The 2022 CQ Ranking Manager Thread

[BR2]

My unique pick Dries de Pooter is 4 points into profit! I can die, ehm, leave happily now.

@skidmark: There's something slightly weird about the update, though. Vermeersch loses 5 points? What did he do? And Benoot gains 2 points? From what? Isn't he out injured?
Now, not that it makes any difference, I was just wondering.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

I feel bad for laarsland, it's very hard to find a unique pick in that price range that turns out well and having a big chunk of Quintana's gains taken away like that is brutal.

That was a very good week for my team, but I won't relax until I lock in the GC points from the Vuelta. If Evenepoel, Ayuso and Rodriguez can keep their spots, I think I'll finally have a gap big enough that De Lie won't wipe it out in two weeks.

@skidmark: There's something slightly weird about the update, though. Vermeersch loses 5 points? What did he do? And Benoot gains 2 points? From what? Isn't he out injured?
Now, not that it makes any difference, I was just wondering.

Quintana got stripped of his results in the Tour so everyone else moves up on the GC and the various stages, netting additional points (2 in Benoot's case for moving from 36th to 35th). I'm not sure what happened to Vermeersch (and Ewan for that matter). My best guess is that they were mistakenly entered as finishers at the Bemer Cyclassics and when it was corrected to DNF instead, they lost the 5 points awarded for finishing the race.

 

[bminchow]

No Remco or Mas for me, but hoping having 5 of the top ten in the GC will move me up a couple spots. Was hoping for more points from Strong as well. Oh well.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Don't want to spoil the next update too much so I'll just say one thing. Assuming the GC in Spain holds tomorrow (and why wouldn't it), at least one team, unfortunately not mine, will break the all time record for most point in a week (Ben1376 during the Giro GC update in 2014 with 2146pts). That's with one stage of the Vuelta, the GP de Montréal and the GP Foumies still to go.

 

[Squire]

Don't want to spoil the next update too much so I'll just say one thing. Assuming the GC in Spain holds tomorrow (and why wouldn't it), at least one team, unfortunately not mine, will break the all time record for most point in a week (Ben1376 during the Giro GC update in 2014 with 2146pts). That's with one stage of the Vuelta, the GP de Montréal and the GP Foumies still to go.

Exciting! I think Ben1376 had the entire Giro podium, if I remember correctly.

For my part, I can safely conclude that the no Remco gamble absolutely didn't pay off. Also a lot of other mistakes which look very obvious in hindsight, like not picking Arensman.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

Normally I would be really happy with a week where Girmay, Bagioli and Schmid manage third, third and sixth in WT one-day races, but Evenepoel's Vuelta renders it moot and there were so many other decently popular picks that had a good week regardless. Beating my 24th spot from last year is the best I can hope for, was definitely aiming higher when I was in sixth two months back but dry streaks are a part of the game.

 

[BR2]

I am so angry at my riders who think of themselves or I don't know what first and only. What about me, Mr Pedersen, Mr Pidcock, Mr Cosnefroy? And what about Bagioli? Is he staying in Europe, too?

Edit: I'm not going to pick riders with such an flamboyant personality anymore.

 

[search]

Finally some points from Mas, and something like ~1700 total this week, so that should hopefully move me back up into the Top 10 again.

Still, unsure if Enric was a good pick or not. Without all the late crashes/dnfs he would probably have scored something like 500 points more, but that would still not really be a significant profit.

 

[Earns1985]

Normally I would say, that this was be a fantastic week. 4 riders top ten Vuelta, Aleotti and Girmay scoring solid in canada. Ewan also in France. I just calculated approximately 1570 points for this week.
But with 35 players having Evenepoel I don´t think that this will be a top placing for the week.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

I think that's only the fourth time anyone's cracked 2000 points for the week.

Looks like we are about to get some new entries to this list. I am also at about 1570 points without Evenepoel, would not be shocked if like ten people break the barrier this week. Also means the below was way off:

Two years in a row that one of the most popular riders in the game wins the Giro, so every chance that we get the biggest weekly score of the season this update - Landa will be a prerequisite to win the week but the scoring at the Tour of Norway in particular will be high as well.

In addition, EITB will have a higher post-Vuelta score than Object (who was over 1000 points ahead) did last year, the all-time record is still a tall order but it will be interesting to see how high this year's winning score can go. If only someone had combined Evenepoel, De Lie and a good support cast...

