- Mar 22, 2010
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The Concept
The standard fantasy team competition is based on publishing a "price list", whether based on previous history or the assumptions of the game's creator.
I have been wondering about doing it slightly differently. How about we give each participant a budget (say 1,000 points) and a stipulation that they must have exactly 9 riders, and then let them name their own price for a rider. That doesn't mean you can pick up Contador for 20 points though: there is only one Alberto Contador, so only one team can have him. The team that get him is the team that bids most for him. To minimise the likelihood of identical bids for any rider, I'll increase the budget to 10,000 points, and recommend that you don't all make all your bids a multiple of 10
The Auction
In an E-Bay style auction, secret bids would be sent to me, and for each rider, the price will be one point more than the second highest bid (player A bids 220 points for Contador, B bids 230: Contador joins B's team at a cost of 221 points).
You can put more than your basic budget into bids: You can for example put in the following bids in one go: Contador 300, Andy 280, Basso 260, Sam Sanchez 220, Evans 220, JvdB 210, Cavendish 200, although the total is well above 1000 points. If by some miracle, these are all exactly one point higher than the second bid, you would have Contador, Andy Schleck and Basso for a total of 840 points, and 160 points left to spend on you remaining 6 riders. The assumption is that the rider you are willing to pay more for is a higher priority to you. Meanwhile, your remaining bids are disqualified, so someone else gets Samu for 219 points, Evans for 219 etc.
The Schedule
I would suggest a phased approach that might go something like this:
Saturday-Sunday early evening before the Tour: All bids for riders for whom you are willing to bid more than 200 points.
On Sunday evening, I would work out how many points each participant has left, publicize the list of those who have already been snapped up, and open up the bidding for the next phase.
Monday-Tuesday Bids for riders who you would pay more than 100 for. Again, late on Tuesday I'd do a list of the riders already snaffled, and budget updates.
Wednesday-Thursday Bid for whoever is still available.
Friday Hopefully you will have a few points left to mop up the last few riders after the last update so that everyone has a squad of 9. It might be of course that some squads will have changed since the beginning of the week: the risk of a rider not participating is something to bear in mind when deciding how much to risk bidding on him.
Saturday morning If participants are quick, they can get a say in any distribution of the last few riders, otherwise I'll just do it in some pseudo-random order
The Scoring
Points will be allocated largely according to the CQ scale, but with a couple of tweaks. My deviations from CQ are shown in italics.
GC: 600 for 1st down to 21 for 50th, and 20 for every finisher
Green/Polka dot jersey 160 for 1st down to 2 for 10th. (double what CQ give, makes winning points/KoM equivalent to 10th in GC)
White jersey young rider A quarter the points given for points/KoM ranking
Each stage: 80 for 1st down to one for 10th. A quarter of this for each rider in the TTT, for those who record the same time as their team's top 5 on that stage. If a rider is tailed off by his team, but still finishes ahead of the tenth placed team, he will get the points that a rider on the next slowest time after his personal time would get.
Jersey Holders(rightful holder: not merely the guy wearing it if leader of the category is wearing another jersey) 20 pts for Yellow 10 for Green/Polka Dot, 5 for White
Participants
As you'll have realised, with 9 riders each, the competition will work best with 22 teams. Participants will need, as you can see from the timetable above, to be able to make submissions several times in the week before the Tour starts: please don't put your name forward unless you are fairly sure you will be able to edit within those slots.
So book your place: I'm not excluding myself. In the interests of transparency, I'll send my bids to a non-participant admin (if one would be agreeable) at the time I first invite submissions. Suggestions for tweaks to the format will be vaguely considered, and really good ones won't be dismissed out of hand.
As of 22/06 we have 10 entrants:
Armchair Cyclist
Timmy Loves Rabo
Hitch
Taiwan
Boomcie
Jobiwan
TeamSkyFan
Sasquatch
Gotland
Michielveedeebee
It would be good to get to 22, and I'm happy to keep the list open until midnight Friday night (UK time) subject to that upper limit of 22 teams. I reckon I'll go ahead and run it so long as there are at least 12 active participants.
