Game of Stones Season 3 Mid-Season Blog 1
Hello all! Since this is a blog I figured huh, maybe I should write an actual blog post rather than just a collection of weekly and tournament updates. We're ~25 gameweeks in and 2 mid-season tournaments done, so this seemed like a good time to do so. The format will be somewhere between a stream of consciousness and a semi-serious retrospective/forward look.
In retrospect of writing a few sections, I want to warn all readers that I am a huge fucking yapper, so buckle in (or tap out now). I'll also add some random images to break up all the text, so our visual readers can enjoy those.
Retrospective / Changes for Next Season
Without going into really any detail, it's certainly been a season for me and I definitely haven't been able to put my full 110% effort I'd usually give both into the league and into my team week in and week out. That said, in both respects things seem to have gone pretty okay so far.
League Size
I think I can speak for most people in this league in saying that 16 managers is too many. There isn't a lot of space for waivers and the FWD situation is just dire. That said, the average gameweek score is almost exactly 3 points below last season, which doesn't seem like that huge of a difference. Could be due to the average 'level' of manager increasing as our 2nd season managers gain experience.
To note, while 16 managers is cramped, I am very glad we added 4 new managers this season, as they have all done pretty solidly this season(especially Matt who is killing it). Plus, a non-zero amount will return next season.
Next season, we split into 2 leagues! At the very least, Game of Stones A will have 12 managers. We are hoping to have 12 for Game of Stones B as well, but I have not confirmed interest apart from one(ish?) new manager. I'll start reaching out in a couple of months, so if you have anybody who wants to join the second league, let me know! I have an offer for backfilling, but would love to give the opportunity for current managers to bring in an interested party or two before doing so!
I'm super excited to run two leagues with promotion / relegation and am so curious to see how it turns out.
Weekly Updates
One of the biggest changes (from my perspective) is the change in weekly updates from last season to this. A lot is the same and I've streamlined some things, but I've also introduced Game Changers and probably also more stats/timelines but I can't really tell. I do really enjoy writing the Game Changers section (usually - you can probably tell the weeks where I just do it to get it done), but it does add a solid chunk of writing time.
If people enjoy the prose section, I'll continue it! Otherwise, I can just provide the tabulated version which looks like: player | score.
Currently, the plan is to continue writing the full section for Game of Stones A, while tabulating it for the Game of Stones B weekly update. Just to save my sanity. And my time. So let me know what you think!
Odds are unless one of y'all make any suggestions for new things to add or sections I could change - or I get a jolt of inspiration - there won't be anything additional coming to weekly updates next season.
The Spreadsheet
Honestly, I highly doubt anyone in the league actually looks at the spreadsheet (I guess if you're this deep into me typing for the fun of it you might), but it's hugely improved from last season. It's way more readable, navigable, and straightforward than last season, which has greatly improved my quality of life and speed of weekly update-ing.
It's also made it so I can backfill information from previous seasons (such as the xP table for Season 1!) and easily fill out the All-Time spreadsheet. All in all, huge improvements have been made on the spreadsheet front and although it is pretty ugly, it at least works pretty well.
The Website
If you're here from Discord, welcome! This is the website, and yes, there are ways to read the weekly update that don't create a red 1 on your taskbar. If you're reading this from your email inbox, you're lucky that email doesn't have a character count, or you'd be on the website right now. If you're on the website having just clicked the link in your email inbox earlier, you're my favorite person in the league and I sure as hell won't let you get relegated.
Anyway, website is awesome and makes writing and sending the updates so much faster. I'm so glad I committed the time to getting this barebones, kinda barely functioning site working for this season. And I have lofty ambitions, so the only goal I'm setting for next season is to get the Season pages to automatically update from Google Sheets. Yeah, I know, figuring out the Google Sheets API is shooting for the damn moon.
Anyway, let me know if you have any suggestions for improvements or complaints about why it sucks!
Also, a huge shoutout to Kevin for creating a dashboard for the league! Go check it out here: https://fpl-dashboard.com/ (I'll add a link to the home page of the website eventually!)
The Draft
I think the draft room and experience was much improved on last year, here are some things we did differently:
- Hosted an in-person drafting group, with another portion of the drafters joining the discussion via Discord
- Updated a live draft board so there was a visual element / spark for some discussion other than the speedy quick FPL UI (shoutout to Dylan et al for helping out with this)
- Pinged people to make sure everybody was aware of their turn
I think for the average drafter, this all was a huge improvement on the experience and I hope y'all agree! It isn't easy to schedule things with people all across the country, so I am definitely grateful things went smoothly.
I also wanted to thank y'all for the effort put into the drafts, this season has had a lot of parity and I think a great deal of that is from managers coming (mostly) prepared. That's really all I can ask for as the league tsar, so it's much appreciated.
However, the above points led to a lot of overhead from me. Honestly, I had a fine draft, but I made a number of picks that had me scratching my own head the next day. There were a number of players I either missed from my list or drafted way too early, and genuinely was so exhausted once the event was over due to the amount of focus I exerted over that ~2 hours.
Mostly, I think this can be fixed by just not updating a draft board in real time, so my plan is to find a way to display the picks in real time. Seems easy enough.
Due to the two-league structure of next season, the plan is to run the drafts basically back-to-back, with Game of Stones A drafting first. Game of Stones B managers will be able to sit in and watch the draft, as ideally this league acts as an entry point for new managers. Letting them see the draft and where players go when chosen by more experienced managers will hopefully give them some ideas.
Kick-Off Tournament
Loved making the video for this, but something like that probably won't happen again. However, I do enjoy the draw vibes and I think something similar (probably offline, maybe via Discord) will occur next season, so hopefully y'all enjoy that when it comes up.
