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Subject: SW Stock Car Challenge Strategy Posted by: The Beezer - [20982322] Mon, Jan 15, 14:52 I thought I'd kick off some discussion on strategy for this game (since I'm in North Carolina, the birthplace of NASCAR, it's hard to believe that the season ever STOPS ;)). First, the basics: $10m to start, 4 drivers, roster freeze Saturdays at 7 p.m. EST(not sure if it changes to EDT after Daylight Savings), price changes at the same time as roster freeze, 2 trades alloted at this same time as well. Point scoring is the NASCAR scoring system, so no formulas needed. To afford the 4 most expensive drivers , you would need about $18m. And the drivers around $2.5m are not so great, so making $$$ to afford 4 good drivers is going to be extremely important. There's not too much difference in the points in the top 5, so you want a guy with consistency, who finishes races and does consistently well. Prices go all the way down to $.25m, so picking up 2 bargain guys will allow to have 2 top guys on your team as well. A barbelled team seems to be about the only reasonable way to go in this game. I believe you can expect most dollar gains to come from the sub-$1m guys who get out and do well. Another benefit from having 2 top guys who are consistent is that you can then focus your 2 trades each week on your cheap guys. This will give you the freedom to be able to move into a guy to pick up his $$$ gains and still drop back out of him the next week if he has a poor finish. | ||||||
| 1 | philflyboy ID: 49040915 Mon, Jan 15, 17:40 |
if the roster freeze is at 7:00 on saturday then we will be able to see qualifying results and make picks according to who made the race. That should help tremendously with picking the cheapies. If a cheapie should make the top 10 in qualifying he will be a big money gainer for the week. I agree that the best way to go is with 2 good guys and 2 cheapies. | |||||
| 2 | VIDevilRays ID: 508151619 Mon, Jan 15, 18:54 | Sounds good to me:) Thanks! | |||||
| 3 | Tom ID: 31812208 Tue, Jan 16, 06:59 |
My gut is telling me to go with consistency. Here are a few drivers to ponder. Ricky Rudd - 12 top 5 finishes last year and 19 top 10. 5th in points. The only draw back is he never wins. Bill Elliot - 3 top 5 and 7 top 10's. Now has Ray Everham! When Everham started working with Elliot last year at the end of the season Elloit started placing better. If Dodge is competitve Elliot could be a good pick. Ward Burton - 4 top 5 and 17 top 10's. 10 th in points. 10th in points. Definitely keep your eye on Ward. Steve Parks - 8 top 10's in final 13 races last season. 11th in points. If he picks up where he left off....??? Johnny Benson , Earnhart Jr., and Matt Kenseth all deserve a look at. I have not checked prices and did not name any gimmies, just guys you might want to consider. Tom | |||||
| 4 | The Beezer ID: 20982322 Tue, Jan 16, 09:02 |
I've been looking at the prices of drivers, and I think there are 2 strategies that are viable with the current prices of drivers: 2 studs, 2 cheapies 3 good, 1 cheapie Kenseth, Earnheardt Jr., Elliot, Mayfield, and Benson are all in that ~3~3.5m range where you can pick up 3 of them and a .25 guy. I'm doing 2 teams, 1 each strategy. And I might start a 3rd after Daytona if I get off to a bad start or if there are several good cheap guys that emerge from Daytona. | |||||
| 5 | JKaye ID: 4711592917 Tue, Jan 16, 13:19 |
Tom says, "Ricky Rudd - 12 top 5 finishes last year and 19 top 10. 5th in points. The only draw back is he never wins." Rudd should have had about 3-4 wins last year but bad luck cost him. He could be a championship contender this year. Unless I can find a second viable cheapie, I am leaning towards guys like Benson and Mayfield who should have better seasons this year. | |||||
| 6 | The Beezer ID: 20982322 Tue, Jan 16, 13:54 | I like Mayfield's price too, but I worry about his inconsistency. He's as feast-or-famine as they come... | |||||
| 7 | Tom ID: 31812208 Tue, Jan 16, 14:05 |
Mayfield is a big question mark. I believe he had three top 13 seasons before last year when he feel to 24?? in the points. If he returns to prior years form then he is defintely worth having. Tom | |||||
| 8 | The Beezer ID: 20982322 Fri, Jan 19, 11:59 |
Is it just me, or do the trade limits seem pretty useless in this game? If you pick 2 studs, say, Jarrett and B. Labonte, you can pretty much expect them to be favored for top-5 every week, regardless of track, and the worst they can do is provisional start, which doesn't happen very often for them either. That means to start the year, you can spend 2 trades on rotating cheapies, and with the breaks in the season for Easter and the 3 week stretch with no "official" races in May, if you wanted to save up trades, you could. IMO, there doesn't seem to be much incentive to save trades. Therefore, I plan to spend all trades every week if needed to maximize roster value. I look at it as a race to $20 million, and the sooner you can get 4 studs driving, the better chance to win you have. Am I missing something here, or what? | |||||
| 9 | philflyboy ID: 49040915 Fri, Jan 19, 13:05 |
Beezer I agree with you for the most part. There will be some rotation of stud drivers going from super speedways to short tracks and road courses. I agree also that is it a race to get to the $$ to afford better drivers. 15$ mil might be enough tho to do that. I also plan to spend trades to upgrade as fast as possible. I wonder if we can get richard to play nascar also ;). his repricing help would be appreciated!! | |||||
