NixTrader for R11 – we’ve got blue lights

If you look at the Dreamteam website you will see blue lights on some of your players indicating the byes have arrived.  For many coaches this will be like driving around a corner after a night out and seeing the blue lights of an RBT station up ahead.  Either you’ll be feeling smug that you’ve planned well and will be able to sail on through, or you’ll panicking with last minute calculations and hail mary schemes that would make  Ben Cousins embarrassed.

Who Needs Trades?

During the last round, Warnie posted a team he received from Josh (twitter @Pearcey47 ).  Josh used the NixTrader spreadsheet to find a team that:

• could have been picked at the start under the salary cap,
• would have you leading the overall competition at end of round 9, averaging 2200,
• without using any trades at all!

I thought it was worth posting again as some coaches may not have seen it.

• DEF: Goddard, Hibberd, Enright, Burgoyne, O’Brien, Malceski, N Wright, Terlich
• MID: Cornes, Pendlebury, Barlow, Boak, Douglas, O’Meara, Wines, M Jones, S Dwyer, J Growden
• RUC: Cox, Goldstein, Blicavs, Currie
• FWD: N Riewoldt, D Martin, Stokes, Rockliff, JJ Kennedy, T Cloke, J Neade, B Kennedy
• Salary Cap left – $5,400

No trades needed, no emergencies needed, just put the ‘C’ on Kane Cornes and set and forget!  This team would be on 19,807 and 631 points clear of the overall leader (at end round 9)!  Even with Cloke and Rockliff missing in R10, I think it would still be in the lead after R10. If you want a closer look at this team, it will be the team in the spreadsheet when you download it.  Might be worth having a look before you post your team over the top.

Unfortunately none of us have this team, so we will have to keep plugging away on our own team.

Strategy for Round 11

If you are set up for the byes it is a bit difficult to know what to do.  I can’t get excited about trading in a premo who will have a bye in R11 or R12, and I already have too many premo byes in R13.  So my strategy will be:

• After team announcements – if any of the players I was relying on for R11 are not picked, replace them (with hopefully better players) while maintaining bye structure.
• If I have spare trades downgrade some stalled rooks into the new mid rookies that have suddenly appeared to cash up for next week.  I have a 3 point plan for picking the best of these mid rookies – read @JeppaDT’s article Jeppa’s Juniors today, then read it again tomorrow, and finally read it again on Friday.
• Hopefully 2 premo upgrades next week to R11 bye players (now bye free).

NixTrader Spreadsheet

Not many new things this week.  On the Players & Trades tab:

• Yellow shaded cells.  You will notice some yellow shaded cells in the columns where you enter scores for R11 and R12.  These indicate that player has a bye in that round.  The obvious thing for you to do is put an ‘n’ to stop his price and averages changing.  However, if you want you can leave it to approximate his next round outcome.

• Variation statistics.  I’ve added some more variation statistics.  These are to the far right of the spreadsheet in the history area.  These are:
  • Standard deviation – expressed as a percentage of the mean,
  • Average less hi & lo – this is an average that excludes a player’s highest and lowest score for the year.  This is more representative for players such as Priddis and Daw whose average  is biased by one extreme score.
  • Skew – this coefficient measures how uniform the variation is around the average and whether there is a lot more variation on one side (i.e. scores up or down) than the other.  If skew is close to zero then you probably only need to look at average and standard deviation for that player.  Bit if skew is outside a range of -0.5 to +0.5 then you should look more closely at individual scores for that player to work out what is going on.

 

Here is link to download spreadsheet (Excel2007) – NixTrader2013 R11 pub

 

Reminders from previous weeks:

• If you used the spreadsheet from previous rounds, you can just select your blocks of players’ names from there and copy and paste them into this round’s spreadsheet.

• My Team in the Bye Rounds:  The table picks up the players from MyTeam in the first tab.  So if you want to make any player changes you have to do it on the first tab, and this will change all 3 bye teams.
  • There is a green section at the bottom where you can write in your own plans for each bye round, and add or subtract players etc.  You can then copy this whole section to next week’s spreadsheet and keep updating your plans.
  • There is a green column in each of the bye rounds to give you more control of your team total and onfield player count.