 

[skidmark]

Update #35: A Record-breaking week in CQ land

With the end of the Vuelta, the return of the two Canadian WT races, and the truncated Tour of Britain, it was a big week in the CQ game. And with a dominant Evenepoel picked by about a third of teams, and a number of popular riders in the top 10 (as well as Roglic, who no one had, crashing out and therefore giving points to riders who moved up), it was the biggest week of all time, in fact! The former biggest week in the CQ game was 2146 points back in 2014 (I'm trusting the reference made here in the thread, I don't keep such meticulous records), and several teams flew by that this week. Let's have a look!

This Week's Top Scorers

Rank	Team	Points this week
1	Object	2551
2	Crevaison	2484
3	Rakim	2377
4	skidmark	2223
5	repre	2209

After a relatively anonymous year, defending game champ Object has another notch in the belt by setting the all-time weekly record for points. A staggering 2551 points were earned this week by their team. Of course, a necessary component of a winning team this week was always going to be Evenepoel and his 692 points, so he's the centrepiece. But even without Remco, Object would have earned over 1800 points, having 3rd (Ayuso, 343 points), 4th (Lopez, 275 points), 6th (Arensman, 280 points) and 10th (Hindley, 165 points) on the team. Beyond that, some underperforming riders came up big in other races for Object, with Pidcock (135 points from ToB), Ewan (130 for winning a 1.Pro race) and Bagioli (126 points in Canada) pulling it together this week.

Crevaison gets a relatively close second, and of course the second best weekly score ever in the CQ game. Their team has a very similar composition to Object's, with the only major difference being Mads Pedersen (265 points) instead of Aresnman. Rakim gets a fine third place (and, yes, third-best score ever as well) with the same collection of marquee names as Object save Bagioli.

Green Jersey Competition

Rank	Team	Total
1	EvansIsTheBest	350
2	ray10	325
3	Rakim	239
4	Leadbelly	213
5	18-Valve. (pithy)	194

EvansIsTheBest is starting to pull away a little bit in this competition, adding another 16 points for 8th place on the week to extend the lead over ray10 to 25 points. Rakim gets 30 points and Leadbelly gets 14 points on the week to consolidate their already-held 3rd and 4th places respectively, although they would basically need to win 3 weeks and have EITB not score to come back at this point.

Top 10 Overall

Rank	Up/down	Team	Points
1	(-)	EvansIsTheBest	16596
2	(+2)	Rakim	15864
3	(-)	ray10	15289
4	(-2)	MADRAZO	15230
5	(-)	squire	15043
6	(+4)	Bonimenier	14857
7	(-1)	laarsland	14820
8	(-)	NielsB	14750
9	(+8)	repre	14589
10	(-3)	Riverside	14568

Speaking of it being difficult to catch frontrunners... EvansIsTheBest extends their lead on most of the nearest competitors, with only Rakim in the top 5 overall outscoring EITB this week. The lead now stands at over 700 points to second, and a whopping 1300 to third. The season isn't over, but things are looking good. Rakim jumps onto the podium at the expense of MADRAZO, and lower down repre enters the top 10 at the expense of Lortnoc falling out.

This week is guaranteed to not be as momentous in terms of CQ points (obviously), but there is the Tour of Luxembourg and a brace of three 1.Pro races and a few other 1.1s.

Spreadsheet at dropbox

 

[BR2]

Oof, this was a hard fall, but I'm hopeful that the worst is over... unless Evenepoel now wins the WC...

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Looks like we are about to get some new entries to this list. I am also at about 1570 points without Evenepoel, would not be shocked if like ten people break the barrier this week. Also means the below was way off:

In addition, EITB will have a higher post-Vuelta score than Object (who was over 1000 points ahead) did last year, the all-time record is still a tall order but it will be interesting to see how high this year's winning score can go. If only someone had combined Evenepoel, De Lie and a good support cast...

Turns out you were right, exactly 10 teams went over 2000 points. There had 3 total instances of a team going over 2k points in the first 11 editions of the game. We've had 11 instances this year alone. Indeed, bminchow deserves a special shout out for doing it twice in a single year (during this Vuelta obviously but also after the Giro).

