Welcome back to the series! We’re on the road to change our flash fortunes over the course of IPL 2023. Focusing on FanCraze Pro: Common games. At Zero to Hero HQ we were hoping for a big turnaround, much like CSK this week.
As a reminder, goals for this series are:
- Win a game of Pro: Common Flash outright (place #1); and
- Look to double our money from $250 to $500
After a disappointing opener we needed to blast back in the second round of games and shift momentum. For anyone who missed the first / second episodes of the series, check them out below. This is not financial advice.
Let’s get into it this week.
Summary
Taking a quick look back at IPL Round 1, we submitted 7 lineups…with only 1 placing for a return of $15. The board of directors at Zero-2-Hero HQ are proud to reveal significant progress this week!
Here is how the lineups performed across round 2 (keep in mind that one lineup submission costs $5):
- CSK vs LSG— 2 Lineups — $35 Winnings
- DC vs GT— 2 Lineups — $15 Winnings
- PBKS vs RR — 2 Lineups — $24 Winnings
- KKR vs RCB— 2 Lineups — $15 Winnings
- SRH vs LSG — 2 Lineups — $0 Winnings
What a turnaround in Round 2!
Not only did we generate some much needed returns for reinvestment, we had a couple of close calls on placing in the top 5. I felt like dissecting one of these close calls would help inform strategy, so we’ll look at the best finish i had this week — 7th place in CSK vs LSG.
CSK vs LSG
I’ll start this by saying, to win a Flash, I know a lineup obviously had to include players that played and performed well on the day. What I was really looking to determine is:
- What set my lineup apart from others who generally were in the right ballpark with their “Player performance” decisions
- What set those who beat my lineup apart — whether it be Player Performance decisions, or otherwise.
Payout Structure: The winners prize structure from this Pro: Common game is below. Continuing to recoup $25/$15 winners from $10/$5 entry fees would most likley eventually get us close to the second of our goals.
That’s not really fun though. We were going to chase winning, learn along the way, and likely land the same results in the worst case scenario anyway. “Now is not the time to turn conservative” was my mentality.
Leaderboard: We landed a great lineup for this game, but were still a mammoth 12.25 points off of 1st place. Hell, even before we get there, we were 10.25 from reaching 4th and the next rung of the payout ladder.
The Game / Lineup / Dynamic Points: CSK were put in to bat first in this game, the pitch report suggested spin might contribute — below was my Bowling PoTD lineup as a result.
With Flash Ravi Bishnoi in as Top Multi (there was a lesson learned here), most people swapped him in between innings, given he was top in dynamic points (DP) at the break.
Moeen Ali then pegged LSG back with a stellar performance of 4–26. Nabbing the Top DP, and transitioning the best PoTD from Bowler to All Rounder.
Pros: So, we had the top three Dynamic points scorers in the lineup, with multipliers. Great, that's a significant reason for placing 7th.
Cons: We did not however, have Moeen as x2, or have the All Rounder PoTD. Correcting these two items would have netted an additional 6.25 points….but we needed to double that to win, we had to do a further 4 better simply to win a bigger payout!
What did the winner do?…
The Winning Lineup — Shout out to BlackCaps
We already know we were 6.25 behind due to the Moeen Multi and the PotD choice, which the winner here got right on the money. This lineup was not without fault though.
- Mark Wood 1.75 multi (ideal was 0 multi)
- Bishnoi 1.25 multi (ideal was 1.75)
- Santner instead of Mayers (6 point DP difference)
It was a lineup, however, stacked with baseline points GOLD !
Fair play to this user.
Investing in top serials, gaining an extra 6 points across these moments versus Middle Serials. AND, spending time to level up the XP on these to level 2 — offering 6 more points over level 4 equivalents (Santner common was Level 2 also). It paid off in this case.
Had they used Mid Serials and Level 4 XP — they would have been more or less level with my lineup on points.
Closing Thought
There was one other thing, 4 flash moments in my lineup. This was down to my halftime swap. I swapped out a Nicky Pooran moment for a Devon Conway Flash given the state of the game. This was fine, and the right decision in hindsight given my collection and budget.
The more perplexing thought was… how could I possibly throw away a handful of baseline points like that, and still finish 7th.
We’ve just seen the difference a few points can make…but I beat 14th place by 6 points with all of these factors.
My hunch is that this is down to the wider scope and possibilities of lineups, the pure number of players with moments / in play.
An example across 3 games this week:
The “Placing Lineup Spread” here is calculated by taking the difference between the Flash points for the lineup in 1st place, and the Flash points for the last lineup to place in the money (usually around 50th/60th).
I know this is a small sample size — but the trend is remarkably clear. Each additional moment in play added ~2.8 points in spread. In a game where every point is critical, we wanted our lineup to stand up in a fight against high baseline point lineups as much as possible. We would factor this knowledge into our strategy going forward.
Key Lessons Learned
In terms of strategy, I’m adding a couple of core rules this week to the ones we already established last time.
- Multiplier placement: In each game, 2 Flash moments are required. These are at most $3 to buy, usually $1, and I have most of them in my collection already. I am going to put my Top multiplier on a flash moments almost exclusively going forward. This means I do not have to buy in the MP to replace in the swap and remain competitive — I can then leverage 1.75 multipliers for scenarios where I have a boss of a common card to swap in — like the following — should I need to :
- XP Farming: You will notice I have generally played 2 lineups per game— usually one of these is wrecked at the break. Going forward I would consciously use these to farm XP on moments to up the baseline points — even if players were not playing.
- # Active Moments: Consider the # of moments in play — if there were fewer moments, maybe one lineup was ok instead of 2.
Finally, I was going to set aside time to look into the future, and start to target specific Flash games where my collection favored me with baseline points on moments.
Financial Update
Lets look at our financials next — keep in mind we have a 250 budget, and my existing collection to work with.
Last Week’s Performance (Week 1) —$ 96.75 Loss
Last Week’s Performance (Week 2) — $2 Loss
Overall Performance — $98.75 Loss
Biggest takeaway this week — we funded 80% of our investment in moments and Flash entry fees with our Flash winnings. This is a massive step forward.
This source of Revenue for future investment was so much more sustainable than round 1 games — where 78% of revenue was from selling moments.
This was also a good week for scaling our moments upwards. You will notice selling low and mid serial moments to upgrade to their Mid and Top serial equivalents (this included a Bhuvi common sell, which I bought a top serial for last week).
Moments In (Bought this week)
Moments Out (Sold this week)
Rilee Rossouw sticks out as a difficult decision in hindsight — he’s been in questionable form, and could be in line to be dropped given his overseas player status.
Narine was a moment I was thrilled to get for $10 — so experienced, no international commitments, like Rashid Khan will feature in more or less every game he is eligible for.
I think we will need one more week of larger, targeted investment for the Hero-2-Zero fund, to make a run at winning a Pro: Common.
All that said, let’s have a look at this week’s Heat Check.
Heat Check
The Zero to Hero board of directors are breathing a sigh of relief this week as revenue turned in the right direction — the Operations department stepped up their game and were pleased to report 0 flash lineup blunders. The team will now look to the Investment department to direct additional funds into moment / card investment, with a refined strategy from this weeks learning.
For these reasons we’ll go with “Rotating the Strike” for IPL Round 2.
Fingers crossed for Set of Games #3 of IPL. If you have any thoughts / contributions- hit me up in the FC Discord
Cheers — CraigSnax
