Not even Albert Einstein could have picked this incredible SuperCoach team to win $50,000
QUICK trades, Nic Newman as captain, holding out on Danger ... our mathematically-gifted friends have Einsteined the hell out of SuperCoach to produce 2017’s perfect team. SEE THE LINE-UP
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HINDSIGHT is a beautiful thing.
In SuperCoach, picking a strong Round 1 team and getting your trades spot on is crucial for season-long success.
Our mathematically gifted friends have broken out the calculators to produce the perfect SuperCoach season with some crazy trade ideas and a staggering overall score that dwarfs that of this year’s $50,000 major prize winner.
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THE OPTIMAL SUPERCOACH TEAM
Improvements in both computational power and algorithm design have meant that today we can solve what was once the unsolvable.
Algorithms determine how to schedule sporting competitions in the best possible way. Last year, the world’s best player of the Chinese board game “Go” was defeated by Google developed A.I. — a feat that was thought to be at least another decade away.
Today we are happy to announce that technology is now at a point that we can answer another of mankind’s most important questions: what decisions should I have made in SuperCoach 2017 to obtain the absolute best score possible.
When it comes down to it SuperCoach is a game of decisions. Which player should be in what position? How should you use your trades? Who should be captain?
Think about it for a second, there are literally trillions of possible paths that coaches could take throughout the season.
Even the fastest super computers in the world could not check all of them but fortunately, researchers have developed a lot of tricks to tackle these sorts of problems, and in 24 hours of solving on a high power computer, the optimal team was found.
For some context, this year Stuart Bailey’s “the Big Kabosh” won the competition with a total score of 52,596. Although Stuart’s team is impressive, earning him $50k cash, it does not come close to what was possible.
CHECK OUT THE TEAM AND A ROUND-BY-ROUND REVIEW BELOW
With a total score of 61,071, let’s take a look at the Optimal SuperCoach Team of 2017.
The word ‘arrogant’ comes to mind.
In Round 8 Nic Newman is chosen as captain, in what was his fifth game of AFL ever.
After Josh J. Kennedy was captain in Round 1 and scored a monster 176 — kicking a bag of seven goals — he was unceremoniously dumped from the team.
The perfect way SuperCoaches could have started 2017.
Gary Ablett was traded in for a single round, scored 206, and then immediately traded out.
Clearly this team would be near impossible to have chosen during the year. However, once you pick yourself off the floor and take a closer look, some very interesting points begin to appear.
Despite only being in 1.7 per cent of starting teams, it turns out Ben McEvoy was a set and forget ruckman this season, providing a source of consistency compared with the carnage that the rest of us were forced to deal with in the rucks.
Patrick Dangerfield is only traded into the team in Round 9, after having dropped $156,600, primarily due to his one bad game of 65 against Collingwood in Round 6. Despite his starting price of $716,900, most of us (58.7 per cent) still had him in our initial sides.
Interestingly, Hugh Greenwood and Luke Ryan are both in the starting squad despite not playing until Round 9 and 11 respectively. This highlights the importance of getting the best rookies in the starting squad, even if they are not named to play immediately in Round 1.
The high number of mid-price players in the starting squad reveals their high risk, high reward nature.
The optimal team also validates the increasingly popular theory of trading aggressively earlier in the season.
Not a single trade is used in the final four rounds. Trading promptly in the earlier rounds allows you to increase the value of your team and create a squad with more depth.
Amazingly, the team finishes with a staggering $666,700 unused in the budget, an amount the rest of us would have killed for that late in the season.
Toby Nankervis champions the theory of trading out well performing rookies and mid-price players early. He was traded out in Round 6, where 42.1 per cent of teams still had him in their final teams. A good reminder to cash in quickly on your decisions before you miss the boat.
And with that, computers have successfully taken the fun out of retrospective SuperCoach arguments, but at least we know who was right, who was wrong and exactly how to explain why you played it better.
** Steven Edwards is a PhD Candidate in the School of Mathematics at Monash University and works on large scale optimisation problems.
Originally published as Not even Albert Einstein could have picked this incredible SuperCoach team to win $50,000
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