Welcome back to the series all! We’re on the 4th edition of our road to change flash fortunes over the course of IPL 2023.
Its been a couple of weeks since the last update — largely because of the start of the IRL cricket season here in the US — more updates on that to come over the next few weeks.
Anyway — Focusing on FanCraze Pro: Common games. At Zero to Hero HQ we were optimistic after a significant improvement in winnings from week 2 of IPL
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
For anyone who missed the first / second episodes of the series, check them out in my profile. This is not financial advice.
Let’s get into it this week.
Summary
Taking a quick look back at IPL Round 3, we submitted 8 lineups, and well…..we were so damn close….SO SO damn close.
Here is how the lineups performed across round 3 (keep in mind that one lineup submission costs $5):
- RR vs DC — 2 Lineups — $0 Winnings
- MI vs CSK — 2 Lineups — $0 Winnings
- SRH vs PUN— 1 Lineup — $25 Winnings
- RCB vs LSG— 2 Lineups — $30 Winnings
- MI vs CD — 1 Lineup — $110 Winnings
40 in entry fees, 165 in winnings…the turnaround continued in Round 3…but let’s cut right to the chase, what about that $110 winning?
MI vs DC
Is there an IPL team more miserable form than Delhi right now? They’ve won just a solitary game. A game in which 34 year old former Indian seamer Ishant Sharma was player of the match. He hasn't played white ball cricket for India since 2016 (!!!). David Warner has scored 33% of their runs, and only a resurgent Axar Patel has provided any kind of support to Davey on the batting front.
This was the perfect team for the Mumbai Indians to get out of their own mini rut against too.
Lineup Selection
The pitch report suggested batting would be handy on this track. I loaded up on the two inform Delhi players, Warner and Axar, and backed Rohit to come through with a big innings for Mumbai.
Bowling options were the big decision here though, I lacked moments for most of the players. I had to try and be crafty and identify specific lineups that would give me an edge against the broader field…so called “unpopular” lineups as we talked about in last week’s blog.
Here is what the options looked like:
Behrendorff, Nortje, and Kuldeep would be in many lineups, they’re too quality for the average user to omit. I decided to take a gamble on Chawla, a player that only had a Flash moment.
Keeping in mind three things:
- Every lineup requires a minimum of 2 flash moments
- The pitch report suggested a run-fest was likely — so many folks would have batsmen selected in x2, 1.75x spots, anyone playing strategically would have flash moments in those spots (an exception would be if folks had XP level 1, Top Serial moments of Warner or Rohit etc.)
- Mumbai would field in the first innings. The likely swaps actioned at the break would therefore be centered on two possible outcomes. Delhi Batsmen scoring high or Mumbai bowlers taking wickets.
So, my thinking here was if Chawla performed well, the majority of my competition would have to swap out Common moments (see point 2 above), gun players likes Nortje, Kuldeep, Jay B etc. — and be in a situation where many lineups had 3 Flash moments.
By accepting Chawla in my lineup from the get go, I could instead avoid a scenario where I had 3 flash moments at the end of the game. This, of course, required Chawla to perform well and the likes of Nortje not to have a blinder during his bowling effort.
Final Lineup and Dynamic Points:
The Game: Axar had a brilliant outing. 54 Runs, 4 overs 0–20 (economy rate of 5!). With only one lineup selected, and no A/R PotD, the difference between Rohit topping and Axar topping DP was significant.
Rohit was out, caught behind, on 65. 6 boundaries hit…as a reminder 7 or more boundaries receive extra points :(
Anyone following along will recall he was convinced he had hit a bump ball and immediately sent it upstairs for DRS. Alas this was unsuccessful.
HOWEVER …. Chawla came through big time. With figures of 3–22 the gamble paid off and he was the top DP at the break. As expected this led to a mass Swap in of Flash Chawla’s, many of the lineups outside the top 15 ended up in this Chawla flash crunch.
Anyway…where did we finish?
Damn….1.5 points. Robbie pipped me to the post, only just.
I said at the outset of this blog, losers make excuses, but winners make changes. Starting to see these close calls was pleasing….we continue in the pursuit of our first Pro-common win.
Key Lessons Learned
Nothing major in terms of new strategy this week — validation of the approaches taken were nice to see.
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 Financial Status — $ 96.75 Loss
This Week’s Financial Performance — $81 gain
Overall Performance — $17.75 Loss
Ive added in a graph to show the change in each category week here:
You can clearly see the investment starting to pay off with winnings increasing and the moment investment week on week tailing off. The question will be if this is sustainable given the larger win this week
Moments In (Bought this week)
Heat Check
The Zero to Hero board of directors are planning out what they will purchase with their perfomance bonuses after this week. The Strategy department stepped up their game and will look to identify more of the “unpopular lineups” going forward. The first win eludes Zero to Hero, but being within 1.5pts gives great cause for celebration.
For these reasons we’ll go with “50-up” for IPL Round 2.
Will be back soon with Round 4's update.
Cheers — CraigSnax
