Rocking Rackets Strategy and Tips Thread

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by kingfc22

Two players in World 3 and two players in World 4

Who are your guys in GW3? I moved from GW1 to there lately (sorry, Brian, it's just too slow!).

[kingfc22]

Originally Posted by britrock88

Who are your guys in GW3? I moved from GW1 to there lately (sorry, Brian, it's just too slow!).

Christo Henche and Randolf Brown.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by law90026

My understanding is that it's either every Monday in the gameworld or Everyday

Every few Mondays in the gameworld actually.

Originally Posted by britrock88

I moved from GW1 to there lately (sorry, Brian, it's just too slow!).

Sorry about what? That just means less competition for me :P.

[digamma]

Minor development for me in GW 11. My man Ron Ashman was seeded for the first time in a Grand Slam, albeit at #32. He's played to form, but will likely bow out against the #7 seed in the third round.

[Alf]

GW11 too : in Juinior, my young Belarus Piontkowsky got offered to play in doubles with a spanish guy (ranked in the top 16). They won their first grand slam at Rolland Garros when Piontkowsky turned 17yr and 0wk. So cool. Piontkowsky is now ranked #19. In singles, he got seeded as the #11 guy and lost in round 3 (round of 16).

My other guy just got into the top 100 recently but at 25y9wk, I am not sure he is a long term prospect there. I might as well try to get a future trainer now rather than later.

Edit for links

Nikola

Jean-François

[Umbrella]

You guys talked me into it, and I signed up. My questions are very noobish. My two starting players are pretty bad. One is a 14 year old, ranked 1004th, the other is a 21 year old ranked 2106th.

1. Since these guys are so bad, is it better to just do a lot of practice? And does it matter which practice tournament you enter?

2. If the answer to #1 is to practice, when to enter tournaments? When form gets close to 15?

3. I understand junior tournaments are for 18-, but what are amateur? Are these for the truly awful players, like mine?

edit to add

4. I entered my young guy in a tournament, which showed only two other players. However, he ended up having to go through qualifying. Where did all the other players come from?

5. For the entries on tournaments, what are the numbers before and after the slash?

6. What exactly is a futures tournament?

[digamma]

Originally Posted by Umbrella

You guys talked me into it, and I signed up. My questions are very noobish. My two starting players are pretty bad. One is a 14 year old, ranked 1004th, the other is a 21 year old ranked 2106th.

1. Since these guys are so bad, is it better to just do a lot of practice? And does it matter which practice tournament you enter?

2. If the answer to #1 is to practice, when to enter tournaments? When form gets close to 15?

3. I understand junior tournaments are for 18-, but what are amateur? Are these for the truly awful players, like mine?

edit to add

4. I entered my young guy in a tournament, which showed only two other players. However, he ended up having to go through qualifying. Where did all the other players come from?

5. For the entries on tournaments, what are the numbers before and after the slash?

I'll start and others can supplement.

1. You will get most benefit from practice as a young player, in part because they are guaranteed matches (subject to fatigue) for an entire week. That said, your ranking doesn't improve unless you play tournaments. So, I think the common strategy is to play tournaments when your form is between 16.5 and 25 and then let it sink back down to 15-16 through practice, then play tournaments again. Depending on endurance this may be one tournament every three to four weeks.

Brian has some stuff on selecting practice sessions. You can click on the link of the practice session and see who has registered for the session to date. The best practice session would put your player in a group where he is with similarly ranked players but he's near the bottom of the group. You get a slight experience boost for losing matches and for playing longer matches. The ideal scenario then for practice is coming up just short in very competitive matches.

2. I answered much of this above. Others may have more thoughts.

3. I've only played amateurs with one player. I think the more common path is to play the juniors and then move into the lower rated futures tournaments, which you'll be competitive in if you've trained regularly until the junior is 18.

4. The computer owned players join at the last minute to fill out the bracket.

5. The first number is singles players in the main bracket and the second is doubles teams in the main bracket. This doesn't include the qualifying rounds.

[Umbrella]

And I'll add another. How do you gain manager points?

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by Umbrella

You guys talked me into it, and I signed up. My questions are very noobish. My two starting players are pretty bad. One is a 14 year old, ranked 1004th, the other is a 21 year old ranked 2106th.

1. Since these guys are so bad, is it better to just do a lot of practice? And does it matter which practice tournament you enter?

