All Things Vital Downhill Fantasy

I used Poland as a test run of a theory and... Can confirm it was a failure. No need to go over what it was lol.

With the timing of picking the strat is definitely wait to make sure your people are even in basically, of course... Try to pick your winners. And then the make or break to actually win or get close to it is picking the right junior performers basically. I think a lot of people are more or less picking the same 'winners', but it's hard AF to pick the unusual performers below your winners. Ya know the winner is pickin juniors I've never heard of. So you just gotta really know your shit or get very very lucky.

But ya I was kinda hopin picks would close before qualies. But I guess that's not very 'fun'. And takes the gamesmanship outta it.

Poland made me think hard. There were a bunch of riders qualifying in places where they wouldn't ultimately finish. I put together a reasonable team, then later spent a whole lot of time refining the team based on all kinds of weekend results and gut-feeling predictions. Ended up with something that I was happy with only to find I was outside of deadline and had to stick with the first selections. Real good fun in any case. I think Vital have nailed this format.

Any announcement on season prizes?

It's getting tougher and thougher to make good picks 

Locking in my team. Pretty interesting qualy results imo. Outside of first place, things got shaken up a decent bit. But with the rain finals may be a crap shoot anyway. I'm assuming a lot of people will have my same load out. I need to recover after my Poland experiment and learn how the winners are doing their junior picks to refine my strat. Part of me still wants to experiment with outlier strats

A quick scroll through my Insta feed seems to show quite a lot of riders saying the equivalent of "tough day at the office" today. Fully expecting the unexpected tomorrow which is cool but it sure makes building a team challenging!

I should have scored 1455 points this round. Had mixed luck so I am unsure where I'll stand. One rider let me down. 

Had Henri on my vital team. Henri and Cami on my PB so that was in the tank. Race Companion team came through for me though. Men’s 1,2,3 and Vali

I had Kiefer too

Obvious picks were bang on for me. Sadly Troy slipped about in finals and Amaury really fell off. I need to accept that there is a reason he is cheaper right now. It's not the Amaury from before (just yet). Happy Oisin pulled through. Good lad. I ended up dropping Ronan which felt AWFUL. And it almost feels worse to have that change validated. Maybe the track needs to be gnarlier I dunno lol. Of COURSE when I drop Erice and pick Ellie, she comes right on back and drops Ellie but at least I got a second. And then the Asa thing

Fantasy kills me man lol. Literally feel like if I pick someone and they have a bad day I caused it. May as well have held the fake red flag up myself all the way from SoCal...

I dropped Erice for Sascha (Also learned it's pronounced AIR-iss, air-EECE), and of course had Asa and Ronan...

Purely from a potential points per dollar earned perspective, I don't think Asa is worth it - he can at most get 60 points from 80k spend. On top of that, the juniors are pretty volatile. Ronan is a bit of an expensive bet - he is on form, but he's really expensive for almost 200k (can't remember the exact amount) and not exactly the most stable rider. I bet on Tahnee and Nina, especially Nina since she had that elbow injury and seemed to be somewhat on form and only 120k. Lost it on both of them haha. Win some lose some - got an amazing result on the mens field - Loic/Lakie/Luka/Oisin. Juniors I only picked one from each category, unless it's "filler" picks and the first round Asa (60 points for 60k!) I try to find someone that's not priced like they'll be competing for a win, but will probably be on the podium. 

What’s was the go with Henri DNS? Did he have a crash in practice? Had him down for fantasy to bank some points.

Happy to do a normal round and score above average... But def interested to experiment some more. Best possible team DOES choose Vali but basically no other winner. Which is fairly bizarre as she's an expensive and expected winner. So interesting to see how many different ways you can combo the more 'obvious' choices with the extremely not obvious choices.

Congrats to Cloudy. I need to get on the Lachy train. Or maybe I shouldn't cuz I don't wanna ruin his run Those sub 75k picks are killer. I need to learn how to utilize them. Still confused why a Vali pick is so rewarding but a Loic pick is less so? Some diff weighting in some way div to div? hmmm

Got 5th, can't complain. 

Didn’t do horrible but made some last minute changes that were Hail Marys based on rain and they all flopped.  Plus I had tahnee and asa.

I spaced picking a team and it turned out okay. VitalFantasyBot picked Lachie, Max Alran, and Mike Huter for me. I wasn’t gonna pick any of them and they all got points. 
 

So there’s that

Was pretty damn surprised when I checked the scores, not expecting that! This is the closest thing I will ever have to a good result in mountain biking, haha! Didn't remember to update my team for Poland so been pretty poor so far. Definitely got lucky with some of the picks and having quite a few eggs in the basket seemed to help.

Not sure what I won, but hopefully the extra shipping costs to Alaska aren't too bad.

Big thanks to Vital, loving the Fantasy and all the content around the World Cups. Cheers!

I think you might be overthinking it a little, it is simply cost of rider vs payout. Bruni was 210k for 250 payout, Vali was 205k for 250 payout, hence why she was chosen in the best team.

Well that sounds like a nearly same cost to me. That is to say, both riders performed 'as expected' for their cost. But I guess my question is... Does that mean you need only ONE winner, regardless of which div it is. And the 'one winner' is of course the one with the best payout to cost ratio. My question is more so why would a top winner even be involved... OR why would the best possible team not have basically the winner from each div in it THEN lower picks.

But I'm guessing the answer is only one first place winner, of any div, is the best ratio. So of the 4 'winners', Vali had the best payout to cost ratio. (Aka yes, I am overthinking it. Das da point.)

Nearly the same still isn't the same. For the best team as presented by vital, you can't take Vali and slot in Bruni - you'd be over budget by 3000 if you do so.  No "winners" matter in the choice of the team, it's whatever comes out ahead in terms of points/cash and the one mil budget.  If you had a bunch of 80-150k guys winning 2-4th places, then potentially the winning team will have no "winners" at all. 

Ok, I see. These points are static and the fall off is pretty significant so while a top pick may help, you're really winning by those sorta Lachlan/Oisin/Newkirk/Baumann picks.

I did wait till the final hour this time, but I'm still picking too many high budget riders to finish much further than average. Not enough outlier picks to get an outlier high score. Never really deep dived results until this fantasy thing. Gonna have to dial in those semis picks and trust the outlier performers for finals.

The formula is pretty simple, as many have already said. It's points/dollar, and that's it. It isn't points per pick, because the picks are unlimited as long as you stay under the budget.

Picking the assumed winner for juniors is always a bad pick. Pick Asa if you want to, but he's 80k and he can only get you 60 points. Same on the junior womens side. At least with elites, Loic and Vali will get you better than 1 point per $1000 if they win. You could theoretically have the bottom 15 men if they were all under $30,000 and be guaranteed better than 1 point per $1000, and they would all be better picks than picking Loic even when he wins.

Ya that's what I heard somewhere else. Juniors winners don't quite make sense as a value. Goal is to at least get point per 1k. Than find some outliers going well above point per 1k ratio. Thanks, that last bit clears up my concerns. I kinda had an idea around that, which is why I threw away my Poland round. But it was dumb because it guaranteed 0s since I was lazy and didn't want to update it for finals. But basically had the same idea. Pick 'all the lowest' picks and probably end up well above average. Val Di Sole will be fun. First event where I know what the hell I'm doing I guess.

I don't want to give too much away during the season, but there are definitely some cool strategies to work with, the way vital set up the league is pretty interesting.

As mentioned above, Asa could win every round and would still be too expensive. There are a couple things vital could do with the pricing to help, but I'm keeping my thoughts to myself until the last round