Freezing Saddles 2015

[rcannon100]

@Steve O 100887 wrote:

3) MR is easier to implement

Just one point of clarification. Setting the teams is not hard. It is an investment of time and if the game launches ~ its good. This is not hard. (ease of implementation should not be factor ~ good game design is the key)

What is hard is when people who are not on the forum sign up for FS and then dont show up, creating holes in teams – or people cant play for some reason – or people get placed on teams who did not go through the registration process. The goal is to create a bunch of relatively equal teams. Shat is hard has been the gap between creating the teams – and finding out who did not show up, who is on IR, who didnt sign up but wants to play. Both previous years this has been challenging.

Thankfully ACL has volunteered to be substitution czar.

Also, remember that our goal here is to move toward consensus.

1) Modified random indemnifies the team assigner’s system from being second guessed

There is absolutely no truth to that statement. :p

[dkel]

@rcannon100 100898 wrote:

What is hard is when people who are not on the forum sign up for FS and then dont show up, creating holes in teams – or people cant play for some reason – or people get placed on teams who did not go through the registration process. […] What is hard has been the gap between creating the teams – and finding out who did not show up, who is on IR, who didnt sign up but wants to play.

Sounds like none of the hair-splitting in forming teams will matter…

Wait—did I just say that out loud?

[dkel]

@dkel 100899 wrote:

Sounds like none of the hair-splitting in forming teams will matter…

Wait—did I just say that out loud?

Seriously, though, if there’s no way to overcome the effects of unpredictability, let’s just use one of the ideas (even last year’s plan) and go for it. Not being on a competitive team won’t keep me from busting it to ride every day and get as high as I can on the overall list. So it will still be fun!

[rcannon100]

The first year we did this, FS was a great success and the game design was pretty good. The second year we modified the game, and that was an improvement. But we suffered from scale. We had lots of outsiders and those outsiders did not show up, causing teams to be very unbalanced. It took a lot of work to balance the teams. When we did, the game worked well.

We are taking time now to reconsider the game design because, well, this game is fun. And a good game design makes it fun. If we set up the game right, it works better and we avoid a lot of whining later on. If we get impatient (what is the hurry after all) and take “whatever option,” then one month from now those of us doing the work will be dealing with a bunch of people screaming because they dont like this or that or the other thing.

If you are not going to be part of a competitive team and this does not matter to you, then maybe I would suggest step aside and let those people who will be participating and competing work this out. We are close to being done. Engaging in a good peer dialogue produces good results. You dont have to be a part of this process if it doesnt matter to you.

Right now I think the compelling game design is Steve’s MR if we can solve some of the questions out there (which I think we can).

TALKING PROPOSAL
* Modified Random
* Everyone provides handicap based on Sept through November. This will be checked against Strava. Sandbaggers will be ridiculed.
* Top cyclists will be spread across teams based on handicap. Using top cyclists, we will create a set of relatively equal teams. The rest of the cyclists will be randomized.
* Participants will be given the option of regionalization (MD, DC, VA)
* ACL will be substitution czar. Late signups or whatever will be put in a substitution pool. After three weeks or something, the team captain with the greatest deficit can take on subs (in past years, where we did not randomize, participants with like handicaps were substituted (if someone with a 75 handicap did not show up, they could be substituted with someone with a 75 ish handicap)
* Communication and coordination will be through the forum
* Game is for members of the forum, for people in the area (with maybe the exception of Kiev)

[PeteD]

I’m glad I’m not all that competitive. I just wanna ride a bike with my friends

[ATTACH=CONFIG]7095[/ATTACH]

[Anonymous]

@dkel 100899 wrote:

Sounds like none of the hair-splitting in forming teams will matter…

Wait—did I just say that out loud?

I don’t think it will, either, no matter what handicapping scheme gets used or how talented a substitution czar I do or don’t turn out to be, not if what you’re going for is a bunch of teams still competitive by March, which is what it sounds like people are trying to get to. Having watched the 2013 craziness, and been a member of the first place team in 2014, I would strongly suggest that team dynamics is the biggest factor in being in the top couple teams, and you can’t handicap for that.