2. If the answer to #1 is to practice, when to enter tournaments? When form gets close to 15?

3. I understand junior tournaments are for 18-, but what are amateur? Are these for the truly awful players, like mine?

edit to add

4. I entered my young guy in a tournament, which showed only two other players. However, he ended up having to go through qualifying. Where did all the other players come from?

5. For the entries on tournaments, what are the numbers before and after the slash?

6. What exactly is a futures tournament?

Originally Posted by Umbrella

And I'll add another. How do you gain manager points?

1. Regardless of how good or bad your guys are, practice is an essential part of players' careers. It's the primary method to earn XP that you use to build up players' skill/service/doubles abilities. When players are young, the primary focus is on practice, while playing tournaments to keep their form above 15.

Choosing practice tournaments doesn't have to be too complicated. Digamma's point is a good one, but may be more nuanced than you need. My main thoughts in choosing among practice tournaments is 1) what surface season is it? and 2) what surfaces do I want my players to be better on? Question 2 is more important when your players are younger, as added exposure increases their affinity to surfaces, but that effect decreases over time as players accumulate more total tennis experience. And always enter both singles and doubles for maximum experience.

2. Mostly covered already. This changes, though, when you have a player that you're trying to have climb to the very top of either the junior or general rankings.

3. The breakout of tournament types is essentially this: Major tourneys are open to all; Challengers are open to players outside the top 30 or 32; Futures to those outside the top 200; Amateurs to those outside the top 1000.

As Digamma has alluded to, there are junctures in a player's career where it is important to match his abilities to those he's playing with. Early in a player's adult career, it's hard to break through with a very low ranking, so you spend sufficient time earning ranking points in one level of tournaments so that you can consistently compete at the next level of tournaments.

4. Computer-managed players do not register for tournaments in advance. The list you see if of human-managed players that have entered the tournament.

5. The X/Y denotes the number of singles and doubles entries in the main tournament field.

6. Covered it in 3.

7. I think manager points are mainly gained by having your players win practice matches. There could be more ways to earn points, but I honestly haven't looked into it much.

[Umbrella]

Originally Posted by britrock88

And always enter both singles and doubles for maximum experience.

So if I choose doubles, will it just randomly assign a partner?

[digamma]

Yup, unless you have a partner already who is playing in the same tournament. (You can send partner requests to other players.)

[Brian Swartz]

1. Others have pretty much covered this, but a couple additions/clarifications/whatevers here. Keeping form 15 or above is the big thing, so if you are below 16.3 you want to play a tournament the next week. Whether you can micromanage this week to week or want to play two or three events in a row to make sure you don't dip too low will depend largely on your time and how fast of a world you are playing in. It basically doesn't matter what practice tournament you enter until you have a highly-ranked player, because they will pair you with similarly ranked players. However,

Originally Posted by britrock88

always enter both singles and doubles for maximum experience.

This is only true above a certain endurance threshold(I think somewhere between 2.5 and 3.0 though I haven't nailed it down precisely). Below that, just singles will be enough for your needs.

3. Amateur tournaments are only available if you are ranked outside the Top 1000. They are the lowest rung of senior(i.e, not junior) tournaments. I think they are great as long as you are eligible, because if you lose early you're not good enough for futures; if you don't, you can get in more matches in a week and therefore take more time off for practice. This is because the field is larger than you'll find at higher levels.

4. Others have answered correctly. I'll add that this becomes less and less of a problem as you ascend the rankings, because more and more of the players for the better tournaments are human-controlled. At the lower levels, I gauge what tournaments to enter by looking at the results for recent similar tournaments. I.e., for your player, you might look at who was seeded at recent JG4 and JG5 events to see what the ranking range tends to be for them.

6. Britock's answer to #3 is a good quick summary.

7.

Originally Posted by britrock88

I think manager points are mainly gained by having your players win practice matches. There could be more ways to earn points, but I honestly haven't looked into it much.

Partial credit only for this answer :P. You do get them from practice matches(the higher group you are in, the more you get per win; 45 for the top group, 25 for the second, then 14, 7, 4, 2, 1. if you are down low enough, I think Group 9 or below, you get nothing). However, you also get points equal to the ranking points your player earns in tournaments. For example, winning a Masters is 1000 ranking points and 1000 manager points.

