2022 WERA MotoGP Fantasy League

March is approaching, so its time to start soliciting players and getting ruelsets all finalized. I spoke with jksoft and he will again support the game on the back end via his web application.
To get the ball rolling, I say we start where we left off.
Same game rules as baseline (two paying games -- weekly and seasonal, with same payouts).
I propose a few changes. Please add comment. Nothing will be imposed without due deliberation, but it will really help your case to have been a past player.

1) Buy in 75, with $5 a fixed allocation for hosting services fees. While we effectively covered these last season due to individual choices, I want to take free rider syndrome out of the picture.

2) Create a standard, post-qualifying cut off time for picks. The reason for this is fairness. Depending on where one lives, morning practice and pregrid vary all over the map (we have players not just in NA). With most Euroraces going off at 2 pm local in the GMT +1, that makes morning races very convenient for some (most?) players at the disadvantage of other players. If we effectively create a time that is something like 12 hours after qualifying, we obviate that disadvantage. The only real intel to base picks on (other than some rare kind of conditional medical clearance for a crashed rider) is the grid order as determined at the end of Q2.

3) I personally don't like the autofill picks from the previous round (or rounds, just passing through) in cases where picks are not made. The original game hosted at Motogo.com had no such provision, and we adopted it largely three years ago when we didn't have a reliable game platform for the first few races. It puts a high priority on making safety picks for situations where a back up may be needed due to circumstance (eg., backpacking, no cell service). I am proposing allowing autofill once or not at all.

That's all I have for now. We will work on these rules for a bit, and in the next couple weeks open up registrations and deposits. K-go.
--dave

 

Wife and I are in again this year.

Typing on my phone, so excuse the brevity.

Totally good with increased buy-in.

I like the suggestion about a fixed cut-off after qualifying (assuming that whatever it is can be easily implemented by jksoft). I personally never took advantage of the Sunday warm-up sessions; I've always picked based on qualifying and all of the sessions preceding it. Maybe that's why I suck...!?

I am indifferent on the auto-pick for the most part. I like the idea of having a single mulligan of some sort - life does get busy - but not being able to carry over picks through multiple and consecutive rounds. If there's an easy way to manage a one-time auto-fill, then I vote for that. If not, I vote no auto-fills.

 

I obviously like the way it's been done. It just makes sense, and we worked a bit to get it to where there's still excitement till the last round.

Cutoff times: same as always. Too much happens between qualifying and race start to not account for that. BUT, i've done better when I don't mess with my picks after qualifying, so it may actually help me having it locked earlier...lol

Autofill: Keep it. You know when you are travelling the world, immersing yourself with the locals, deep in the country and there is no wifi. You sometime can't do picks. And you don't want to be an American jerk looking at your phone. How else can you totally immerse yourself? ammirite or what

no reason to fix what ain't broken is my stance, but I will go with the majority.

AND...i'm in!

 

I would like to join again. Took last year off and ended up missing it.

 

in


time to kick the bird in the nuts


i've scrambled to pick the picks in spots with bad wifi or cell reception (camping), so a backup would be tremendously helpful

 

Good comments all; keep them coming. And welcome back westie!

 

In and fine with the way it has been done.

What if there was a 5 or 10 point penalty on rollover or default picks?

 

As the self proclaimed King of Autofill, I can say that there's little difference in my eyes from penalizing someone for where they live (and standardizing it so there's a set cutoff after Q2) vs penalizing someone for the lifestyle they lead (travels, has kids, grueling job, etc.).

This seems like a solution without a problem - it's not like autofill is some kind of advantage, and no one who's in the running is using autofill in any meaningful way.

