Here is my idea for a VHL Super Coach

[Berocka 2,192]

Here is my idea for a VHL Super Coach

 

Introduction

Many of you may know, I am Berocka one of the few Australians in this league. One of the challenges that us Australian’s face is that of time zone differences. This is an issue with making sure you get your claims in before the deadline, with making/watching the drafts and my biggest issue is the VHL Fantasy Draft. Sure, there is the 12-hour window that should make up for any time zone differences, but I also can’t guarantee I will look at the league within the 12 hours. I haven’t participated in the VHFL recently as I don’t like to keep others waiting on my pick and I feel that I have a negative impact on others enjoyment of the league. This is why I came up with this idea to try and help those people who can’t commit to the draft.

 

What is Super Coach

Super Coach is a popular version of Fantasy sports in Australia. I am unsure whether it is as well known worldwide so I will try and explain it here. You are given a budget to spend on players to fill in a team. Each player is worth a certain amount. Obviously, the better players are worth more money than the rookies or depth players. Let me use my example that worked in the VHL last season. You have a budget of $34 and each player is worth their TPA/100 truncated (i.e. if someone had 784 TPA they would be worth $7). You need to fill a top line just like you have to in the VHFL, 3 forwards, 2 defenders and 1 goalie. This means that in the $34 you have to spend you need to budget it with the 6 players you have to buy. This gives you a few options do you spend $6 on all but one skater and $5 on a skater and the goalie. Do you buy a couple of players for $8 and then need to spend less on others. It is all about figuring out a players worth and where to spend your money. I like it as it adds more strategy with less time constraints so you get to see some really interesting teams. In actual super coach a players value will change with time, if a player plays well their value will increase and visa versa. This adds some more depth to the strategy as your budget can increase if you sell players that have increased in value. With regards to the VHL super coach this will not be a feature though, as it would increase the time and effort needed to keep this running.

 

Trial Run

During S82 I ran a test experiment of the VHL Super Coach as you can see here: https://vhlforum.com/topic/115611-vhl-super-coach-proof-of-concept/#comment-906574 it went well with 8 people, including myself participating. I used the budget of $34 and this is the team lists people put together. Please note that I did not do a check on these and I have a solution to this issue that I will discuss later.

Username	Forward 1	Forward 2	Forward 3	Defender 1	Defender 2	Goalie
Ledge	Jerome Reinhart	That Dude	Justin Lose	Tavish DeGroot	Jaromir Lemiuex	Em Em Flex
MubbleFubbles	Bogdan Trunov	Robert Wilk	Asher Reinhart	Chicken Wing	Tynan Sylvester	Oskar Lindbergh
fromtheinside	Duncan Idaho	Vasile Lamb	Henry Tucker	Corey Kitson	Tavish DeGroot	Artem Tretiak
Berocka	Taylor Mourning	Nico Pearce	Jerome Reinhart	Juice Box	David Tavau	Em Em Flex
Alex	Alex Johnston	Luc Tessier	Kyle Peace	Robin Galante Nilsson	Max Torq	Em Em Flex
Shindigs	Jerome Reinhart	Jivere Zolnek	Tyler Reinhart	Alessandro Nano	Zdeno Chara	Artem Tretiak
Greg_Di	Henry Tucker	Gustislav Nasherov	Hadrian	Tom Eagles	Frank Funk Jr	Sirkants Klamasteris
GustavMattias	Henry Tucker	That Dude	Sunrise van de Schubbekuteveen	Rolf Fizzlebeef Jr	Chicken Wing	Em Em Flex

 

As you can see everyone went for a different team and no one copied. Here are the final results of the experiment.

User	Points
@fromtheinside	1579.1
@Gustav	1493.8
@Greg_Di	1445.8
@MubbleFubbles	1425.5
Berocka	1380.9
@Ledge	1314.5
@Shindigs	1296.5
@Alex	1291.5

 

You can see that it was a fairly close race, congratulations to @fromtheinside for winning the test case.

TPE Payouts

The reason most people do anything on the VHL is for those sweet Training Points, so this is my proposal on the payout method of the VHL Super Coach is as follows:

Position	TPE
1st place	6
Top 20%	5
Top 40%	4
Top 60%	3
Top 80%	2
Everyone Else	1

 

So, for our example above this is the percentile that everyone finished and their TPE (THIS IS NOT A TPE PAYOUT AND IS JUST AN EXAMPLE)

User	Percentile	TPE
@fromtheinside	12.5%	6
@GustavMattias	25.0%	4
@Greg_Di	37.5%	4
@MubbleFubbles	50.0%	3
@Berocka	62.5%	2
@Ledge	75.0%	2
@Shindigs	87.5%	1
@Alex	100.0%	1

 

This works out to be an average of 2.875 compared to the 3.5 average that you would receive in the current VHFL. The reasons behind my payouts are as follows

1.       You make it so there is an incentive to compete in the VHFL rather than super coach as there is more history in that for the VHL.