Once you start accumulating manager points, you will also notice another aspect: you lose some of them weekly, so if you do nothing your manager points will decline. If you are VIP you lose 1.5%; free managers lose 1%(this is to off-set the advantage of the VIP managers getting four players instead of two). At first this means basically nothing and is not noticeable. As you move up though it's more and more noticeable; I lose almost 500 points a week this way, so if I'm not bringing in a considerable amount on a particular week, my total will drop.

And now, my standard answer to a question you didn't even ask, since I'm an annoying twerp:

Originally Posted by Umbrella

My two starting players are pretty bad. One is a 14 year old, ranked 1004th, the other is a 21 year old ranked 2106th.

Firstly, your self-awareness is admirable . Secondly, I would consider restarting(you can fire your players and reset to 150 points at any time). And third, the best way to start is with a young player(well done) and the best mid-20s player you can find(you can do better than someone in the 2100s). From there, the path is this:

Earn enough points with the 'mature' player to hire the best trainer candidate you can find. This will be a player in their mid-30s usually. Typically this is in the 600-800 points range but it can be less. Once you have enough, fire your mid-20s player, hire the trainer, and turn them into a trainer as soon as you can get them to 5.0 or as close as possible to that. I can point you to more info on specifics here if need be in terms of how to calculate trainer ability, how to identify the right players, and so on.

While that is going on, regularly look for better youngsters(almost always in the 14-year-old range). When you find one with significantly more potential than the one you have, fire and replace. Lather-rinse-repeat. Once you have your trainer in place, you'll want to get a second young player, and off to the races you will be.

[Umbrella]

Thanks Brian. I have already tried the fire/rehire method in both my worlds. The things I did differently were to focus more on endurance than talent, although the pickings were still pretty slim. What I also did was focus on young players only. I enjoy the challenge of trying to bring them up the ranks.

I had come on here to ask the singles/doubles question that you preemptively answered. I've been entering my guys in both singles and doubles for practice, and they are only playing a couple of matches per week. I think I will stick with singles only for practice week, and try singles and doubles for tournaments, to give them additional matches if they get bounced early.

[Umbrella]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

Earn enough points with the 'mature' player to hire the best trainer candidate you can find. This will be a player in their mid-30s usually. Typically this is in the 600-800 points range but it can be less. Once you have enough, fire your mid-20s player, hire the trainer, and turn them into a trainer as soon as you can get them to 5.0 or as close as possible to that. I can point you to more info on specifics here if need be in terms of how to calculate trainer ability, how to identify the right players, and so on.

For trainers, are the 600-800 points you are talking about manager points, or the experience points?

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by Umbrella

I had come on here to ask the singles/doubles question that you preemptively answered. I've been entering my guys in both singles and doubles for practice, and they are only playing a couple of matches per week. I think I will stick with singles only for practice week, and try singles and doubles for tournaments, to give them additional matches if they get bounced early.

You're actually showing the more correct and more nuanced understanding here. Playing practice tournaments for fatigue and playing tournaments for form are different. Maximizing the form you get is always good, whereas with fatigue you want to just barely exceed 50 per day.

Originally Posted by Umbrella

For trainers, are the 600-800 points you are talking about manager points, or the experience points?

Manager points are the cost to hire players.

I'll make one qualification to Bryan's point--I've found great trainer candidates for many fewer points. I think the 5.2 trainer I have in GW3 cost 85 points.

[Umbrella]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I entered my senior player (ranked 1153) in an amateur tournament, and he won singles, and made semifinals in doubles. My gut tells me winning lower level tourneys is better than bowing out early of higher level ones.

However, there was a FT3 tournament in a couple of weeks in his country that I want to enter. But since he made such a good run in both singles and doubles, his form is pretty high. By my calculations, his starting form will be 23.8 for the FT3 tournament. Using this, I am planning on only entering him in singles. For the more experienced players, does this sound like a decent strategy, or should I forgo the tournament until his form is lower?

[MarkBGregory]

Good evening all,

(Well, evening in my part of the world)

I've been a RR player for a very long time, having picked it up around 4/5 years ago before dropping out and restarting again this February. I'd noticed how dead the forum was on the website itself and stumbled across this website (I honestly can't remember how) that had a thread about a Sri Lankan legacy and this one. It's great to see people are still enjoying the game and actively talking about it.

