The fantasy sports game Supercoach Racing is back for the Autumn 2020 season. Select a stable of horses and their real-life feats will contribute to your fantasy points total. Making it harder is that you have a budget to work to and the likeliest horses to win the most lucrative races cost more. Astute picking for value can see you score more points per dollar and as - your horses win - your budget can rise each week. The stable with the highest total will win....absolutely nothing, it seems. So it's for the glory!(?)

https://supercoach.foxsports.com.au...sic/team/select

February 21, 2020 - Registrations open

March 7, 2020 (round 1) - Competition begins - Flemington (MEL) - Randwick (SYD)

March 14, 2020 (round 2) - Caulfield (MEL) - Rosehill (SYD)

March 20-21, 2020 (round 3) - Moonee Valley (MEL) - Rosehill (SYD)

March 28, 2020 (round 4) - Rosehill (SYD)

April 4, 2020 (round 5) - Randwick (SYD)

April 11, 2020 (round 6) - Randwick (SYD)

April 18, 2020 (round 7) - Randwick (SYD) This is of course in addition to the NRL and AFL fantasy competitions which begin on the 12th and 19th March respectively.

Round 1 Lockout is at 12:20pm.

I'm trying something different and my stable (pre-scratchings) is:
Nature Strip (c)
Standout
Muntaseera
Tagaloa
Rubisaki
Larimer Street
Ole Kirk
Minhaaj
Farman
Supreme Idea

I have no idea why you can't easily download the horse pricing info from someplace...

Swapped Captain to Standout due to odds changes.

Really wished I didn't!

Ended up with a total of 245pts and placed 655th of 11,500 participants. Had I left the Captain's armband on Nature Strip I would've been 20pts higher in 183rd.

My stable value has now gone up by $75,000. The top stables went up an additional $100k, which is a little disappointing.

Current first place is on 320pts. They filled one spot with the cheapest possible starter. I only had a cut-down list of horses 'cause I needed their prices for my approach and there's no easy way to scrape the site; it was missing from the list and I didn't think to look for cheapies myself. I'll try and figure out how to get a full list of competing horses next week.

I'm also only considering a horse's expected value with respect to them coming first. I should do that for all points-earning places. That cheapie above was in a 6-horse Group 2 race and even coming 5th it got 12pts - as much as my Captain did! I'm sure there used to be a spreadsheet around here somewhere showing the average chance of a horse priced at $x in a field of size y coming in zth place. That could come in handy... Else a Monte Carlo simulation is probably more accurate for a given field.

The other issue I had was in determining the importance of points potential vs value. I could only think of selecting my stable manually and seeing what the expected total would be, or checking every combination automatically. There must be a better way....

Alligator Blood (c)
Probabeel
Sylvia's Mother
Funstar
Master Of Wine
Ilovemyself
Kaakit Akit
Rainbow Thief
Kumasi
Celestial Sol

I scored 153pts this week. I had predicted 190, but that was largely contingent on my captain's score. I'd anticipated Alligator Blood likely adding around 50pts to my total; he added 8pts. Sylvia's Mother was also a top-3 pick for me: 0 points to the total.

Better news with my jockey choice: James McDonald who scores 3-2-1 for 1st-2nd-3rd finishes, ended up with 15pts for the day. He outscored 6 of my horses!

254 - over 100 greater than my score - was the highest of the round. But I was still in the top 16% of the week and my overall ranking dropped only slightly to 726th out of just over 13k.

Tough Round this week....



Tagaloa
Minhaaj
Te Akau Shark (c)
Addeybb
Princess Jenni
Chenier
Cosmic Force
Mugatoo
Montia
Mamaragan



Jockey: Craig Williams

I'm suffering a little as I've been unable to increase my budget. Any increase (from a horse I have coming 1st or 2nd) is pegged back by another coming last or 2nd last. Some of those stables ranked in the Top 20 have an extra $250k to spend on me.

Earned 190pts last week and was in the top 20% for the week but I have been slowly slipping down the rankings. Currently around the 900-mark (of 14000+).

Not doing any handicapping at all, just using in-game pricing and market odds to determine pointscoring opportunity per dollar, gives me these starters this week:
Verry Elleegant
Funstar (c)
Probabeel
Villami
Royal Celebration
Quick Thinker
Mugatoo
Return With Honour
Zebrowski
I Am Swerving

Jockey: James McDonald

Had I the extra couple hundred of grand, I would have selected Sweet Deal instead of Return With Honour.

Still yet to make a good captain choice: last week it was Funstar's turn to fall short. I held steady in the ratings and remain in the top 6% overall - without doing any handicapping and just searching for value in the game pricing with respect to real-world odds.

There are some big-priced runners contesting the races this weekend and I need an extra million in my salary cap to afford the ones that I want. Everyone's in the same boat though, to at least a certain extent (the highest-earning stables have an extra $275k more than me).

This weekend's stable:
Nature Strip
Castelvecchio (c)
Rubisaki
Brandenburg
Quick Thinker
Reloaded
Ole Kirk
Damaged
Zebrowski
Mamaragan

Jockey: J. McDonald

There was quite a bit of shuffling around with the stable, given the cap limitations and some quite similar expected values. Doubtland, Prague and Paradee were all in there at one stage before being swapped out for runners who were very marginally ahead. Hopefully these miss out on Saturday and I'm rewarded for having a closer look at things.

And wouldn't you know it....!? LOL. Doubtland won and Prague got 2nd. I think I still came out slightly ahead with their replacements and what they allowed for the rest of my stable, but it's easy to see where I could have plugged them in for some poor performers. Speaking of poor performers: to the surprise of no-one my Captain failed once again, with Castelvecchio going down. I really liked Nature Strip and held concerns regarding Castelvecchio over the longer distance, but I'd made a decision just to go with whatever the figures said.

I ended up with a total of 236pts this week, leaving me in the top 7% of stables. Had I got my Captain right I would have finished 750 or so places higher.... Overall I'm sitting around 650th of 14,000-odd teams; not bad for just doing what the market says/my salary cap allows.

With a couple of winners - and no big losers - my salary cap goes up $75000 for next week, the penultimate round. I'm no chance of taking it out but the scoreboard is quite compressed, so hopefully I can continue the rise. ...and finally get a captain choice right!