Red text: update on 22/06
The standard fantasy team competition is based on publishing a "price list", whether based on previous history or the assumptions of the game's creator.
I have been wondering about doing it slightly differently. How about we give each participant a budget (say 1,000 points) and a stipulation that they must have exactly 9 riders, and then let them name their own price for a rider. That doesn't mean you can pick up Contador for 20 points though: there is only one Alberto Contador, so only one team can have him. The team that get him is the team that bids most for him. To minimise the likelihood of identical bids for any rider, I'll increase the budget to 10,000 points, and recommend that you don't all make all your bids a multiple of 10
The Auction
In an E-Bay style auction, secret bids would be sent to me, and for each rider, the price will be one point more than the second highest bid (player A bids 220 points for Contador, B bids 230: Contador joins B's team at a cost of 221 points).
You can put more than your basic budget into bids: You can for example put in the following bids in one go: Contador 300, Andy 280, Basso 260, Sam Sanchez 220, Evans 220, JvdB 210, Cavendish 200, although the total is well above 1000 points. If by some miracle, these are all exactly one point higher than the second bid, you would have Contador, Andy Schleck and Basso for a total of 840 points, and 160 points left to spend on you remaining 6 riders. The assumption is that the rider you are willing to pay more for is a higher priority to you. Meanwhile, your remaining bids are disqualified, so someone else gets Samu for 219 points, Evans for 219 etc.
The Schedule
I would suggest a phased approach that might go something like this:
Saturday-Sunday early evening before the Tour: All bids for riders for whom you are willing to bid more than 200 points.
On Sunday evening, I would work out how many points each participant has left, publicize the list of those who have already been snapped up, and open up the bidding for the next phase.
Monday-Tuesday Bids for riders who you would pay more than 100 for. Again, late on Tuesday I'd do a list of the riders already snaffled, and budget updates.
Wednesday-Thursday Bid for whoever is still available.
Friday Hopefully you will have a few points left to mop up the last few riders after the last update so that everyone has a squad of 9. It might be of course that some squads will have changed since the beginning of the week: the risk of a rider not participating is something to bear in mind when deciding how much to risk bidding on him.
Saturday morning If participants are quick, they can get a say in any distribution of the last few riders, otherwise I'll just do it in some pseudo-random order
The Scoring
Points will be allocated largely according to the CQ scale, but with a couple of tweaks. My deviations from CQ are shown in italics.
GC: 600 for 1st down to 21 for 50th, and 20 for every finisher
Green/Polka dot jersey 160 for 1st down to 2 for 10th. (double what CQ give, makes winning points/KoM equivalent to 10th in GC)
White jersey young rider A quarter the points given for points/KoM ranking
Each stage: 80 for 1st down to one for 10th. A quarter of this for each rider in the TTT, for those who record the same time as their team's top 5 on that stage. If a rider is tailed off by his team, but still finishes ahead of the tenth placed team, he will get the points that a rider on the next slowest time after his personal time would get.
Jersey Holders(rightful holder: not merely the guy wearing it if leader of the category is wearing another jersey) 20 pts for Yellow 10 for Green/Polka Dot, 5 for White
Participants
As you'll have realised, with 9 riders each, the competition will work best with 22 teams. Participants will need, as you can see from the timetable above, to be able to make submissions several times in the week before the Tour starts: please don't put your name forward unless you are fairly sure you will be able to edit within those slots.
So book your place: I'm not excluding myself. In the interests of transparency, I'll send my bids to a non-participant admin (if one would be agreeable) at the time I first invite submissions. Suggestions for tweaks to the format will be vaguely considered, and really good ones won't be dismissed out of hand.
As of 22/06 we have 10 entrants:
Armchair Cyclist
Timmy Loves Rabo
Hitch
Taiwan
Boomcie
Jobiwan
TeamSkyFan
Sasquatch
Gotland
Michielveedeebee
It would be good to get to 22, and I'm happy to keep the list open until midnight Friday night (UK time) subject to that upper limit of 22 teams. I reckon I'll go ahead and run it so long as there are at least 12 active participants.
Red text: update on 22/06
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