The winners and the results from this year's contests.
November 4, 2024 by Keith Raynor in Fantasy with 0 comments
With the 2024 USA Ultimate Club National Championships in the book, the Beat Charlie Challenge and #TheGame are all wrapped up. We picked the winners, guessed the props, and tried to find the upsets and which favorites to target. Hopefully, following along was fun. We keep trying to improve the mechanics to make it as fun as possible!
Beat Charlie Challenge
But let’s see how Charlie did, talk about the popular picks, and announce the winners for this round of the BCC.
Charlie’s Picks
Only 15 of 170 entries outscored big Charlie who finished with 47 points. That puts Charlie at about the 91st percentile. That’s one of the Charlie’s best performances, though he fell short of first place by a few points. The average score was just below 41.
Charlie’s Most Recent Result: 73rd percentile (WUC 2024)
Charlie’s All-Time High: 97th percentile (D-I Championships 2021)
Charlie’s All Time Low : 47th percentile (Club 2023)
This run’s top scorers: Gabriel Schwartz-Ketchner, Bri Morales, Max Hamilton, josedas, Bulb, Brendan Smith, and bang that (49).
Women’s Division
- Quarterfinals
- Fury
- BENT
- Brute Squad
- Phoenix
- Molly Brown
- Riot
- Scandal
- Flipside
- Semifinals
- Fury
- Brute Squad
- Molly Brown
- Scandal
- Final
- Fury
- Scandal
- Champion
- Fury
- Scored: 19
- Avg. Entry: 16.7
Y’all probably thought you were smart bucking the chalk. About 60% of entries went away from the Big Four. Charlie was steadfast: big four to semis, top team to win it. And he was right. The lack of upsets (some very close calls!) made this the highest scoring division and Charlie did very well. His only incorrect pick was BENT to make quarterfinals.
Men’s Division
- Quarterfinals
- Machine
- Rhino Slam!
- Truck Stop
- Chain Lightning
- Johnny Bravo
- Revolver
- PoNY
- DiG
- Semifinals
- Machine
- Truck Stop
- Revolver
- DiG
- Final
- Machine
- DiG
- Champion
- Machine
- Scored: 11
- Avg. Entry: 10.1
It proved tough for contestants to even get three semifinalists in the men’s division, and Charlie went down with the ship. However, he rightly faded Johnny Bravo and sharply landed on Revolver; the other misses were all popular. That insulated Charlie and the Revolver pick put him above the average.
Mixed Division
- Quarterfinals
- BFG
- Disco Club
- Shame.
- Rally
- Drag’n Thrust
- Slow
- Hybrid
- Red Flag
- Semifinals
- BFG
- Shame.
- Drag’n Thrust
- Red Flag
- Final
- BFG
- Drag’n Thrust
- Champion
- BFG
- Scored: 9
- Avg. Entry: 10
The only division where Charlie fell below the average line, his most off-the-board pick was Red Flag, and that played out poorly as they missed even quarterfinals. Hitting only five quarterfinalists certainly didn’t help.
Bonus Picks – Fantasy
Denotes a a pick that was in the top five for the category. An additional point is awarded if the player selected leads the division.
- Women’s Div. Goals: Lindsay Soo
- Women’s Div. Assists: Yina Cartagena
- Open Div. Goals: Joe White
- Open Div. Assists: Jacques Nissen
- Mixed Div. Goals: Conor Belfield
- Mixed Div. Assists: Travis Dunn
- Total: 3 points
One reason for Charlie’s strong performance was landing some good fantasy picks. Yina Cartagena finished just outside of the first place slot for women’s division assists, while Travis Dunn led the mixed division, earning Charlie the extra bonus.
Denotes a correct pick.
- #1 seeds lose 1 game
- Lawless leads all no.13-16 seeds in points scored in pool play
- All halftime trailing teams will lose in the finals
- Johnny Bravo wins over Chain Lightning by 1 or 2 goals
- PoNY wins over Sockeye by 3 or more goals
- Drag’n Thrust wins over Mixtape by 1 or 2 goals, or Mixtape wins
- Molly Brown wins over Brute Squad by 1 or 2 goals
- Total: 2 point
If there’s one place Charlie might have left money on the table, it was in the pick ’em section. He was below the average (2.5) in this area. He was on the right side of the comeback-in-the-finals question, which I was positively shocked to see at about 80% of entrants expecting a comeback. Mixtape was the correct and most popular choice of the low seeds to score in pool play, so he missed out there.
The Winners
By random selection of the top scorers, Bri Morales wins a free month of Standard subscription. By random selection of entrants who outscored Charlie, Brendan Smith and Sam A. each win a free month of Standard subscription.
