race before covid hit. So, what happened? Well, a familiar name is on top.

This Week's Top Scorers

RankTeamPoints this week
1Jakob747156
1ChrisDK156
3LukasCPH50
4Bonimenier48
5dimasotf35
5ray1035
5western_grebe35

Two teams took talented young Austrian Gregor Muhlberger this year, and this week he lived up to his talent, hitting the jackpot by being a good rider from a big team on a race with a good amount of points but mostly small teams. With 156 points this week, he brings his total for the year to within a point of his 2019 total. Jakob747 and ChrisDK are the two teams in question who picked him. Jakob, of course, was leading the competition coming into this week and had topped the Slovenian nationals week a few weeks ago. ChrisDK is not as high in the overall standings, but has had a few great weeks (as we'll see in the Green Jersey section). LukasCPH manages 3rd on the week with 30 points from Andreas Leknessund and 20 points from unique pick Veljko Stojnic.

This Week's High Movers

RankTeamUp/down
1ChrisDK(+12)
2shalgo(+4)
2LosBrolin(+4)
2Bonimenier(+4)
5rote_laterne(+3)
5fauniera(+3)
5christopherrowe(+3)

ChrisDK takes the solo win here, as Jakob had nowhere to move up. Shalgo, LosBrolin, and Bonimenier tie for second with a more modest 4 place jump. Interestingly, all 3 had 18 points from Tobias Foss this week (and Bonimenier had 30 more from Leknessund).

Green Jersey Competition


RankTeamTotal
1Jakob747230.7
2ChrisDK119
3Hakkie2116
4EvansIsTheBest113
5Sestriere89.3

The rich get richer here - Jakob and Chris split the top prize this week, getting 40 points each. For Jakob, this gives their team a stratospheric lead of over 110 points, ie. two weekly wins and change. For Chris, 40 points vaults their team into second place in the competition. Sestriere jumps into the top 5 with 13 points on the week too.

Top 10 Overall

RankUp/downTeamPoints
1(-)2952
2(-)EvansIsTheBest2733
3(-)Hakkie22415
4(-)Squire2250
5(-)Object2236
6(-)western_grebe2221
7(+2)search2104
8(-1)LaFlorecita2099
9(-1)skidmark2094
10(-)18-Valve. (pithy)2073

Although it's been fun to get updates again, it's good to remind ourselves that the actual number of points that have been awarded is relatively small. Jakob got 156 more this week to extend their lead over EITB to over 200, but aside from that it was only western grebe (35) and search (14) who scored points in the top 10 this week. So that was the appetizer - with fingers crossed that the revamped, compressed schedule goes as planned, there are going to be a whirlwind of points to come in the next 8-10 weeks.

This week, the Vuelta a Burgos is already underway, the WorldTour kicks off with Strade Bianche on Saturday, the 2.1 Occitainie gets underway on the weekend, and the 1.1 Circuit Getxo happens on Sunday. That itself is just an appetizer for what's to come, with the two Italian monuments, the Dauphine, and a host of other races coming in the next couple of weeks. Here's hoping it all goes down as planned!

Spreadsheet at dropbox
 

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