Spoiler: Every 2000+ week ever

Rank	Team	Points	Week
1	Object	2551	Vuelta 2022
2	Crevaison	2484	Vuelta 2022
3	Rakim	2377	Vuelta 2022
4	skidmark	2223	Vuelta 2022
5	repre	2209	Vuelta 2022
6	rote_laterne	2160	Vuelta 2022
7	Ben1376	2146	Giro 2014
8	fauniera	2101	Giro 2014
9	Bonimenier	2100	Vuelta 2022
10	CQManager	2063	Tour 2015
11	EvansIsTheBest	2041	Vuelta 2022
12	Leadbelly	2038	Vuelta 2022
13	bminchow	2032	Giro 2022
14	bminchow	2011	Vuelta 2022

Concerning the all time record, I don't think anybody will get there this year. While teams especially Rakim's, could still overtake my lead in the overall if my team falls apart during the last weeks, I think that they are just too far back to get to 19372. I just don't see how it's realistic to expect someone to score 4k+ over the remaining races. I'm ahead of Object's pace last year but just barely and 2021 was super backloaded with covid pushing a bunch of races back, so frankly their team should end up in front of mine. Despite the second best post-Vuelta tally ever, I'm also way off skidmark 2012 post-Vuelta mark (17333) so I shouldn't top that team either.

With De Lie, that would have been much more achievable. But honestly I never really considered him. The one that got away is Sheffield. He was one of my last cuts and if he had made his way onto my team then I think that the race for the record would have been really interesting.

 

[will-10]

1977pts not even worth top 10 for the week

 

[Mayomaniac]

Not exactly great, but I know exactly what mistake is holding me back: Valverde & Steimle instead of Remco and Schmid. If I'd stuck with the later I'd have an extra 2,000 points.

 

[bminchow]

That was a fun week guys. Well done on the Remco pick. he was out of my price range.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Girmay is the 6th rider on my team to crack 1000 points, that's by far the most I've ever had. Rodriguez is on 955 so he might get there too, if he races again this year. Good rides from Martinez and Zingle also today.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

Nobody cares probably but today is the day my 2022 team became my best scoring team ever, surpassing the 16911 points of my 2012 team. Thanks to Ewan and Skjelmose for pushing the team over the line. Now back to stressing over the fact that Rakim's team has De Lie, Jakobsen and Ewan and will rack up a million points in all those Belgian one day races.

 

[Panda Claws]

I present to you the currently mathematically ideal squad, sorted by their current 2022 scores.

Riders	Price	Value
PEDERSEN Mads	589​	1472
DE LIE Arnaud	57​	1286
KRISTOFF Alexander	579​	1223
HINDLEY Jai	137​	1171
HIGUITA GARCIA Sergio Andres	404​	1107
MARTINEZ POVEDA Daniel Felipe	311​	1073
AYUSO PESQUERA Juan	178​	1004
GIRMAY HAILU Biniam	431​	960
RODRIGUEZ CANO Carlos	312​	955
ARENSMAN Thymen	178​	950
MEINTJES Louis	201​	814
KOOIJ Olav	249​	800
THOMAS Benjamin	185​	737
SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias	344​	663
PINOT Thibaut	207​	639
SIMON Julien	268​	625
GROENEWEGEN Dylan	287​	610
HERMANS Quinten	186​	599
SHEFFIELD Magnus	19​	588
HIRT Jan	158​	587
ZINGLE Axel	138​	582
SCHMID Mauro	156​	564
VAN GESTEL Dries	133​	546
GUERREIRO Ruben Antonio Almeida	236​	527
LOUVEL Matis	248​	516
BUITRAGO SANCHEZ Santiago	198​	493
TESFATSION Natnael Ocbit	115​	474
HOULE Hugo	185​	470
GROVES Kaden	67​	463
LEKNESSUND Andreas	184​	462
JUNGELS Bob	42​	439
VINE Jay	168​	433
VERONA QUINTANILLA Carlos	111​	423
Total	7261​	24255

Some may doubt that the perfect roster only uses 7.261 of the budget but that is simply due to a lack of options. There is, for example, no single rider left that scored more points than Jungels yet costs 281 or less.
Evenepoel got surprisingly close to making the cut despite his hefty price tag.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

I present to you the currently mathematically ideal squad, sorted by their current 2022 scores.