2.       The winner of the whole tournament receives more TPE than anyone else to congratulate their ability.

 

Known Issues

I remember when I initially brought this idea forward Beketov had this to say.

“I didn’t do it back then but if I remember correctly what usually happened was someone found what we’ll call a “meta” team and most people just copied it so good team or not a bunch just wound up exactly the same.”

I have a two-fold solution to this issue, firstly, if you create a unique team, you get a 10-point bonus. Teams will not be shown publicly until the Super Coach has closed this is to stop someone from intentionally picking the same team to hurt another member. This 10-point bonus isn’t much, but it is enough for Alex to have jumped Shindigs if Shindigs would have copied a team in my test run. Also, I feel like the bonus points helps with people trying to make interesting picks.

Secondly, when ties usually occur in sports it would be shown like this (in this example 3^rd and 4^th place tied)

·         1 – 6 TPE

·         2 – 4 TPE

·         3 – 3 TPE

·         3 – 3 TPE

·         5 – 1 TPE

However, in the VHL super coach whenever there is a tie between two or more players they will receive the TPE of the lowest place, using the same example as above it would be

·         1 – 6 TPE

·         2 – 4 TPE

·         4 – 2 TPE

·         4 – 2 TPE

·         5 – 1 TPE

You can see that this is another deterrent as with every person you share your team with you are dropping down one place in the standings and this could cost you TPE.

Implementation

First of all, this is NOT a replacement for the VHFL but instead it is an alternative. Members can choose which one they would like to compete in at the start of the season. If anyone picks both methods, they will only receive the TPE payout from the VHFL and not Super Coach.

The way this would hypothetically work would be. As of the finance cut off point the TPA of the players would be set, which would give every player a value, this if possible could be exported and entered into a spreadsheet (I am not totally sure if this is possible, especially now with the hybrid attributes) then members could pick there teams using a Google Form, the team would then be checked on the back end by the spreadsheets to prove that they are under budget.

If a member is over budget their top priced player would be removed until they fall under budget. (i.e. if the member spent $6 on 5 players and $8 on their 6^th player they would be over budget. The player worth $8 would be removed and they would be under budget and this would be their new team.)

The VHL Super Coach would be scored in accordance with the VHFL scoring system that Spartan has done.

This would then have the 10 bonus points applied to any unique teams, from their the members would be ranked from best to worst and the TPE would be handed out in accordance with the TPE payout schedule.

 

What do I need to get it up and running

Well apart from approval from the league to be able to give out TPE there are a few things I require so this could become a permanent fixture in the VHL.

1.       A csv or excel export of all VHL players and their TPE. If anyone knows of a way of doing this please let me know. As far as I am aware you would have to do three exports for each team from the portal to get a comprehensive list. I am unsure if there is a quicker way.

2.       Confirmation of the time when finance cut off is considered so that I can make sure that the players TPE amounts are set so the budget works.

3.       BOG to have a look through my proposal to make sure I haven’t missed anything important.

 

Conclusion

Most importantly what do you all think. I know this is a wall of text and numbers but I want peoples input so that this could become a reality. Would you participate if not, why not? Is there anything I can do to make it more appealing?

Thank you for your time!

 

@Jericho could you do your thing and tag BOG lol.

 

1586 words claimed for 3 weeks

[Gustav 6,100]

10 minutes ago, Berocka said:

@Jericho could you do your thing and tag BOG lol.

 

I gotchu fam @BOG

 

For what it's worth, I had a lot of fun building my team! Whether it happens officially or not, I'd keep playing in the future.

[Nykonax 1,550]

1 minute ago, Gustav said:

I gotchu fam @BOG

make the proposal thread nerd

[Dil 1,744]

49 minutes ago, Gustav said:

 

I gotchu fam @BOG

 

For what it's worth, I had a lot of fun building my team! Whether it happens officially or not, I'd keep playing in the future.

treason.

[fromtheinside 1,278]

Sooo claiming for 6TPE?

[Greg_Di 933]

Super coach was really fun and I enjoyed being part of the test run.

Just interesting trying to put together a competitive team with the limited amount of $ that you can spend. Lots of different strategies could be used.

 

Would love to see this implemented into VHL going forward!! Great work Berocka!

