The Loophole Thread

[tracygrims]

The captain and emergency loopholes have become very much part of the secret to winning Supercoach in the last few seasons. I'm assuming everyone is already is aware of how one actually uses the loopholes, so I won't explain any further.

My plan here is to collect some data about how the loopholes have been used, and ultimately quantise the advantage of loopholing in terms of points per game.

What I'm going to need to find a reasonable answer to my original question is quite a bit of data, probably in the territory of 100+ different events where people have loopholed players, in two data sets (captaincy and emergency).
For the captaincy loophole I would like to try and use the data to help make the decision of when is it best to invoke it or not also using player average data.
However I am more interested in the emergency loophole, as to use this, a coach may have to plan his team accordingly and thus sacrifice cash, trades or space to accommodate the right balance of players. The end goal of this is to be able to then decide for my own team, whether it is better to say upgrade my F7 to a premium or simply trade around injuries later in the season, and if it's worth to bring in a player like Jayden floating-doughnut Hunt. Of course this data will also be made available at various stages during and at the conclusion of the experiment and hopefully it will help all who visit this site.


So my request is, at the conclusion of each round, please post your weekly captain loophole and emg loopholes here if you either invoke them or had considered/planned to invoke them. And please for the interest of data integrity - so that we do not get skewed results - post all of these events, both where you made the right choice and where you made the wrong choice.


To make it a little easier, it would be nice if the information was in a standard format:
CL/EL, Player1's name, Player1's score, Player2's name, Player2's score, if you invoked the loophole.

To begin, these are my loopholes from rd9:
CL, Pendlebury, 128, Ablett, 184, no

 

[tracygrims]

Here is some background on why I am interested in this..

Thats exactly right, there is a point where it becomes more beneficial to forget about value and just go for the points. But it's maybe too difficult to actually quantify where this point is - do you measure by number of trades used, rounds elapsed or $away-from-perfect-starting-22?


Just because I said its hard to do, I'm going to give it a go. Since we are already talking about value, I think the best way to find the tipping point will also be value. When you start getting near this value, this is when you can stop investing in value in your starting 22 and only look for value in your non playing players.
The total amount of $ needed for a perfect 22 is approximately the following prior to rd8 (it will vary throughout the season based on player prices):

Backs: 6x500 + 2x125 = 3250
Mids: 1x750 + 2x650 + 2x600 + 3x550 + 2x125 = 5150
Rucks: 2x500 + 2x125 = 1250
Forwards: 1x600 + 5x500 + 2x125 =3350

=$12,900,000

Once the leading teams are at this value - and if they can manage to keep their bench to around $1,000,000, they are going to be very VERY VERY hard to catch assuming injuries do not play a role. (Note that some of the leading teams are already around 12.5 mil - in a best case just one premium away from a perfect 22)

And although its debatable, once your team value gets to this point, I think its probably best to stop thinking about value for your starting 22. This means cutting your value players from perhaps 7-10 on field in Rd3 to zero at this point, keeping in mind you will have 8 bench players which you can still continue to earn coin with. Given the drop in numbers, the $increase/round will likely be around 50% of what you got in Rd3-5, which means upgrades* from this point are a much slower, so those behind you in terms of cash are given a little chance to catch up.


With a perfect 22, who do you continue to upgrade?
Of course the answer is your bench. Covering injuries will be important as trades run dry, but considering the amount of extra injury trades required to upgrade these positions, it might be even a better idea to not upgrade unless forced, or it might be beneficial to just begin by upgrading just two of your bench positions (M9/D7 DPP and R3/F7 DPP). However, all things being equal, there is one more option left to the teams chasing the leader - the emergency loophole...


This is really the confounding factor in what I've concluded above. There's no real information on this, but my educated guess is that the loophole is worth on average 10-20 points per position per round. This would mean having a good B7,M9,R3 and F7 is important if you want to make up ground on the leaders.

So this would make the perfect 30 is around $1,500,000 more expensive than the perfect 22 or a total of $14,400,000.

However considering the relatively low returns of the emergency loophole compared to trades/money invested, it's doubtful that it's worth pursuing over points..

 

[Maso]

Rd 9
CL - Swan, 79, Ablett, 184, HELL NO
EL - Laidler, 54, Tippet, 54, Yes

 

[Lukus193]

Rd 9

CL - Danger 152, Ablett 184, used loophole (cost me 32 points)

 

[Rickwood]

Rd 9

CL - Danger 152, Ablett 184, used loophole (cost me 32 points)

64 points with the double?

 

[IDIG]

64 points with the double?

Nah, you only get the difference in scores. ie. (152x2 + 184 = 488) vs (184x2 + 152 = 520)

Rd 9 - CL, Pendlebury, 128, Ablett, 184, no

 

[OzRulesFootball]

Rd 9 - CL, Dangerfield, 152, Ablett, 184, yes.... (C placed on Kade Simpson not playing)

32 point loss

 

[Rowsus]

CL, Pendelbury 128, Sandi 121, no
2 weeks in a row I've snagged my highest scorer for Captain, but the only 2 weeks I've managed it!
It's not easy, when you don't have Gaz, and only had Pendles one week!

 

[Oh My Watson]

Round 9: CL - Swan, 79, Ablett, 184, no

 

[davo]

CL, Pendelbury 128 Ablett 184 no
EL Derixx 67 H Maccintosh 74 no

 

[doc ron]

Rd 9
CL beams 104 gaj 184 loophole not used

 

[d-buzzz]

rd 9;
CL, Pendelbury 128 Ablett 184 no
EL, M Crouch 10 B Acres 4 yes - 6 points lost LOLL

 

[Krieks]

Rnd 9

CL Pendles 128, Gaz 184, considered it right up the bounce of saints but backed gaz in.

No EL

 

[JT23]

R9

CL Pendles 128, Gaz 184 - No (profit of 56 points)
EL Crouch 10, Acres 4 - No (lost 4 points - but in hindsight as a BYE week neither were in my best 18)

I am thinking that some of the best data around this will be from the start of the year where people made conscious decisions to either play a FD or to pick a cash generating rookie. Therefore if people roll back through their scoring rounds (which I think you can do quite easily on the website) they could post their loopholes for the season thus far). This may provide you with even better data - different data (wouldn't surprise me to see the benefit of a FD being different at the start of the year to the 2nd half of the year where there are less common rookies and some have already been upgraded etc) and a larger quantity of data quickly!!!

 

[Mr_Arrogance]

R9

CL Pendles 128, Ablett 184 - Yes
EL Crouch 10, Acres 4 - Yes
EL Ambrose 48, JKH - No. Was going to use it until I saw JKH was named starting sub

 

[DoggyODFL]

R9
CL Cotchin 112, Gaz 184 - No
EL Ambrose 48, JKH 25 - Yes - 23 point gained - Chose to loop hole when JKH named as Sub, would not of normally took 48 as a loophole score

EDIT: Not sure I listed the EL the right way around - Ambrose had the E and I switched JKH on the the bench when named as sub

 

[drafter]

R9

CL Beams 104, Ablett 184, no

 

[Emre]

R9
CL, Pendlebury 128, Ablett 184, No
EL, Ambrose 48, JKH 25, Yes

 

[Goodie's Guns]

Round 9

CL, Pendlebury 128, Ablett 184, No

 

[Hawk]

R9

CL Beams 104, Ablett 184, no