The Great Big A2K Fantasy Olympics Game For 2012!

I have passed the info along to Unsullied. Thanks for all the hard work you scorekeepers, normally a thankless job, but here is a thank you.

And in case you're a geek like me, the best possible team was:

A: Russia 228
A: Great Britain 215

B: France 100
B: South Korea 96
B: Japan 94

C: Kazakhstan 43
C: Brazil 39
C: New Zealand 39
C: Jamaica 36
C: Czech Republic 32

D: Iran 38
D: Azerbaijan 22
D: South Africa 22
D: Ethiopia 21
D: Croatia 20

Total: 1045


fbaezer usually makes the call on country groupings, but I would contend that Iran could move up to Group C, and Australia could move down to Group B (sorry hingehead), though the Aussies likely just had a bad showing this Olympics. One could also argue that Belarus and Canada could move down to Group C, but this may be preliminary.

Thanks to everyone who played--I definitely had a good time.

Thank you very much! This is a fun game!

I've enjoyed it a lot - thank you three for all the work involved. And it was good to have the checks and balance of three watching for inevitable errors.

Me, I had chosen 4 out of the first five, A + B, messing up by not choosing Britain
and then 3 out of 5 for both C + D.

So it goes.

I agree.

I'd move Australia down to B since there's a natural break after Germany. Australia is unlikely to be a factor in the A group, but they become a much more interesting pick in B.

I'd replace Belarus and Canada in group B with Kazakhstan and Brazil (especially since they're hosting) from group C.

I'd replace Slovakia, Thailand, Argentina, and Norway in group C with Iran, South Africa, Azerbaijan, and Ethiopia from group D.

4th place... AGAIN!

(Bangs his head to the wall)

Damn Croatians!

Congratulations to all medal winners - and special thanks to Realjohnboy for setting up the thread, to tgordon92 for keeping scores (a though task, I know) and to markr for checking them.

Let's meet again at the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014 !

On principle, I agree with markr's grouping proposal.

It wouldn't do wrong to check different world championships right before the Olympics to confirm it (if we hade done it this year, we would have known, for example, that Belarus' rowers and canoeists were not as strong as in Beijing 2008).

I have no objection to moving the countries around (I said Australia should be dropped a league when submitted my picks) but ultimately it doesn't really matter - as long as you know a team is crap in their division you don't pick them.

"as long as you know a team is crap in their division you don't pick them"

True, but ideally each division is made up of teams that have the potential to be relevant in that division. I think it's more interesting to put Australia with France, South Korea, Japan, and Italy to make division B tougher to choose than to leave them in division A and ignore them.

On the flip side of that, Russia is becoming something of an automatic choice because they're not good enough to split (with both teams in division A), but they're better than a split US or China (or non-hosting Great Britain).

CAN WE DO THE PARAOLYMPICS! IM HOOOOKEDDDD!

Thanks for the enjoyment tgordon92, wheel158 and markr (and to RJB for kick-starting the event). Congrats to the medal winners - tough luck fbaezer! Roll on Rio!

OK, I'm a dork. You must've posted this at the same time I was responding to another post...

I agree with you -- having Australia in group B gives us more variety in who picks whom; and your choices would still be good picks, depending on how the games played out.

And boy, Russia really dominated the last week of the games (after a somewhat slow start). They were really firing on all cylinders the last few days.

Back in 2004, ESPN had a Fantasy Olympics. That game required you to pick countries (10 or 20, I can't remember). The medals were scored the same too: 5 for Gold, 3 for Silver, 1 for Bronze. But the trick was that each country had a multiplier: USA had a multiplier of 1.0, China had a multiplier of 1.1, etc. On the extreme opposite end, Israel had a multiplier of 75 or 100 (I remember, because I chose Israel, and they won a Gold in sailing). So, if you picked the "dark horse" country, it was a high reward if they got a medal...or no points at all. Conversely, if you picked safer countries, you were guaranteed points, so there was a bit of strategy involved--and the country choices were all over the place.

I'm not advising this approach (how do you determine the multipliers anyway?), but just throwing out ideas on how to make things more interesting. A slight bummer for me this year was seeing that everyone ahead of me had very similar picks, which made it tough to gain ground. Now, one could certainly argue that I should've chosen my picks more wisely...

It can't be said enough

I knew I'd read this somewhere




Congratulations tgordon92 and the future 92+

Also congrats to Sir TGordon. And many thanks for all of the bean counters to this contest.

Oh!! Wonderful! Congratulations, on the gordonian knot (or whatever you two will enjoy calling it), tgordon. This makes your major participation even more remarkable (or understandable).

"I'm not advising this approach (how do you determine the multipliers anyway?), but just throwing out ideas on how to make things more interesting."