Riders	Price	Value
PEDERSEN Mads	589​	1472
DE LIE Arnaud	57​	1286
KRISTOFF Alexander	579​	1223
HINDLEY Jai	137​	1171
HIGUITA GARCIA Sergio Andres	404​	1107
MARTINEZ POVEDA Daniel Felipe	311​	1073
AYUSO PESQUERA Juan	178​	1004
GIRMAY HAILU Biniam	431​	960
RODRIGUEZ CANO Carlos	312​	955
ARENSMAN Thymen	178​	950
MEINTJES Louis	201​	814
KOOIJ Olav	249​	800
THOMAS Benjamin	185​	737
SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias	344​	663
PINOT Thibaut	207​	639
SIMON Julien	268​	625
GROENEWEGEN Dylan	287​	610
HERMANS Quinten	186​	599
SHEFFIELD Magnus	19​	588
HIRT Jan	158​	587
ZINGLE Axel	138​	582
SCHMID Mauro	156​	564
VAN GESTEL Dries	133​	546
GUERREIRO Ruben Antonio Almeida	236​	527
LOUVEL Matis	248​	516
BUITRAGO SANCHEZ Santiago	198​	493
TESFATSION Natnael Ocbit	115​	474
HOULE Hugo	185​	470
GROVES Kaden	67​	463
LEKNESSUND Andreas	184​	462
JUNGELS Bob	42​	439
VINE Jay	168​	433
VERONA QUINTANILLA Carlos	111​	423
Total	7261​	24255

Some may doubt that the perfect roster only uses 7.261 of the budget but that is simply due to a lack of options. There is, for example, no single rider left that scored more points than Jungels yet costs 281 or less.
Evenepoel got surprisingly close to making the cut despite his hefty price tag.

Appreciate the info, nice to see I have 12 riders from that team. I think there's an issue with Groenwegen though, his price wasn't his 2021 score because of his suspension so he shouldn't be on the list.

 

[Panda Claws]

Thank you for the clarification! I actually messed up anyway. I did the calculation a bit differently and got a team with a bit over 25.000 points, which should at least be very close. I'll do it more carefully at the end of the season because it is easy to slightly mess this up and I am not 100% sure if the way I thought to do it is truly correct.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

I often try to do a best possible team for the games I run, and if there is a mathematically sound way of being sure that any combination is the best possible, or excel function that assists, I haven't found it yet. Hakkie often used to better the team that I thought was the best possible (after the event, not in the team he submitted).

Brave to try to do it before theseason finishes though!

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

I did a bit of digging because I remember Skibby the bush kangaroo getting into detail of how he calculate the perfect team during the first few editions of the game. Turns out, he even gave the step by step instructions to figure it out: Skibby's R program. There's just a couple adjustments to make for it to work in 2022.

A couple remarks, there's a couple fixes for Rebellin and Konig that should be disregarded. They were implemented because their prices weren't what showed up in their previous year score (but it does spell out how to "fix" Groenewegen price for 2022). There's also the starting assumption that the perfect team is composed exclusively from riders in the top1000 scoring for the year. This saves a lot of computation and is perfectly reasonable since the 1000th rider scores around 30 points total for the year so there's really no way that anybody falls through the cracks.

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

The WC are my third favorite race of the year and hopefully multiple riders from my team will feature in the final:
EVENEPOEL Remco
GIRMAY HAILU Biniam
HIGUITA GARCIA Sergio Andres
SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias
BAGIOLI Andrea
BATTISTELLA Samuele
TULETT Ben
HINDLEY Jai

I cleaned up skibby's code to get the optimal team (based on monday's update) for those interested.

Spoiler: Optimal 2022 team

EVENEPOEL Remco
VLASOV Aleksandr
PEDERSEN Mads
DE LIE Arnaud
MARTINEZ POVEDA Daniel Felipe
HINDLEY Jai
HIGUITA GARCIA Sergio Andres
GIRMAY HAILU Biniam
AYUSO PESQUERA Juan
RODRIGUEZ CANO Carlos
ARENSMAN Thymen
SKJELMOSE JENSEN Mattias
MEINTJES Louis
THOMAS Benjamin
KOOIJ Olav
SIMON Julien
PINOT Thibaut
ZINGLE Axel
SHEFFIELD Magnus
VAUQUELIN Kévin
HERMANS Quinten
HIRT Jan
SCHMID Mauro
VAN GESTEL Dries
TESFATSION Natnael Ocbit
GROVES Kaden
JUNGELS Bob
KÄMNA Lennard
VLIEGEN Loïc
KANTER Max
TURNER Benjamin
KAMP Alexander
DUJARDIN Sandy
Price: 7493
Score: 26894

 

[DJ Sprtsch]

Nine riders for me I think: Plapp, Hindley, Fuglsang, Biniam, Tesfatsion, Sivakov, Bettiol, Jungels, Soler
Have no expectations. But hope Biniam will shine of course.