Something that Steve O’s randomized look back at 2014 misses (has to miss, not his fault) is that many of the individual scores would have been different had we been on different teams. My score, at least, would almost certainly not have been what it was if I weren’t on the same team as Chris Shue out there riding centuries with broken collarbones at 4am (seriously, 4am!?!?– in February?!). And I’m betting that the sleaze champions of 2014 (who gave us a good run for our money, or whatever it was we won) didn’t just randomly happen to all be on the same team, but encouraged and fed off each other to get out there every day and *become* the sleaze champions, and almost winning team.

It doesn’t matter to me this year but for 2016 I will vote for random teams, unless y’all try it out this year and it’s a disaster.

[CPTJohnC]

@acl 100907 wrote:

I would strongly suggest that team dynamics is the biggest factor in being in the top couple teams, and you can’t handicap for that.

This. I guarantee you I rode many, many more days (though not a lot of miles) because of my team. Watching Fast Friendly Guy do Strava art, and Dave (DKel) get really into things was just amazing! Did it change my riding behavior? You bet it did!

[ShawnoftheDread]

I think what you’re saying is my teams didn’t lose, I just failed them as the captain.

[rcannon100]

@acl 100907 wrote:

I would strongly suggest that team dynamics is the biggest factor in being in the top couple teams, and you can’t handicap for that.

Actually….. you can…. just saying.

[CPTJohnC]

@ShawnoftheDread 100911 wrote:

I think what you’re saying is my teams didn’t lose, I just failed them as the captain.

It isn’t necessarily all about the captain. There’s a somewhat indecipherable dynamic that just… works. Sometimes. I am pretty sure that our head of team spirit was ~not~ our captain.

Oh, and we didn’t win – We were #3. My contribution to that was small. But it was larger than our margin over the next closest team, so obviously there was something to it.

That said: I think some handicapping is useful: we don’t all ride 4AM centuries. With a broken collarbone. Or do bike advocacy as part of our jobs. But as for what separates the #3 team from #4 (at least last year)? It was very much about team dynamic – which convinced me to take way more sleaze rides than I otherwise would have at 11PM in sub 20f weather.

[dkel]

@rcannon100 100913 wrote:

Actually….. you can…. just saying.

I’m very interested in this; how does it work? I feel like all the ideas people have come up with are good, but I haven’t seen (or have missed) how planning can mitigate for the unexpected injury or now-show, aside from rejiggering the teams to compensate (or is that the only way?). That seems to be the biggest hurdle in keeping the game close, along with creating that magical team dynamic.

[cvcalhoun]

I can verify that team dynamic thing. I (accurately) reported last year that in the relevant pre-FS period, I was bicycling 2 days a week for a total of about 30 miles a week. During FS, I bicycled every day, and racked up just under 75 miles a week. That wasn’t the result of sandbagging, but of genuinely increasing my mileage more than I ever thought possible. My points weren’t all that astronomical–I was number 7 of our team of 9. (Yep, geeks, I really was Seven of Nine!) But the difference between the points I would have had based on my original schedule and the points I actually had was more than the difference between our winning team and the runner up.

But the idea behind handicapping is not that the teams should be equal all the way through FS, but that they should start out with roughly equal capabilities. I don’t think last year’s system did badly at that, and I’d be fine with using it this year. Or if you wanted to eliminate potential sandbagging, you could use last year’s FS numbers, and then randomize the newbies. But I really don’t see the need for some immensely complicated system.

[Dickie]

Having read an entire thread about an event I do not intend to participate in should earn me a Master’s of something right? Master’s of stupidity, procrastination, OCD, fear of missing out….. something.

[Vicegrip]

@Dickie 100947 wrote:

Having read an entire thread about an event I do not intend to participate in should earn me a Master’s of something right? Master’s of stupidity, procrastination, OCD, fear of missing out….. something.

Easy fix, retake the lost time by signing up.

[DCAKen]

Just to put another spin on all the handicapping discussions…

The number of days that a participant gets the daily bonus is never taken into account. Those ten points can be a substantial percentage of the points earned…and I had several 13 point days during those bitter cold spells only because I didn’t want to end up on the Sleaze Days list. How much of an effect does the daily bonus have on a team’s ranking?

[Author]

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