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Meh i dunno what the strat is for PB but my results def indicate I didn't figure it out. I like vital more. The fact that somebody can pick 10 or less riders and nearly be the same points as someone picking over 15 makes it way more interesting.
6 riders only seems boring. Also no juniors at all. We play the WHOLE race here.
The "problem" with Vital's contest is that with no roster cap, the optimal team is 20+ riders, mostly a swarm of $10-15k juniors. Junior Men value is like ~270 expected points per $100k; best Elite Men value is ~85. Juniors are 3-5x more efficient per dollar, which means a high-performance floor is generally tied to having as many value-pick Juniors on your team as possible. The absolute winner of the day needs to get lucky and pick a breakout performance; and yes, sniping a bunch of good Elite picks could outperform this strategy. But from an optimization perspective, this is how it plays out. Oops -- I may have made the contest more competitive in upcoming events...
My unsolicited advice to Vital is to add a reasonable roster cap (higher than PB's 6, sure). It seems like the thought process here is that we should be "team managers" (thus wanting to stick with exactly UCI scoring and have rider values scale in a big way between Elites and Juniors). No actual DH program runs ten juniors and one elite, so this is more "realistic" anyway. Fewer riders mean more variance (Elite finals are less predictable than a huge Junior floor), which makes it more fun and also makes low-owned picks more decisive.
the optimal team was 15 riders.
and I actually enjoy that the right picks are 'not intuitive' as opposed to... picking the winners being the only way to win.
i think the only solid advice is rider values need to be adjusted more aggressively so that you are not necessarily just getting rewarded by picking last place in juniors over and over. that I can agree with. even tho its the only thing that saved my garbage strategy
its pretty clear the points awarded for last place in juniors means even the unknown riders maybe shouldn't quite be ~10k or whatever. that floor should be raised to 15k maayybe 20k. not sure how others feel about it. in vitals defense, these ARE practically unknown riders to the casual viewer. it would be more compelling if we had to pick BEFORE qualifying.
but right now yes, picking the cheapest juniors riders that even make it to the finals is basically free points. doesnt guarantee you a race win but likely becomes a mandatory strat to attempt a win.
The best team deterministically optimized after the event has 15 riders in this case, yes, but an optimization strategy before the event will maximize number of juniors to improve the performance floor.
Unfortunately, that's nerdy as hell, which might be why the participation in Vital's DH Fantasy has been declining...
For sure. But again, 2nd place player used 14 riders.
Eoin who is FREQUENTLY at the top somehow used 9 riders. He scored 908 (8th place) with 9 riders lmao... This bro knows too much. Investigate this man.
So yeah it's absolutely a statistics game to 'do well' but it still doesn't guarantee a win.
I think I did a test run last year to pick the cheapest riders to go in to the finals to see if it's a stupid free win button and, predictably, it is not. I wouldn't even say it did 'good' since just a tiny amount of management above only picking cheapest riders will net you decent gains immediately.
But yeah I can't argue that the 'unknown' juniors are too cheap and become free point filler for players who are not OMNISCIENT like Eoin...
Funnily enough last year I was making a quick excel after q2 ranking all qualified riders by time and assigning points like it was finals, then picking the most points/money riders. That will stack your team with underdogs and juniors. It won me a pair of handlebars once.
This year I'm just picking riders I like, mostly top 10 elite males and mid pack girls getting through q1. Feels more fun.
It's all just luck anyway, but nice to give extra stakes to the broadcast.
I don't like a rider cap idea. What they need to do is bring top rider prices down a bit to make them better value and worth picking.
I hear you. Or raise Junior values. But I’m probably done playing as-is. Basically just a comp sci knapsack problem in this config.
I'm just here for the love of the game, baby.
And by that I mean cursing my favorite riders by picking them as well as considering a rider last second, ultimately not picking them, and watching them win the whole damn race of course.
(ur welcome Luca)
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