Competitions Pieman Rd 6 v Carlton 6:45pm Sunday 12 July (Metricon)

[Sharkey66]

Just a quick thought, and haven't really thought it through, but maybe have the cutoff for team entries to just before teams are realesed at the start of the season.
Could fix any inequities by having a trade week early in the season, say round 5.

 

[Bont2Bruce]

Think this is when the bookies would pay out all the entries with Vandermeer so that there remained some level of interest amongst the rest of the comp.

The issue with untried players whose expected position is eventually going to be midfield is that they often begin their AFL career in the forward pocket or on the forward flank. Rhylee West for example, I fully expect him to be playing midfield eventually but not for a while yet. Back in the day I remember Luke Dahlhaus starting for us as a small forward only to play an entirely midfield role in 2016. It's what makes guessing the handicap on the position you think they'll play (and probably what most of the information from feeder comps suggests) largely redundant for the first year or two of their AFL career.

On the question of having more trade periods or early trade periods for this comp, that is not the solution in my view. The horse has most likely already bolted and bringing in the favourite who already has established a decent lead won't help anyone claw back the lead - will only maintain the distance behind the leaders.

Well played to the 3 who selected Vandermeer. Too good this year.

 

[BEaston]

PIEMAN RESULTS RD 6 v CARLTON

Part 1 - An Editorial

"Pie Central, we have a problem... "

Anyone who's been following the Pieman results this year would have guessed by now that the three entries with Vandermeer have cleared out to an almost unbeatable lead, following Laitham's two goals on Sunday. While it's still up for grabs out of those three, the rest of the comp is so far behind it's going to be hard to get near them unless Vandermeer has a season ending injury (for the Dogs' sake, let's hope not!)

This troubles me because a good competition is one where you still feel you have a chance for most of the journey even if you're not going all that well. To see it pretty much out of reach so early in the season - even a shortened season like this - is pretty deflating.

So I apologise to everyone (bar three of you!) if the fun has been sucked out of the Pieman this year. To steal a phrase from Dan Andrews, the buck definitely stops with me.

It happens when a player gets under the radar. These things can be hard to predict when you're trying to work out the handicaps several weeks before the season starts. Unfortunately this has happened twice before, maybe three times, but this is probably the most disappointing occurrence.

Skip the next few paragraphs if you aren't interested in the history but I think it helps explain how this situation can happen.

In 2014 we had a first year player in Bontempelli who couldn't get a game until about Round 6 and didn't kick a goal until Round 13 but from then on he kicked 15 goals in 9 rounds. We had a different handicap system back then but converted to today's terms his handicap would be about 60 or so. Only four people picked him pre-season and those four pretty much dominated the comp for the last part of the season, but at least it was an open race until about round 18.​

Then in 2016 our villain was a second year player in Zaine Cordy who was expected to take a year or two to develop. He had played 2 games as a defender late in 2015 and amassed a total of 2 kicks and 6 handballs (definitely no goals). By the time the second trade period came around in 2016 (just before Rd 19) nobody had him in their team and he seemed highly unlikely to figure in the Dogs run home as he still hadn't played a game all year ... and what the heck he was a defender anyway wasn't he? So I extended his handicap from 160 to 180. After I published the handicaps and trading started, the Rd 19 teams were announced and he was picked! Not only that but he played forward for the rest of the season and kicked 8 goals. Those two astute Pieman players who sniffed out a bargain and traded him in after teams were announced rocketed to the top of the Pieman comp and finished 1st and 2nd. But again it was really only after Rd 22 (incl finals) that the comp got blown apart, so not too bad. Frustratingly, in the four years since then Cordy has only kicked 2 goals in 65 games. Grrrrr!​

​

In 2017 our VFL side Footscray picked up a HBF/midfielder who had been delisted by Carlton without playing a game. He played in various positions and managed a few goals but nobody took much notice of him, even when he was rookied late in the 2017 draft. As a rookie he wasn't expected to get many senior games in 2018 (if any) unless there were lots of injuries. So a pre-season handicap of 80 seemed pretty safe in 2018. Once again, the surprise came when he was selected in Rd 1 while Pieman entries were still open. About 12 people jumped on him and the rest is history - with 26 goals he became the first rookie to win any AFL club's goalkicking award. The Pieman rapidly became a two tier competition with the top 12 all having Gowers, followed by the rest. Like Cordy he appears to have been a one-season goalkicking phenomenon with only 13 goals in the next season and a half. Grrrrr!​

​

And so we come to season 2020. We have Laitham Vendermeer, an unheralded mature age 2018 draftee who is listed as a pacy wingman. He was injured for 8 weeks in 2019 but managed 14 VFL games playing mostly HB, HF and wing where according to the AFL season record he "struggled for consistency". He kicked only 2 VFL goals for the whole season. No senior debut at all. So not much risk there eh? Let's give him a handicap of 75. But, lo and behold, he gets picked almost straight away in 2020 and is breezing along at a goal a game.​

So you can see how hard it is to get the handicaps right to make it a good tight competition. And how frustrating when Bevo pulls a swifty with some player most people have never heard of.