| 10 | The Beezer ID: 20982322 Fri, Jan 19, 13:08 |
philflyboy, your points on track differences are well taken. I think that will be a major focus once money has been taken care of. As far as sampling goes, I'm not sure how useful it will be for this game. With freezes only on Saturdays, and at the same time as price changes, unless current rosters can be viewed, only the data from the previous week will be viewable. Of course, his insights would probably be on target anyway, and he'd definitely be the source for info on Ricky Rudd! :) | |||||
| 11 | Bob S. ID: 1635116 Fri, Jan 19, 16:09 | beezer, i may have read the rules wrong, but i thought they were only going to give new trades out in the weeks preceeding a race. does this mean in may with 3 weeks of "un-official" non-racing that we will get 2 trades each week?? | |||||
| 12 | The Beezer ID: 20982322 Fri, Jan 19, 16:39 |
Bob, the way I read the rules, it looks like it's every week during the season. This is from Smallworld's Help - How to Play - 7. Trades - first bullet: "Once the season starts, you will receive two trades every Saturday at 7:01 PM ET. " Looks like every week to me. So after the Richmond freeze on May 5, you'll have those 2 trades, plus 2 on the 12th and 2 more on the 19th to prepare for the 600. Plus there will be price changes on these weeks as well, so there's a good chance to pile up some cash without worrying about performance too much. If I'm still using 2 studs/2 cheapies going into Richmond, if I have only 2 trades I would consider going to 4 cheapies during that time to pile up more $$$ - if needed by then, then use the other 4 trades to get whomever I want for the 600. But that's a ways down the road! Also thought about doing that for the Easter break if I can bank a trade or 2 to help with roster moves for that bit. | |||||
| 13 | Bob S. ID: 1635116 Fri, Jan 19, 18:11 | thanks beezer. this should be a lot of fun. will be a long season, so i hope a lot of people don't stop playing before they build up enough roster value to compete. i agree that the late roster freeze will help us so you know which "cheapies" have qualified. very interesting strategies here. one point. don'tthink there will be any "randro" here as in baseball. nobody pulls randy and pedro off the mound and runs them into a wall!!!:):):) | |||||
| 14 | The Beezer ID: 20982322 Sat, Jan 27, 18:37 |
PHILFLYBOY, I was perusing the Golf forum to get some more ideas on how this game will work, and I thought of something that might be useful: sampling. I know in the past we've used it mainly to figure out where price changes are going to go, but what if after the Daytona freeze, we did a "Richard Sample" (for lack of a better term) and found out % of ownership for all of the drivers. Should be much easier in this game since there are only about 43 or less viable choices in any week. We could then all use this data to know who was most vulnerable to price drops, and who would be most likely to move up due to low worldwide holding. Plus the insights into trading activity just being able to look at the past might be quite valuable. I'm not sure how to set it up, but if you or Richard want to try it, or can give me some pointers on how to do it (don't know much about macros, but I have a fairly good mathematical and statistical understanding of things), I'm curious as to how it would work. Any thoughts? | |||||
| 15 | Superho ID: 421138130 Sat, Jan 27, 18:45 |
Another thought regarding barbelled rosters. I think we can agree that many people will follow the two stud, two cheapie roster formula. It also seems obvious that the key to performing well with cheapies will be to make sure they make the race. With that in mind, remember that most weeks the roster freeze follows qualifying. It's quite likely that each week one or two viable cheapies will miss the show and a couple will make it. It seems that most people employing the barbell roster will trade into the guys making the race. Unless there are other factors I'm not taking into account, it seems price moves among cheapies will be dependent on qualifying more than actual race performance. Especially if many people use both of their trades to insure their cheap guys are in the race. Any thoughts on this? | |||||
| 16 | Superho ID: 189282015 Mon, Feb 05, 13:42 |
Bueller, Bueller.... Anyone giving any thought to strategy at this point? With only testing speeds to go by I don't think driver analysis is going to be particularly useful until the boys get to Daytona. | |||||
| 17 | NEMESIS ID: 501133241 Fri, Feb 16, 15:43 | I think any strategy for the Daytona race begins with making sure you get the Dodge drivers on your roster. I see a Dodge domination for the top 10. | |||||
| 18 | Tom ID: 3611538 Fri, Feb 16, 16:08 |
I am not sure that I buy into the Dodge domination thing just yet. I think the thing to do is maybe have one each of Dodge, Chevy , Pontiac. Ford is so busy bit**ing about their "dis-advantage" that they seem to have forgotten that NASCAR has what it wants - equal representation in the top ten. Remember also that drafting is the key. Teams who are near each other draft each other. Big E now has two cars that can help so that makes it a little easier for him if they get up front with him. Same goes for T. Stewart and B. Labonte. FWIW Tom | |||||
| 19 | Lugnuts ID: 211491316 Fri, Feb 23, 14:58 | Well if you are going to take a cheapie you have to go with Casey Atwood. He is at 250,000 and will do nothing but go up. I look for him to be rookie of year. | |||||
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