Criterium du Dauphine

You wanted to win the
You wanted to win the competition… :W But you had to get through joelsim… :W Not (!) an easy thing to do (!) 😕 … But how, you say, how? 😕 … I haven’t slept for days now… :S How can you beat a beast like joel?… :W Of course, you can’t.. X( But what if I learned from the masters themselves?… 😕
.
What if I tried to come up with a strategy based on using the least amount of transfers possible, stick to the ‘Best Purist Team Possible’ as much as possible, used ‘Breakaway Specialists’ sparingly, if at all, and tried to stick to just swapping sprinters for climbers? 😕

So here it is… The guide to to ‘Perfection’… 🙂 Here’s ‘Enrique’s Retrospective Guide to Winning the Dauphine with 8 transfers or Less’. Enjoy! 🙂

Premises:

1. You mysteriously figured out Nacer Bouhanni, Sacha Modolo, Samuel Dumoulin, Tiesj Benoot, Edvald Boasson Hagen and Jonas Vangenechten were the sprinters you wanted on your team for Stages 1,2 and 4.
2. You decided Daniel Teklehaimanot was going to do something special in this competition.
3. You noticed Dennis Rohan was well placed in the YR competition and decided to bring him in for the TTT.
4. You decided your climbers would be Chris Froome, Tejay Van Garderen, Simon Yates and Dan Martin. You would put Chris Froome in at the beginning of the competition and he would never leave… :W The same with Teklehaimanot, Benoot, Boasson Hagen and Vangenechten… 😕
5. When Benat Intxausti showed himself on Stage 5 you decided to switch to the Movistar rider for Stage 6.
6. You liked your team so (!) much you decided not (!) to fiddle around with it, not (!) to gamble on breakaway riders and not (!) to switch your climbers around.

(See screenshot below).

If you had stuck to these guidelines, you too (!) could have beat joel! 🙂 I jest, of course, that was next to impossible, but here it is, a guideline for saving transfers and winning a weeklong stage race, courstesy of hindsight, which as you all know is 20/20! 🙂

Oh, yeah, this formation and strategy would have yielded 1204 points and used only 6 transfers, just enough to beat joel! 🙂

Now if only I could learn something from all of this… 😕

backflipbedlem wrote:

… What island are you on?…

Both my parents are from a beautiful little island called Puerto Rico… 🙂 So, it’s a saying down there we’re fond of saying…

There were 839 teams
There were 839 teams registered for the Criterium du Dauphine.

There were only 140 unique scores, meaning at the very least, there were only 140 different teams made… There could be more, of course, since teammate bonuses are the same for every team member of the winning rider… And breakaway riders may match the score of a rider who placed in the Top 20.. 😕

And things like the Lanterne Rouge getting the same points as a Top 20 rider… For example, Caleb Fairly, the Lanterne Rouge today, got the same points as Chris Froome (10)….

Dux89 wrote:Don’t often take

Dux89 wrote:

Don’t often take a 40-point rider and leave him in throughout a race…

If he goes for the win tomorrow, you’ll come out smelling like roses… 🙂

enrique wrote:Well, it seems

enrique wrote:

Well, it seems to me most Purist teams are loaded with climbers…

Sanderville wrote:

How do you know?…

Hmmm.. 😕 I don’t… I guess I was referring to the ‘Best Purist Teams Possible’ I create, not the actual teams…

.
I’d have no way of knowing if that was true for the whole population of Purist teams in the game…

Sanderville wrote:

… Have you found a new way to cheat?…

That hurt… 😐 But, who am I to get sensitive over the subject? I deserve that… I’m guilty as charged… I stand humbled by your comment…

stumps wrote:I dont think the

stumps wrote:

I dont think the budget is too bad. I’ve picked my standard team for stages 1 & 2 and still got 24 credits left…

:W The budget is great (!) for stages 1-4… The nightmare is for the high mountains… It is (!) the same for everybody, though… And whining is (!) my forte! 🙂
.

stumps wrote:

… my purist only has 1 3.0 rider.

Well, it seems to me most Purist teams are loaded with climbers, and this race ends with 4 mountainous (or hilly) stages… But that could be different this time around… 😕 I wonder if the ‘Best Purist Team’, or any ‘top’ Purist team, could afford to completely ignore the non-mountain stages?… :W
.
I can’t play Purist, but (!), just for fun, here’s my ‘Fantasy’ Fantasy Cycling team:
.

40.0 Alejandro Valverde
38.0 Christopher Froome
34.1 Vincenzo Nibali
30.7 Tejay Van Garderen
3.0
3.0
3.0
3.0
154.8

It’s over budget by 4.8 credits 🙂 Of course, I’ll lose, but I always like to see how a team of 4 ‘Star’ riders does Purist-wise… :W They always lose against more ‘creative’ teams… I wonder why?… 😕

Come the high mountains,
Come the high mountains, teams are going to look something like this:

40.0 Alejandro Valverde
38.0 Christopher Froome

Your pick of one of the following:
35.6 Joaquin Rodriguez
30.7 Tejay Van Garderen
34.1 Vincenzo Nibali
30.2 Bauke Mollema

Your pick of one the following:
18.4 Andrew Talansky
18.4 Adam Yates…

and something like this:

a 3.0 rider
another 3.0 rider
yet another 3.0 rider
still another 3.0 rider…

:”( *sigh* I miss the Giro already!…

… but I wonder who’ll be able to put in any more than 4 ‘stars’?… 😕 There’s always fastiduosly creative people who foil the game for us mere ‘underperforming’ mortals… My self esteem suffers every time I play this game… :W But it’s beautiful… :X