I'm on GW2 and GW12, and my username is the same as it is on here. Anyone wishing to check out my players can do so, the best two (potentially, at least) I have on each world are linked below:

Christian Kulle (GW2)

Ralph Dyer (GW12)

I've flicked through the thread and seen a lot of advice given out, which for the most part has been similar to my train of thought while playing the game. There's nothing much for me to add in terms of training and such like, but I'd like to throw in my two cents when it comes to finding a future star player, and what specifically to look for.

If you accept that the MOST IMPORTANT statistics in the ENTIRE game are Skill and Service, then at 14 years of age, you're looking out predominantly for Talent and Endurance, because combined, they allow you to get more experience which leads to a higher Skill and Service at the peak of a player's career. Secondary attributes are Strength and Speed, as they contribute smaller amounts to Skill and Service respectively, while Mentality is seen as tertiary. Home Advantage is just a bonus.

Let me provide you with an example: in GW12 right now, there's a 30-year-old player called Guillaume Saint-Waleri. He's roughly 4th/5th in the rankings, but was world number one for years. I checked out his stats when I re-signed up in Feb and I was like, eh, they don't seem that great. Speed/Strength was around 3 at 100%, while Endurance and Talent were 4.5+ - that is, he wasn't necessarily that strong or fast, but he was able to gain experience super, super quickly. I noticed that his Skill level was at 5.2(!) which was at least 0.2 ahead of everyone else - so despite his relatively weak Strength and Speed, it didn't matter because his Skill was so much higher than everyone else. That's why he was top of the world.

So, myself and a friend of mine came up with the following, and ranked our own players according to it:

(Bear in mind that all the values discussed are when a player reaches 100%)

a) Talent and Endurance totals (TE):

1) 9.0+: HIRE THIS PLAYER AT ALL COSTS. Even if the other stats are a little disappointing, you have a brilliant chance of making the top 10 at the very least. Top of the world if it's backed up with good other stats, and even if it's not. (see below).

2) 8.5-9.0: HIRE THIS PLAYER, but make sure they have fairly high other stats. At this level, players might get off to a slow start, but generally have good enough endurance to get through a full week of singles/dubs practice, plus a couple of training sessions/friendly matches, and can be competitive at the top.

3) 8.0-8.5: Worth hanging on to, especially if their other stats are high. In quiet gameworlds, and even in busy ones with the right schedule, these players can still push towards the top 10, but they will need good aging factors and strength and speed to maintain a high position, because otherwise their Endurance will drop too quickly and the player will start to decline.

4) Below 8.0: Don't bother.

b) Speed and Strength values (SS)

Assuming you've hired a player with at least 8.0 TE, then you want to look at their S+S potential, because obviously a player with 8.5 TE and 7.5 SS will do worse than one with the same TE but 8.0 SS

1) IF you can get a SS at 8.0 or higher, that's ideal. Players with 8.5+ TE and 8.0+ SS are generally going to be pretty strong.

2) If your SS is between 7.5-8.0, you could still have a pretty successful career with a player whose TE was 8.0+.

3) If your SS is between 7.0-7.5, then you really want 8.5+ in terms of TE to offset the poor physical stats.

4) If your SS is below 7.0, then unless you have a TE of 9.0+, it's not really worth training this player.

c) Mentality value (M)

Mentality is viewed (by us) as more of an 'added bonus', and we generally don't factor it in to our calculations when deciding whether or not to hire a player. If you're in two minds on a player (maybe one that has 8 TE and 7.5 SS), then if the Mentality is 3.5+, you might want to train the player up until a better option eventually comes along. Apart from that, a TE 9.0 player with 8.0 SS is going to rock, even if the Mentality is zero.

Generally speaking, if your Talent, Endurance, Speed and Strength totals at 100% (TESS value) is 15.5+, then your player has a decent chance of making it.

Examples

All of those numbers might be a touch confusing, so let me give you a couple of in-game examples. Some are my players, some aren't.

1) Guillaume Saint-Waleri (GW12)

The best example of mediocre stats backed up by huge Endurance. At 100%, Saint-Waleri had a TE = 9.2 (Talent 4.4, Endurance 4.8), but a SS = 6.3 (Strength 3.0, Speed 3.3), and a M = 3.3. Not exactly jaw-dropping statistics. Yet thanks to the ability to constantly pick up experience week in, week out, Saint-Waleri won 9 Grand Slams and 15 Masters 1000 events, with his first Slam coming aged 22y46w, and his last aged 28y46w. At 31 years old, he's still 4th in the world.