• Select “LTI/Low JS” if you think one of your players is likely to be out for that round.
• Select “Can DPP” if you can bring a benched player onto the field using DPP.  This will make their score count (only works if player is already listed as “emg”).

• I’m stalking the watchlist allows you to add players in groups according to their bye round.

• After lockout, you can also use NixTrader to start planning for next week.  Just enter your players’ actual scores in the column for the current round to update your watchlist or trades.

• Younglings:  if you don’t have Excel2007 software on your device you can still download the file, put it on a usb stick and ask around to find someone with Excel2007 software and ask to borrow their computer for an hour or so.

• Mac users have reported Brandon Ellis (Richmond) is placed as an Adelaide player in bye and draw tables.  This doesn’t occur in Windows Excel.  Mac users should be aware of this if you add Brandon Ellis to your spreadsheet.

Any comments, questions or suggestions please post below or tweet to @NixTrader. Post below how your bye preparations are going and your average score forecast, this might be useful for other coaches. Also post if you think an otherwise good trade is being assessed badly by the formulas.

————————– notes below are mostly the same each week ——————————————-

Brief instructions:

• You only have to enter information into the green cells, the other cells are protected to prevent any errors.

• Confirm or change Magic Number estimate for the end of next two rounds.  I have put in values for MN, but if you think you know enough about MN to prefer other numbers you can change them.

• Enter your players using the drop down menu.  In the menu only the players who fit that position are named in full, other players are reduced to 3 letters.  If you used the spreadsheet from previous rounds you should be able to select and copy groups of players from there into this spreadsheet.

• For each player in your team data is pulled up automatically.

• A projection for that player headed “Points Proj.”.  This is used as default in the calculations.  If a player has played more than 3 games this is their current average; if less than 3 games the projection is calculated from their starting price.

• There are 2 green cells to enter the actual scores (or your estimates) for your players for the next 2 rounds.  Based on these scores the last other columns calculate the averages, BEs, price change and new prices after the rounds.

• If you leave any cell blank, the calculation assumes the player gets their 2013 base score for that round – i.e. the score in column headed “Points Proj.” is used as default in the calculations.

• The player has to play 3 games for their price to change, so if the players miss games their price change won’t happen until after they play 3 games.

• If one of your players misses a round, put an “n” in the green cell for that round.  The calculations for the next round will then update to take account of this.

• There is a section to show the next 5 teams that player will face.  At the right of these 5 teams there are 4 percentages.  These show the variation in points and 100 scores that are predicted to come from playing that string of teams, over the next 3 and 5 weeks.  Percentages are based on the number of points and 100s each team has conceded so far this season.  Positive percentage says this run of teams is expected to concede more points and hundreds than average; negative percentage says these teams are likely to concede less points and hundreds than average.

FAQ:

• Why are these calculations different to other published BEs and valuations?
  • Everyone’s calculations depend on their assumptions about Magic Number, projections of future scores and how they round averages and values.  This spreadsheet should replicate any other published calculations if you make the same projections, including changing the magic number.  However, this spreadsheet is unique in that it allows you to change the estimates to do your own analysis.

• Tech talk:
  • You need a device and software that supports microsoft excel 2007 spreadsheets to be able to open and use the spreadsheet.  It won’t open on mobiles or tablets unless you have software or apps that support excel files.
  • Even if you have other software that claims to support Excel files, the file still might not work properly, as every excel formula might not be supported.  This current file uses array formulas, I expect many non-excel spreadsheets won’t support array formulas, despite supporting other excel like functions.
  • The file will not operate fully in either Google docs or Skydrive Excel web app.
  • Mac users report that some of the team / bye data for Brandon Ellis is wrong.  This didn’t occur on Windows / PC and was only reported on a Mac.  Be aware of this if you are on a Mac and looking at Brandon Ellis in the spreadsheet.