 

On this we disagree. I normally wake at between 5 and 545. For me (or anyone in my timezone) to make pregrid that means waking early, and if you are the type of person with very regular sleep habits this isnt an easy thing. Given that races are usually on Sundays, and Saturdays have some typical openness to them (say concerts or the like that might make for later than normal bedtimes) it's a custom built bias to having the cutoff 5 minutes before race for what I think is 16 of 21 races. Making safety picks -- even if those are the same as your last entry -- is not asking a lot of personal behavior. The issue is people not winning because of safety picks; the issue is a direct penalty for not playing (and that's exactly how the original game was set up -- for years people got tossed out of the hunt because they simply failed to spend 5 minutes on safety picks, even when all it takes in five minutes anytime in the leadup to a race. IMO, actively playing should be a prereq for doing well. If there were a special instance where a player is likely in a situation where even that minor effort was not available (eg backpacking the whole week) I would allow for a provision to have proxy entry (by me, jk, someone).

I am fine with being outvoiced on this, but want to make my case clearly.

 

In.

I like autofill, even though it makes me come in near the bottom, it's better than no picks. However, a beginning of the year non-changeable autofil would be cool too.

 

I hear there is a new version of the avian flu going around. Could this finally be the year the bird goes down?

I will be in to make sure of it! Cough Cough.

 

Dan off to a good start on the TTPOA (and he's the current champion) so everyone needs to up their game. The Bird is such an easy (and endearing) target, everyone should play.

 

I’m in again, but only because this fantasy MotoGP game is the ABSOLUTE GREATEST. I agree with BigBird on all points. I also agree with a per player tax in the buy in amount to cover the cost of operation.

 

In!!!
1) completely agree
2) have no opinion so just put me where you need the votes
3) I would be in favor of a "preset autofill" option (ie something that has to be set by us "in case of emergencies" or just keeping it as is where it rolls over from the previous week). I just looked at the schedule and just first half alone is going to present some interesting challenges: COTA weekend doing offroad ADV bike training classes in Va; Jerez riding the Smokies; Catalunya going to be in the bush in South Africa; and that doesnt include the shitty wifi and cell coverage at the tracks on the East Coast during one of those weekends, let alone my family already sending out things about Europe once it opens back up again. If I had to guess, this spring and summer are going to be similar to last year in that more people than normal are going to be motivated to "do things" away from home and that in and of itself may be a good reason to keep it.

 

I'm in for this year as well!

Regarding your 3 points, I agree with #1 and #3. I'm not sure what the right way of going about is, but I definitely agree there should be some harsher penalties for when people don't submit picks. Maybe not necessarily 0 points, but something that makes more of a difference. Some have gotten lucky and had decent scores despite completely forgetting. I forgot ONE time in the last 2 years and although I got a shitty score for that round, it was surprisingly not my worst of the season, which doesn't seem fair. Just like in racing, a DNS should be worse than starting from the back of the grid and getting a time penalty! lol Perhaps a "backup" or "preset" list as others have mentioned. If we use the same site again, I'm sure @jksoft could program it so that instead of seeing last week's picks when you log in or an alphabetical order, he could set it so that by default it goes to the "preset" list and have only top 10 riders on there. That way even if you get lucky and your preset is actually decent, at least you only get points for 10 instead of 15. Just an idea.

But regarding #2, I don't see what difference it really makes to have it at say 12 hours after qualifying vs 5 minutes before the race. Both are fixed times. Only change is the time zone of the people participating but the only way to normalize that would be to have the cutoff be different for everyone based on their time zones, like midnight at each person's local time, which would be extremely complicated and a total cluster. I personally liked the 5-minutes before the race, but if you want to change it to an hour before or something like that, it's also fine. For me it only mattered with the races in the Americas, Qatar, Motegi and Phillip Island. Those are the only ones I usually watched live anyway.

 

In on page 1

 

What’s the paypal addy. I got my 80 bucks ready.

 

i read it as $75 with $5 of that going to hosting, and $70 to my the pot, $80 is more better

 

What the paypal addy. Take my $75.

 

Im in again, all the way from down under.

Im happy with the current platform and see no need to change. I am in favour of auto fill too. As a minimum id suggest one default set list chosen prior to the first race of the season, that would act as your auto entry otherwise auto fill from previous round works for me.