[Ben 200]

Here in America we do something like this called a auction draft where players have a budget and they have a  fake “auction” on players

[DMaximus 1,045]

Really like this idea. Could allow 50 or 25 cent increments instead of rounding down to the whole dollar. 784 TPE would cost $7.75 instead of $7 in your proposal. That would also help reduce duplicate teams. 
 

I don’t see the “everyone might copy one person” scenario as a valid enough reason to not implement it.  I think making the picks hidden until everyone has completed would be enough to prevent that from happening. 

 

I would play for no TPE, so even if this wasn’t allowed for TPE, you (or someone else) can run it unofficially and count me in.

[Berocka 2,192]

2 minutes ago, DMaximus said:

Really like this idea. Could allow 50 or 25 cent increments instead of rounding down to the whole dollar. 784 TPE would cost $7.75 instead of $7 in your proposal. That would also help reduce duplicate teams. 
 

I don’t see the “everyone might copy one person” scenario as a valid enough reason to not implement it.  I think making the picks hidden until everyone has completed would be enough to prevent that from happening. 

 

I would play for no TPE, so even if this wasn’t allowed for TPE, you (or someone else) can run it unofficially and count me in.

I will be running it again this offseason to help prove it is a valid alternative to the VHFL.

 

 

[Spartan 3,997]

Overall I think the concept is pretty neat, and closely mimics the fantasy style the EFL used to run. Basically players would be assigned dollar values, but it also factored in team state, actual attributes of the players, and whether they were actually favored for success or not.

 

Positives:

1. Convenience - Without any reliance on anyone else to make your team, this is 100% more convenient than the VHFL's draft structure. I don't think there's any argument there. It's also probably the most overwhelming positive of this concept, which is quite important. People's time is valuable.

 

2. Value of TPE - With the payout dependent on percentage of scores, as well as a unique 6 for the overall winner, there is definitely more of a competitive incentive in picking your teams here. Removing the incentive to copy folks is also an interesting concept, and I think it's both a positive and a negative which I'll address later. Overall though, dropping your payout to the rank below if you tie seems like a good deterrent to be copying people. I'm not completely sure how often it would occur since payouts are dependent on overall participant percentiles vs VHFL's group-related scoring.

 

3. Strategy - I liked your point about budgeting, and how irl super coach would allow you to sell players whose values increase. Budgeting can definitely force people into making harsher decisions than they'd have to make in VHFL, and it'd potentially be more strategic than the VHFL. With a draft structure though, it's difficult to compare.

 

Concerns:

1. Player Costs - I'm not sure what your scoring was since I don't see it in this post or in the original sign-up post, but in the old meta era I would see this format as a bit problematic for obvious reasons. As people start to discover build efficiencies, TPE doesn't adequately reflect skill level. People who have lower TPE but spend more efficiently could have equal if not better builds than those who have more TPE but don't build as efficiently. The way you assign the dollar value

 

2. Punishment for copying - One thing I've noticed is nice about all of the current Fantasy games is that players can either copy people more "knowledgeable" than them, or can get advice from their peers or GM's. In this system, they are punished for that with the bonus for non-unique teams (which seems a bit like a crapshoot) as well as the tiebreaker structure that could drop someone's TPE for copying someone else's team. 

 

3. Incentive to participate - Convenience was a big + for me in this system, but it does have its limits. It's convenient from a time to complete perspective, but for those not overly familiar with the players in the league, the inherent punishment for copying negates the convenience aspect. With the scoring system as you highlighted, the average payout will definitely be lower than VHFL since only the overall winner of Super Coach will get 6 TPE, and ties drop people to lower percentiles. I don't know if I'd participate in Super Coach if I had to pick between VHFL and Super Coach, knowing I would average a higher payout in the VHFL.

[NSG 495]

Hey look people drafted me

[Berocka 2,192]

6 hours ago, Spartan said:

Concerns

I will address them here

 

1. Yeah I can see this being an issue the scoring system is the same as the VHFL. Whilst I think that the change to the attributes will make it that higher tpe will generally be better players. An alternative budget system I have is to use last year's performance and their tpe to create a players worth. It just depends on how this season goes.

 

2. As I feel most players will use the VHFL so there should be a knowledgeable user base available to the super coach users. Most GM's are active enough in the league that they would pick VHFL therefore allowing them to help their players in super coach.

 

3. First of all I made this as almost a welfare version of VHFL not a replacement. Second my plan is to make a list of players with their $ amounts and the points they scored last season as a cheat sheet for people.

 

Thank you for your response

[Berocka 2,192]

Claim week 2

[Berocka 2,192]

Claim Week 3