NixTrader for R14 – All plain sailing now?

 

Ever wondered what it would be like to come round the home turn in the Melbourne Cup and see that someone has suddenly decided to turn it into a steeplechase event?  Well now you know.  Put that whip away.  You still need some smart trading to negotiate the hurdles ahead.  And NixTrader is here to help you find the best trades.

Byes Review

First let’s recap on the byes.  I think they went pretty well, especially when compared to last year.  This week Warnie has started a thread on the rule changes here – you should have your say.

One of the reason I believe it went well is because the holdings of each of the teams stayed fairly constant over the 3 rounds.  See table below –

Coaches were able to hold the players they wanted to keep and trade the ones they were happy to get rid of.  In both R12 and R3 there was about 2% overall reduction in player selections in the bye round, with the increase fairly evenly split between the other 2 rounds.  Coaches were able to improve their teams through the byes without having to trash their existing team set up.

I averaged 1,730 odd over the 3 rounds.  This is above my initial target of “1,700+”, but I am a little disappointed.  My plans were fine – just a lot of my players underperformed in both R11 (especially) and R13.  How did you go?  I am interested to see how users of this spreadsheet fared during the byes so please post your averages in the comments.

Updated Team Averages

I haven’t posted this table for a while so here is the current version to show which sides are giving up the most scores.

On the against side I’ve changed the order for how it is ranked.  It is now ranked by who is conceding most 100s instead of most points.  This is a bit more useful now we have had enough games to get more stable averages of 100s.  North Melbourne is quite interesting as they don’t give away many points, but concede lots of 100s.  Whereas Freo is the opposite.

Even though I don’t post this table in the article every week, NixTrader spreadsheet always includes the current data where coming rounds are shown for each player.

Magic Number (N rated content)

The Magic Number jumped up again this round (see chart in NixTrader).  So a lot of your players will have had bigger than expected price rises.  Current BEs and projected price increases on a lot of sites might be a fair bit out this week so be careful about locking your plans in on these numbers.  On previous history MN should fall and revert back to a smoother pattern after the end of the byes but we shall see.

What happens next?

Below is an updated table showing who has best run over the next few weeks.  If you are not sure how to use this, go back and re-read Tbetta’s latest article where he covered something called fixture trading.

I have added another column to the table headed “toR23”.  This covers all the remaining rounds to the end of the year.

 

NixTrader Spreadsheet

Changes this week:

• I have hidden and greyed out a few things that referred to Byes as these are no longer necessary.

• The I’m Stalking watchlist has been changed to remove the bye groups, and the position were groups made a bit bigger.  So be careful if you normally just copy and paste your watchlist from last round as it will not match exactly.

 

Here is link to download spreadsheet (Excel2007) – NixTrader2013 R14 pub

 

Reminders from previous weeks:

• The team of the current overall leader is in NixTrader spreadsheet when you download it.  You can look at this team to see if you can learn anything from it, before replacing it with your own team.

• 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.

• 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.