I like that. It makes every country relevant. One simple approach is to base the multipliers on the previous results with a cap at some arbitrary value (for instance, assume each country earned at least n points, where n is something like 1, 2, or 3). The multiplier for a country would be the top score (in this case, USA = 346) divided by that country's score. I'd suggest scaling up the previous host's multiplier by dividing it by something like 0.85 (which is how China performed).

Here's what the top end (teams scoring at least 3 points) of such an approach would look like (forgive the crappy formatting):

Gold Silver Bronze Total Points Multiplier
United States of America 46 29 29 104 346 1
People's Republic of China 38 27 23 88 294 1.18
Russian Federation 24 26 32 82 230 1.5
Great Britain 29 17 19 65 215 1.61 (1.89 if adjusted by 0.85)
Germany 11 19 14 44 126 2.75
France 11 11 12 34 100 3.46
Republic of Korea 13 8 7 28 96 3.6
Australia 7 16 12 35 95 3.64
Japan 7 14 17 38 94 3.68
Italy 8 9 11 28 78 4.44
Hungary 8 4 5 17 57 6.07
Netherlands 6 6 8 20 56 6.18
Ukraine 6 5 9 20 54 6.41
Spain 3 10 4 17 49 7.06
Kazakhstan 7 1 5 13 43 8.05
New Zealand 6 2 5 13 41 8.44
Cuba 5 3 6 14 40 8.65
Brazil 3 5 9 17 39 8.87
Islamic Republic of Iran 4 5 3 12 38 9.11
Jamaica 4 4 4 12 36 9.61
Czech Republic 4 3 3 10 32 10.81
Canada 1 5 12 18 32 10.81
Belarus 2 5 5 12 30 11.53
Romania 2 5 2 9 27 12.81
Kenya 2 4 5 11 27 12.81
Denmark 2 4 3 9 25 13.84
Democratic People's Republic of Korea 4 0 2 6 22 15.73
South Africa 3 2 1 6 22 15.73
Azerbaijan 2 2 6 10 22 15.73
Poland 2 2 6 10 22 15.73
Ethiopia 3 1 3 7 21 16.48
Croatia 3 1 2 6 20 17.3
Sweden 1 4 3 8 20 17.3
Colombia 1 3 4 8 18 19.22
Turkey 2 2 1 5 17 20.35
Georgia 1 3 3 7 17 20.35
Mexico 1 3 3 7 17 20.35
Switzerland 2 2 0 4 16 21.63
Lithuania 2 1 2 5 15 23.07
Norway 2 1 1 4 14 24.71
Ireland 1 1 3 5 11 31.45
Argentina 1 1 2 4 10 34.6
Slovenia 1 1 2 4 10 34.6
Serbia 1 1 2 4 10 34.6
India 0 2 4 6 10 34.6
Tunisia 1 1 1 3 9 38.44
Mongolia 0 2 3 5 9 38.44
Dominican Republic 1 1 0 2 8 43.25
Trinidad and Tobago 1 0 3 4 8 43.25
Uzbekistan 1 0 3 4 8 43.25
Thailand 0 2 1 3 7 49.43
Latvia 1 0 1 2 6 57.67
Egypt 0 2 0 2 6 57.67
Slovakia 0 1 3 4 6 57.67
Algeria 1 0 0 1 5 69.2
Bahamas 1 0 0 1 5 69.2
Grenada 1 0 0 1 5 69.2
Uganda 1 0 0 1 5 69.2
Venezuela 1 0 0 1 5 69.2
Armenia 0 1 2 3 5 69.2
Belgium 0 1 2 3 5 69.2
Finland 0 1 2 3 5 69.2
Bulgaria 0 1 1 2 4 86.5
Estonia 0 1 1 2 4 86.5
Indonesia 0 1 1 2 4 86.5
Malaysia 0 1 1 2 4 86.5
Puerto Rico 0 1 1 2 4 86.5
Taipei (Chinese Taipei) 0 1 1 2 4 86.5
Botswana 0 1 0 1 3 115.33
Cyprus 0 1 0 1 3 115.33
Gabon 0 1 0 1 3 115.33
Guatemala 0 1 0 1 3 115.33
Montenegro 0 1 0 1 3 115.33
Portugal 0 1 0 1 3 115.33

Interesting. I'd probably play, but I don't like giving up the regular way of doing it. It's two separate games.

Thank you to everyone for graciously letting me in this game back in 2008 when I was looking for a substitute for the ESPN Fantasy Olympics, which I, too, had played in 2004. Jahiegel made it a great down-to-the-wire contest, which had me on the edge of my seat during yesterday's events.

Thanks also to everyone offering their best wishes on my upcoming wedding. And thanks to the soon-to-be Mrs. tgordon92 for being tolerant of my obsessive Olympics-watching over the last two weeks. (Fortunately, I did not choose my contest countries based on our honeymoon destination, since Thailand's medal count was next to last in Group C.)

I'm looking forward to seeing you all in eighteen months for Sochi 2014, where I'll be going for the double-double.