Tanking the Round 13 bye

[Toga]

Hey FF coaches, just wanted to ask something about tanking (disregarding) a bye round this year.

Did anyone do reasonably well in DT 2012 and not put any consideration into which players had what byes?

With a majority of the good mids having the round 13 bye this year, I'm not sure whether I should try plan around this so I can have enough players on the field, or just pick the best of the best and hopefully make up the points by having the better players.

Do you think disregarding the round 13 bye and trying to fit say Swan/Beams and Murphy into the team instead of Cotchin and Redden will make up enough points to make up for eating donuts in round 13?

[Justin Bieber]

Closer to the date I'll have a look. Really avent looked into it too much this year so far..

[Toga]

Yeah fair enough.

But did anyone disregard the byes last season and still finish reasonably high?

[Grazz]

Managed to improve rank over the 3 bye rounds but was more due to luck or others bad luck. I'll be setting up at this stage for a bad one in rnd 13 and hopefully go ok in 11 and 12 offsetting what may happen in rnd 13 rank wise.

Last year i planned for the byes in setting up with no more than 2 out in each line, alot of the work came from rnds 3-10 in trying to achieve this. LTI's and form were other issues that came up to spoil the work around the byes but compared to alot i was in pretty good shape still. Having a plan B and a plan C is an advantage and by that i mean be prepared to be flexible and change tact should something unforseen crop up.

[Mr.Craig]

I try to keep my side reasonably balanced but I'm not going to do it at the expense of picking the best available players. My argument against say, picking Redden ahead of Beams purely because of the bye, is that by the time Round 13 rolls around Beams would have outscored Redden by 150 odd points (based on last year's averages) so it would be better to pick Beams from the start and take the donut in Round 13.

Some comparisons are a bit closer, such as Beams vs Cotchin (67 points) but this talk I'm hearing about people not picking Swan just because of his bye is lunacy. I mean c'mon, why would you leave a perma-captain out of your side just so you can score a little bit more in one round?

I went from 19k to 7k during the byes and averaged 1689, I think from memory the best 3 round average I saw at FF was around the mid 1700's so unless they change the format everyone will cop some bad scores. At the moment I have an 8/5/8 split with the premiums being 6/2/6. I'd be willing to live with something like 11/8/11 once the rookies are announced. A few rounds before the byes I'll have a look at what I can do to lessen the impact but I'm not going to waste too much energy on it.

[Toga]

that's pretty good Mr Craig going up by that amount averaging in the 1600's!

I'm just trying to figure out what I should do... Just pick the best team I can and hope for the best during byes or trying to keep it more balanced...

The thing I'm worried about is even if I pick a balanced team, if I try to upgrade any players before the byes it will just undo the work I've done to keep it balanced already!

[Mr.Craig]

For me Round 12 was the problem this season, I had a bunch of Collingwood and Essendon players out and the only option was to trade to Round 11's which in most cases I wasn't willing to do.

Now with Round 13 looming as the worst next year we'll have more flexibilty to trade out of donuts so I don't think it's as risky to have a 13 leaning team. Still, it's always a balancing act. Lean too far and you might fall over. :-\

[Torpedo10]

Tank the byes. Don't waste trades. Do well in finals but make sure you get there. You will do well if you structure a team that does well during the NON bye rounds.

[Toga]

Tank the byes. Don't waste trades. Do well in finals but make sure you get there. You will do well if you structure a team that does well during the NON bye rounds.

yeah that's a good point, but what about going for overall? I kinda wanted to improve on my overall ranking from this year (which was just inside 20K i think).

[Dudge]

Well i panicked about the byes last season, and tried to do all the right things and have a balance through them. It did sort of make me pick some players i would normally not have, but they were still prems, just not the prems i normally would of gone for. What hurt a lot of people, or me anyway, was the unforseen injuries ( to my team ) and a few resting i couldn't of planned for during the byes. Anyway went into the byes ranked 2063, and got spat out the other end of them ranked 4058. I averaged 1537 in those rounds. This year i'm going to keep an eye on them, but i think i'll pick the players from the start I want, and go from there. Not going to let it do my head in again lol

[ronl]

First off, at the start of the season I picked all the players I wanted making no allowances for byes at all.  Was ranked 1400 something at start of bye rounds, and ranked 811 after round 13. I made all the trades I was allowed during the bye weeks to avoid goose-eggs and ended up only having three goose-eggs in round 13 and none in rounds 11 and 12.  I made the grand finals in two of my three leagues which were ranked in top 100. Could have done better if I hadn't run out of trades, but overall I was happy with the year.  Will use the same approach this year but just be a tiny bit stingier with bye-related trades. There's always going to be a certain amount of luck involved in the whole thing, no matter what you do, so all I did was try to have the strongest team I could field at the start of the year, and hang in there as best I could.

[Barra17]

I didn't allow for the byes at all and just wanted to have the best team I could by the end of year. I won all 3 of the byes in my league matches while finishing 3,226 overall.

[Toga]

First off, at the start of the season I picked all the players I wanted making no allowances for byes at all.  Was ranked 1400 something at start of bye rounds, and ranked 811 after round 13. I made all the trades I was allowed during the bye weeks to avoid goose-eggs and ended up only having three goose-eggs in round 13 and none in rounds 11 and 12.  I made the grand finals in two of my three leagues which were ranked in top 100. Could have done better if I hadn't run out of trades, but overall I was happy with the year.  Will use the same approach this year but just be a tiny bit stingier with bye-related trades. There's always going to be a certain amount of luck involved in the whole thing, no matter what you do, so all I did was try to have the strongest team I could field at the start of the year, and hang in there as best I could.

I didn't allow for the byes at all and just wanted to have the best team I could by the end of year. I won all 3 of the byes in my league matches while finishing 3,226 overall.

thanks guys, that's what i really wanted to know! cheers for both of you! :)

[tbagrocks]

Yeah I hardly did the bye's justice and still won all three league games (was only in one league), though I did trade nicely through the bye's no real planning went in as I say it all being a lottery anyway.

[LF]

I tanked round 11 bye wasn`t planned until closer to the byes tho (all the injuries and suspensions didn`t help)
I figured by tanking this round with my GWS rookies I had It not only gave them a couple of extra games to go up in price it also meant I had cover for the rest of the bye rounds barring injuries and suspensions and those that had an extra week off.Round 12 I had 3 donuts.By round 13 I only had 2 donuts still scored low with all my rookies on field but won my league games.