@@stefanjoeres7149 This is a good point. Massive lead, no reason to chase the break away could lead to a disappointing points haul. He needs to position well in so many of the stages to be worth it. Tricky.
@@WattPolice Taking Pogacar means not only betting on him to win stages and GC but for everyone else to take each others points away. Or Pogacar going past breakaway riders and Thomas etc finishing behind those break riders. If Thomas consistently finishes 2nd on mountain stages and TTs, it's almost certainly optimal to take him. If Thomas stays within 1000 Velogames points of Pogacar, it's propably better to take him and some other GC guy over Pogacar unless there is a weird combination where you can afford Pogacar, Thomas and a top sprinter and still score well with cheap climbers. To be among the top teams in Velogames Grand Tours requires 10k+ points, i.e. an average return of 100 Velogames points per credit. Pogacar needs 3200 points to do that. He got there in the 2022 TdF because he and Jonas battled from the first TT to the stage 20 TT for first place in lots of stages and the GC. But it seems unlikely that there will be such an intense fight and Pogacar likely will not force his team to catch every break like in the 2022 TdF. He might still get 5 stages and 3200 points but he cannot outperform his cost. Taking him is a pretty safe bet because he is likely to give you ~3k points and you usually can't do poorly with one rider contributing that many points but as LR says, if everyone takes him, picking him does not set you apart from the other players. You gain no advantage over 90% of players if he is picked that much. If Thomas isn't consistently 2nd with O'Connor close behind, I'll look very stupid. But I have a chance that all of my riders outperform the 100 points per credit ratio. It's unlikely that they all do but it's a valid approach to the Velogames Giro. There is a price where you wouldn't take Pogacar anymore. Surely 40 is too much and even at 38 and 36 you would strongly consider not taking him and I don't think that 32 can then be a price where you "have" to take him.
@@WattPolice As it turns out, Pogacar was the optimal choice. He had the best points to cost ratio of all All Rounders and wasn't priced too high to afford the best climber (Martinez) and the best sprinter (Milan). A lot of reasons for why this happened: - I completely missed that the way the KOM at the Giro worked this year, Pogacar would have no competition, earning another 360 uncontested points. - On top of that, Thomas underperformed my expectations by a lot. Scoring was generally higher than last year but he scored less points because he was not the second best rider in the race and even his TTs were disappointing. - Other teams didn't mind Pogacar winning and both Movistar and DSM handed him stage wins that he didn't even want to go for in the third week. - UAE managed to catch the break on the Prati di Tivo stage, which surprised me I personally scored quite well because I had no DNFs and all my riders scored 400+ points but Pogacar outscored Thomas and O'Connor combined, so I missed an easy and fairly obvious improvement of the team: www.velogames.com/italy/2024/teamroster.php?tid=1371718cfa2eed89f0c8d3dffb6ae33469aC
I picked Berg also we have to see if the team allows him to or if he wants to use some of his energy for the tt or hold off for domestique duties. He is in great form so top 20 finsh is possible.
