Tour de France Stage 1

I haven't looked at the stages yet, is it a TT or is it actually a prologue type stage? If it's short I'll probably stack sprinters as I find Prologue's more difficult to predict than proper TTs.

it's a prologue, 6km or so

Yeah its a proper prologue, and stages 1 and 3 also look quite tough to predict, so could be an interesting first few days...

Ive got my team in mind based on stages P and 1, gonna wing stage 2 to keep my team ready for stage 3, and then after stage 3 make some wholesale changes for the flat!

I tip a certain beligum for stage 3 and a certain aussie or spaniard for stage 1

My prologue plans went up in smoke when Durbridge,Moser,Kelderman and Rasmussen weren't selected.

Yes, the Giro prologue had some clear favourites in the DS list (Phinney, Larsson, Rasmussen etc) which isn't so much the case this time, so I might try to pick some good, cheap, all-round DS's for the first 4 days and just rotate my stars. Even the 3 DS's I have my eye on for the prologue haven't been confirmed to start yet, so I'm gonna leave it a few days until all the teams are in and have another look next week.

Watched the DVD review of TdF 2011 last night, so can't wait for next weekend now!

The Spaniard has got to be Oscar? The Aussie could be Cooke but is probably Gerrans?

I'm thinking more along the lines of Slovak/Danish/Kiwi/German stars for stage 1 proper.The 2 young phenoms can hold their own in the prologue and the other 2 can come in for my TT specialists.

I have my team pretty much sorted out, I'm off to a remote place for work as of 5th July, so unless by some miracle i can get use of wifi somewhere, my team will be based around the first few stages and then purist'ing it from there

Not really sure what to do with mine, my provisional team is pretty star heavy budget-wise with EBH, Chavanel, Gerrans and Sagan. I'd like something more rounded but I'm not sure which DSs will go well. The obvious ones like Larsson, Zabriskie and Konovolas are all pretty expensive and I can't fit more than one into my team at a time.

Looks like the first week will be tough to predict and whoever picks well should take a nice lead into the flat stages 4, 5 and 6.

Off on vacation for the first week of the tour. Going to have a purist team for premium and a second account for stage hunting in weeks 2-3. I'm just going to go and post my purist team as of now... Will probably change a little when finalized start list comes out, but pretty set on this.

Wiggins
Evans
Sagan
Rogers
Gallopin
Simon
Cayetana
Vandenbergh
Chainel

Quote:

Going to have a purist team for premium and a second account for stage hunting in weeks 2-3.

NAUGHTY NAUGHTY

Edit: Sorry, just the nature of your premiumship.

My bad.

I've got a premium account for the overall and a separate purist team, also got a dead account I started so I could play against people at work last year before the rider/team values got reset, it'd be nice to use that to go after spot prizes (seems unfair that you have to choose really between overall and stage prizes) but it feels a bit dishonest running three accounts

I think running two accounts is already outside the realm of good sportsmanship, let alone three!

It's not as if I'm having two bites at the overall cherry, I'm playing separate games in the full and purist games and going after entirely separate things. Playing three teams, one going after the overall, one purist and one for stage prizes is probably too far and I'm not really intending to but there's a point there, there's a group of players going after the overall who won't win anything, why is it fair to exclude them from competing for the stage prizes?

If you go for the overall you need consistently high scoring but generally your team is set out for each stage with an eye on the next two or three stages. That means your team usually isn't set up for individual stage wins. I get that these prizes are there to give everyone a chance to win something once your chance for the overall is gone but I'd like those prizes as much as anyone and its a bit crap that I'm excluded from that if I also want a high overall placing.

In my opinion, its all about the season long game.

It would be good if everyone who played the whole season got a prize, like the people in metric centuries.

There'd probably be loads though.

Maybe a T-shirt saying;

Road.cc Fantasy Cycling Finisher

Or is that lame?

How is it possible to not play the whole season? It's not like you have to go out of your way to put together a team like you do to get in a century.

If I were around the full TdF I would have one team, not a purist, but since I am gone it is what it is. I would prefer to have a team to go after the overall (in my dreams), but since that is not a possibility I'll be happy with the purist team and fiddle away with the other one just cuz I need something to be doing

That sounds like a plan, I'll use this account (which is premium) as a purist account and then set up another for stages because i'm not going to be around.................NOT

Anyone with multiple accounts should be barred from the game, I'm pretty sure the T's&C's last year stated ONE team per person

Has that changed??

I think its fair enough to have one account for purist and one for non-purist (like frankiejay), but to have both of these, and a third account for stage-hunting is not really cricket (don't know if anyone is doing that or if we're just discussing the hypothetical).

I only have the one account, but for the Giro I picked a purist team just for fun and worked out the points myself just to see where I would've come, so I'll probably do that for the TdF too.

Further down the line, I would advocate users being able to enter 2 teams in Grand Tours (1 purist and 1 not), as its really good fun to pick a purist team, but if you're going for a good overall position for the season then you're not gonna do it. Although on second thoughts I'm sure Dave would say why not just set up a second account and do it yourself?! So maybe I'll do that...

Perhaps up to 3 teams could be available on one account through premium membership? There's more to be made of the premium account, more features could be added that'll make it more appealing to more players. The 'teams of teams' ideas I had in another thread could be premium only? Stuff like that would work so why not being able to run a couple of teams?

At the minute I do not have an account for stage hunting, it was a hypothetical due to the fact that I have a team I don't really use and to be honest I probably won't go down that line but at least I'm being honest, eh?

I wonder how many people have an account for their 'girlfriend' or dad or some such that they use too. I guess there's no real way of telling or enforcing 'one team per person' rules until a prize is won and Dave notices it's going to the same address as something else.

The easiest way would be for people to pick two teams under 1 account and the purist team not be up for any prizes and just be in a league effectively.

As for having a team that you use for stage hunting and 1 for the overall, I think that is wrong as like I think Wig said its having two bites of the cherry basically

I didn't realize this was even an issue. I deleted the second account (which I never even used and simply created for this purpose). Likely by the time I get back my purist team will be awful and I'll go to daily anyway, but whatever.

Sorry to upset people with something that seemed kosher enough to me. I'd much rather be around and able to change daily but this is life.

By the way, I think the solution to this is to allow daily lineup changes ahead of time as is the case in most other daily fantasy sports. That way if I miss the first six stages I could at least have subs that are automatically set on stages 2-6. It's going to be no advantage to me, considering I will have no concept of how the race unfolds at that point, but it would give me a chance to compete with the other overall guys.

That's beeen suggested before and I think it's a good idea (if difficult to implement).

There's no advantage to it as you have to pick so far in advance and could well schedule bad picks or riders may crash out but it helps those who can't get online for a period of time.

I read somewhere that cav has been getting in shape for box hill so would he try for the sharp finish on stg one or leave it for ebh? A nd then go for stg two which is flatter. Hmmmm