- May 9, 2010
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My apologies, I can see how that specific comment sounds harsh. I really didn't mean to sound condescending, but I can see how that comment comes off that way, so I'm sorry about that.Haha, I was just working on a reply to Squire's prior post but gave up/took a break as it was going in circles a bit, but a snippet of what I was saying in response to that post was "in the hypothetical, Bagioli (or a replacement level Bagioli stand-in) is absolutely not irrelevant to my consideration, but essential. The question for me isn't "will Gregoire and Almeida score more than Vingegaard" but rather "what is the best use of two spots in the scarce resource context of 33 riders and 7500 CQ points".
And then I basically elaborated that 'spreading out the risk' was my preferred strategy, all being held equal. Then I read on in the thread and learn that I'm misunderstanding the game
But I guess I don't think of that kind of risk in terms of 'if one of my guys crashes I get zero points'. Very specifically, in choosing Gregoire and Almeida, my calculus was 'if they crash somewhere and miss a month or two, they are so versatile and consistent that I think they can score highly anywhere'. (same idea with WvA) That's what I want out of my high cost guys, that even if random chance has calamity befall them, they can cover enough that if my cheaper guys hit enough, I can still do quite well in the game. And also their potential ceiling is exciting, of course.
I think about 'floor' in terms of a) what if I've overestimated how good they're going to be and b) what if they miss time due to misfortune. I'm quite confident in those two riders on both those fronts, that even if my assessment is 'wrong' they'll be pretty good picks.
But that's how I've always thought about it - I'm pretty risk averse. I remember the first year of the game, my most expensive pick was Riccardo friggin' Ricco, who cost 756 points or something and then ended his career in February trying to blood dope himself, basically tanking my team's hopes. So maybe that colored it. And then the second year I was proud that my most expensive pick was merely 532 points or something, which I think was the lowest highest-cost rider of all the teams (ie certainly risk averse). And I was like 'oh yeah most expensive pick Modolo is my rarest rider, he'll be my secret weapon'. And a lot of things went well for that team, but that was not one of them. So that taught me that I don't really know anything about this game, and just trust my process. So in summary, I dunno?
To cap off the Vingegaard discussion, yes I can see the strong case for him (that was another reason I paused my response to Squire, I was convincing myself Vingegaard was the better choice lol). But in the end, when I was constructing my team my assessment was that my average EV for either combo (Vinge/random 62 pointer vs Almeida/Gregoire) was a wash, so I'd opt for the two-pronged strategy to a) spread the risk and b) have riders I was more excited about.
I just really like to discuss game strategy from a theoretical point of view and discuss what's optimal and not. But strategy is one thing, picking the right riders for that strategy is another. And there are so many variables to account for, which makes it very difficult to make an assessment. If you have two combinations of riders to choose from, choosing the one you think will give the highest return can never be a bad idea.
I myself don't exactly live and die by this way of looking at the game. If that was the case, my team would be a lot more polarized, a lot more top and bottom heavy.
Oh, and by the way, I was on the Ricco-train back then as well 😁
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