We've tried a few measures to stop these blowouts happening - pulling back the more extravagant handicaps, limiting the points you can get from your banker to a max of 60. Clearly those measures still don't go far enough, and yet we want to make it attractive enough to chance your arm on at least one "roughie". Otherwise everybody just picks Naughton, Bruce, Lloyd etc and there's very little differentiation in teams.

On a positive note we've had a good even competition in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019.

So what do we do?

This season can't be changed. It would be unfair to those who were brave enough to pick Vandermeer to change the rules mid-season. I suppose we could make it a two tier competition with a consolation award to whoever finishes fourth but that's a bit hollow.

What I'm thinking of doing in future years is limiting the handicaps of all new or unproven players to about 40. Only known quantities will have much bigger handicaps (e.g. Dale Morris who kicked only 3 goals in his whole career). If I'd done that this year the three tearaway leaders would still be justifiably in front but they'd be 275 points closer to the chasing pack and we'd still have an open competition.

Anyway, this week's Pieman results will follow shortly. Just thought I'd explain my current thinking. Feedback and ideas welcome ... and I hope you'll stick around for another season in 2021.

Meanwhile, good luck to Charlie Bucket Wocka and ossie_21 who look to have the 2020 Pieman at their mercy!

Hey mate, I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. This kind of thing is the nature of the game. If you could set the handicaps perfectly every year then it would only come down to luck as to who wins! The only thing I would say is that allowing late entries this year was a massive advantage with regards to Vanders. His handicap was set in March but by round 2 he was unexpectedly in the team. Obviously the situation with the shut down was part of this as well so again wouldn't be too hard on yourself.

I think limiting unproven players is a good idea for future seasons.

Thanks again for running it, I know it takes a bit of time and effort and it's massively appreciated by myself and everyone who plays I'm sure.

 

[BEaston]

One thing that might help could be to more aggressively adjust the handicaps for the trade period(s).

So those that have done well would shorten more significantly than in previous years which dissuades people from selecting those players (which as Bont2Bruce said only maintains the lead), while players that have not been selected get really high handicaps to encourage people to take flyers to peg the leaders back.

Another solution could be that the handicaps change in the trade period even if you already selected them preseason, but maybe by not as much so you still have a discount. So vanders comes down to say 10 if you want to pick him up, but if you already have him he comes down to 30 or something. I could see why people might be against this rule though so not advocating for it too strongly, just putting ideas out there.

 

[Bont2Bruce]

What I'm thinking of doing in future years is limiting the handicaps of all new or unproven players to about 40. Only known quantities will have much bigger handicaps (e.g. Dale Morris who kicked only 3 goals in his whole career). If I'd done that this year the three tearaway leaders would still be justifiably in front but they'd be 275 points closer to the chasing pack and we'd still have an open competition.

This seems like a sensible approach to me.

Another idea is that you could reserve the right to adjust the handicaps before the start of the season depending on how many people selected a given player, a bit like bookies move the odds depending on how much money comes in on a given horse. Feels like it might be too "stage-managed" but if there was a plunge on a player like the Gowers year you could use the reserved right to reel it in a bit before it took hold of the entire comp.

 

[dogwatch]

Thanks for the feedback so far folks. Much appreciated and I'll have a think about them all.

I hope to discuss with my co-pielot Vinegar Mess at some stage too, but I haven't heard from him in a while. Hopefully he's just pre-occupied and taking a break.

My gut feeling is that the fundamentals of the comp are sound and all it needs is a few well-targeted tweaks. Let's hope so.

 

[TempletonTheRat]

Thanks for the feedback so far folks. Much appreciated and I'll have a think about them all.

I hope to discuss with my co-pielot Vinegar Mess at some stage too, but I haven't heard from him in a while. Hopefully he's just pre-occupied and taking a break.

My gut feeling is that the fundamentals of the comp are sound and all it needs is a few well-targeted tweaks. Let's hope so.

Agree with bolded

perhaps you should contact Greg Carpenter for handicapping tips

Part of the fun of this is trying to beat the handicapper - you are expected to get a few wrong.



the comp is not over yet - we have seen in past seasons players can come from the clouds in the 2nd half of the season (albeit shorter this year)

plus there are Kelvins to win

 

[grassman75]

It happens DW...I like BEaston's idea about lengthening the HCPs of those unselected players - that would make things interesting, and perhaps for this strange year where there are likely to be lots of player restings, you could really swing some of the HCPs out on players who aren't scoring - it might help close it up a bit.

Another thought i had was this:

If you are going to limit the HCPs of new players to 40, could i suggest that we pick our team of 6 however it is say 5 proven and known players and we selected the 6th player from a separate list where the HCps range between 40 - 60 (or are all set at 50?) - that way, the known players can have lower handicaps to kkep the comp tight and the unknowns are only one player in each team, so you still have that X factor?

Then at draft time, you could adjust lie i suggested above and swap players to different lists - if you are lucky enough to have benefitted from the smoky, early on, that player reverts to a lower handicap that everyone gets, even those who picked them early - you don't get 5/1 on Winx every start bacause you picked her at that before she first raced...you get the same as everyone else

Anyway keep up the good work