#TheGame
The Winners
This year’s winner was Grover31, whose 411 points included three champions and another finalist. This year, finding strong performers in the men’s and mixed divisions was hard — see the Beat Charlie Challenge — and creating the right build to have space for Fury was key. Rhino Slam! only had a 10% selection rate, while PoNY’s 41% still made them the third most popular team. Of course, Grover avoided the both of the most popular teams, Molly Brown and Truck Stop, who both scored ok for their price, but would have taken up valuable slots. Grover31’s last team, Slow, did return good value, even if it wasn’t optimal.
Chris Jacobson had the same lineup, only swapping Rally’s 0 points for Slow’s 20 (and not hitting the bonus Grover did), showing the power of picking that big four.
Andrew Sjogren took third (on tiebreakers), with Fury, Hybrid, PoNY, Mixtape, and Machine. With Rhino picked at such a low rate, it wasn’t required to get to them to place highly.
It was a bounceback for the price bonus! Over 20% of entrants went for the more affordable team to get the 20 point bonus, with the top scorer employing this strategy putting up 309 points, good enough for 16th place.
Grover31 wins a month of All-Access subscription.
Chris Jacobson and Andrew Sjogren each win a month of Standard subscription.
Selection Stats
Wanted to note the rough breakdown on divisions for the bonus teams: 42% men’s division, 37% mixed division, and 24% women’s division. Those numbers add up to more than 100%, but pretty sure this is just from a lot of rounding; the picture is still about right.
Top 5 Women’s Division Teams
- Denver Molly Brown (50%)
- San Francisco Fury (36.9%)
- Washington DC Scandal (12.5%)
- San Diego Flipside (10.5%)
- Portland Schwa (9%)
With a massive total for Molly Brown and pretty sizable selection numbers for Fury, too, there wasn’t much space left over for other teams. Additionally, the bottom seeds were very unpopular, further squeezing the selection rates into a clear group.
Top 5 Men’s Division Teams
- Washington DC Truck Stop (50%)
- New York PoNY (41.6%)
- Atlanta Chain Lightning (20.9%)
- Chicago Machine (14%)
- Raleigh Ring of Fire (10.8%)
These numbers look very similar to the women’s division in the rates of the top teams, but the difference is those prices. PoNY and Chain were $2, while Fury and Scandal were $4. Obviously people wanted to pick up some savings in the men’s division.
Top 5 Mixed Division Teams
- Seattle Mixtape (37%)
- Ann Arbor Hybrid (23.8%)
- Seattle BFG (18.3%)
- Boston Slow (16.3%)
- Arizona Lawless (15.1%)
The good old mixed division: where at least we all believe anything could happen. This is a lot of low-priced teams plus the overall favorite. That makes a lot of sense. If only entrants had went to the other similarly priced Boston mixed team; fewer than 3% of entries locked in Sprocket.
The Perfect Lineup
San Francisco Fury ($4)
Portland Rhino Slam ($3)
Ann Arbor Hybrid ($3)
New York PoNY ($2)
Seattle Mixtape ($1)
A total of 405 points.
The Bonuses and Tiebreakers
How many total points (Goals + Assists) will the men’s division, women’s division, and mixed division leaders score during the tournament? (11 pts)
Can I just say that using this was a mistake? This is meant as a tiebreaker question — wide range of reasonable potential answers — rather than a bonus. My bad. Shout to Myles Powicki, the only person to nail the answer of 110.
How many teams seeded no.5 through 20 will reach semifinals? (9 pts)
I think I like these multiple choice options and will do more of these next year. 18% of entrants were pulling for the underdogs, and they were barking, with six such teams making the semis.
What will be the fewest points scored by any team in any game? (7 pts)
Responses were pretty even, except for 5 or more. So a good percentage hit it on the head with three goals.
Tiebreaker 1: How many turnovers will be recorded across all three finals?
This might be the last year of the tiebreaker, as bonus questions seem to do a good job of separating out the scores. Despite a low-turnover men’s division final, we ended up with 83 total. Shout out to Dave E for getting it right. It was a higher number than most entries picked.
Tiebreaker 2: How many games (including consolation) will be decided by 1 or 2 goal margins?
An incredible 63 games were very tight! Six different entrants got this one right, with another six within one game.
Feedback Welcome!
Did you play? Did you not play? Why or why not? What rules would be fun to play with? What tweaks can be made?
As mentioned above, I think the Tiebreaker Era is over, and the Bonus Question era is here. Maybe we should extend Fantasy to top 10. And I’m considering how we should change the bonus in #TheGame for getting the low priced team — should it exist at all? Should it be greater? Should there be another way to get the bonus? Not sure yet.
We want the Beat Charlie Challenge and #TheGame to be fun and have different strategies be viable without being too complicated for lots of people to enter. You can contact me by emailing [email protected].