Anyway, this tournament went okay, some notes:
- The groups were hella unbalanced, Group D averaged 11 points more than group B
- This was honestly expected because I had to estimate seeding based on past season performance. Plus, I had no data on our new managers and Matt skewed things
- Group points split was 9/6/3/0, 6/4/4/3, 6/6/6/0, 7/6/4/0 (which is a fascinating set of groups, btw)
- The Round of 16 had 7/8 matches be sweeps
- Granted, this included MatthewR getting upset by 4th place in her group Soph
- I think the learning here is single-legged Round of 16s are better, with later rounds being two-legged
- The knockouts were great, we had two quarter finals within 4 points and a third at 8 point difference, along with a 1 point win in the semi finals
- And that's not even mentioning the draw in the second leg of Kevin vs Soph in the quarters
- I'm biased so I think the final sucked
- Actually though, it's super cool we got a new tournament winner in Scott and he would have beaten me even if it was a two-legged draw, so I'm happy with the result!
I think I'll probably re-work the coefficient algorithm, I think it's a really fun idea and is an interesting way to view managers in the league across seasons. It does need to be re-weighted due to the byes in the SnS tournament and maybe just consider group stage finish + knockout round finish, or something rather than total wins. Idk back to the drawing board
Short n' Sweet Tournament
Honestly, this format felt much better than the kick-off tournament. As a reminder, bottom manager of each group was eliminated and top manager got a bye to the quarter finals, and every match was single-legged.
Notes:
- Groups were much more balanced, just a 5 point average swing between groups C and B.
- Group points split was 2 9/6/3/0, 1 6/6/3/3/, 1 9/3/3/3
- I was eliminated from groups so that was fun
- Round of 12 wasn't super close, with the closest match being 50-37
- Quarters had a 5 point and a 3 point match
- Semis were blowouts
- Final was a 7 point match, with 95 combined points
- Darryan made a run to the final (lost to Matt) - you love to see someone not at the top of the table go on a cup run
Also, reports are that Matt got an Ajax jersey so that's pretty cool! My dad decided to forego the jersey and just take the cash for the first tournament, so this was our first full payout!
The League
Obviously, the race for the league title isn't super close at the moment. Currently MatthewR is leading Matt by 12 points and they're just about even on points for, so if MatthewR keeps current pace there really isn't a huge shot for Matt to make up points. From a league runner's perspective, this is fine - Season 1's winner had an 8 point gap and Season 2's a 9 point gap - but what I do enjoy is the race for the following places. As there starts to become a split between 7th and 8th, our group from 2nd-7th sits just 10 points deep, with each manager in this group averaging between 34.92 on the low end and 40.83 on the upper bound.
Dropping 7th place from the list (which I don't think is completely fair, considering his form), we have a group of 5 managers vying for 2nd, with a lower bound of 36.92 and an upper bound of 40.83. If you're in the boat that thinks Matt has 2nd on lock, the upper bound drops to 39.13. It is close.
Here's the top 7 by average points per week:
- 41.13
- 40.83
- 38.00
- 36.92
- 39.13
- 38.13
- 34.92
(Yes, my lucky ass is the 36.92 :))
And even further down the table, we see 2 more managers averaging ~35 and ~36. With some more luck earlier this season I'm sure they'd be knocking on the door for the battle for top 4.
Switching gears a little, let's look at past seasons' race for the places after 1st.
Season 1
Season 1 had an 8 point gap between 1st and 2nd, then just a 3 point gap separating 2nd and 3rd. And then a huge gap, with 4 managers competing for 4th until the last gameweek. 2 of those managers finished on 65 points and 2 finished on 64, with the finish decided on points for. And what's even better, is that 4th and 6th - who finished 1 point apart - had the same points for across the entire season.
This was also a 16 team league, so I'm predicting something relatively similar here based on current trajectory.
Season 2
Season 2 did get a little out of hand toward the end - with me putting up 399 points in a 5 week period - but the table had at least a little competition. Luke picked up pace and created a 7 point gap over Gavin (who finished 3rd), but only by 2 points. Had Dylan won just one of his last 2 he would have ended up finishing 3rd.
Definitely a more spacious table than Seasons 1 and 3, but a pretty competitive one across the board I'd say.
Rules Changes
I hate to say it, but due to drama, next season will come with a rule / conduct book because for some reason I have to spell certain things out. Next season will also have administrator approval for all trades in both leagues (this does not include waivers and free agent signings, just player to player trades). Unfortunately, it seems to be a necessity.
If anyone who missed the drama wants any additional details, feel free to reach out, but I don't really feel like going over it in a public forum (again). And if anyone is curious, a few punishments that I've brainstormed to go in the rule book include:
- Point deductions (ex. -10 points on the season)
- Point nullifications (ex. scoring 0 until X happens)
- Forfeit of prizes (ex. Manager of the Month, cup earnings, etc)
Feel free to suggest more if you'd like! Hopefully I'll never have to apply any of these, but ya never know.
Conclusion
I do want to reiterate my appreciation for your contributions to the prize pool, discussion, and league as a whole. This is something I've put a lot of time, thought, and energy into and plan to continue to do so for the years to come, so it means a lot that you've decided to take part. I truly hope you enjoy all this - whatever this is, considering its ever expanding nature - and maybe idk watch some more soccer than you thought you would.
I highly doubt anyone has read this far, but if you have, shoutout you. You're awesome and I hope you win your matchup next week. Also, enjoy this little sneak preview!
Let me know if you're interested in more or less of these! I'm a big fan of feedback, positive or negative, so feel free to ping/text/email/fax/carrier pigeon me or use the feedback form.