2) Valentino Dotto (GW2)

Another excellent example of the above. At 100% (and bear in mind that Dotto also has an aging factor of 102%, proving early-peaking players CAN be successful at senior level), Dotto had a TE = 9.4(!) (Talent 4.8, Endurance 4.6), but a SS = 6.9 (Strength 3.4, Speed 3.5), which again are hardly mind-blowing statistics. Yet Dotto, at 28, is still world #1 and has 10 Slam titles, 16 Masters titles and 1 World Tour Finals title.

3) Jean Paul Demercastel (GW2)

Here's an example of strong SS values but a lower TE value, and as a result, a less successful player. Demercastel, at 100%, had a TE = 8.0 and a SS = 7.9. 7.9 is generally pretty decent for an SS, and better than the SS of both players above by some margin. However, at 30 years old, the highest Demercastel reached in the world was 9th, having never won a Masters tournament and only 3 ATP 500s. He didn't even win Roland Garros despite being a specialist on Clay and being French!! Still, getting into the top 10 is a pipedream for many RR players, so not bad going, all in all.

Now we come to the My Players section. Obviously, having only been signed up since February (this time), none of players have hit their peak, but here's what I'm expecting from the best ones:

4) Ralph Dyer (GW12)

My best and most exciting prospect. At 100%, Dyer will have aTE = 8.5 and an SS = 8.0. Obviously, this isn't a sky-high TE, but I'm hoping his excellent SS value (and 4.1 Mentality), might just nudge him in the right direction. With better stats than Demercastel above, I'm expecting him to break the top 10.

5) Anton Barth (GW12)

...That's if Anton Barth doesn't get there first. Barth has a slightly better TE = 8.7 but slightly worse physical stats SS = 7.6 and a Mentality of 3.0, so only time will tell as to which of these guys will be the better player.

6) Christian Kulle (GW2)

This could be another example of a Demercastel. Kulle is a hugely talented player, with a SS = 8.0 to match that of Dyer, but his TE = 8.1 isn't necessarily the biggest and may mean he never fully lives up to his potential: especially given his aging factor of 105% may mean he starts to decline before he fully get the chance to compete at the very top of the game.

I hope this analysis has helped some of you out, rather than confused you. One last pointer:

Generally, when aged 19y39w, your player should have at least 144 experience points. If he does, then you're on the right track.

[britrock88]

Welcome aboard! And thanks for this contribution.

[Umbrella]

Welcome Mark, and thanks for your input. Reading it opened up some more questions from me.

Next to a player's age, there is a percentage. I'm assuming that this is their total potential reached. For example, if the percentage is 70%, and their skill on the training page is 20, the skill level indicated by the tennis balls should be (40/20)*0.7, or 1.4. I can verify this on my player's page.

However, in the help file, it claims age affects skill, service, strength, speed, and endurance, with endurance being counted twice. Skill and service I can calculated directly. Does the same apply to strength and speed? For example, if my player in the example above has 2.0 strength, when he fully matures, does that mean his top strength will be 2/0.7 or 2.9?

And finally, with endurance, does this happen twice? Keeping the same player, if his endurance is 2.0, will his final endurance be (2.0/0.7)/0.7, or 4.1?

On a different topic, when it comes to trainers, there is a formula in the help file which defines the trainer rating. So I was looking around, and found a guy who looked to be a good candidate down the road when I get enough points. But I noticed he had a 70% next to his age. Does that mean he is declining? And will his actual ratings will be much better, or are the tennis ball ratings what are determining his trainer value?

Also, when hiring someone to be a trainer, my guess is that you can't make him one right away. You need to build up 7500 experience points. If it is a guy in his twilight, is that difficult to do?

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by Umbrella

Welcome Mark, and thanks for your input. Reading it opened up some more questions from me.

Next to a player's age, there is a percentage. I'm assuming that this is their total potential reached. For example, if the percentage is 70%, and their skill on the training page is 20, the skill level indicated by the tennis balls should be (40/20)*0.7, or 1.4. I can verify this on my player's page.

However, in the help file, it claims age affects skill, service, strength, speed, and endurance, with endurance being counted twice. Skill and service I can calculated directly. Does the same apply to strength and speed? For example, if my player in the example above has 2.0 strength, when he fully matures, does that mean his top strength will be 2/0.7 or 2.9?

And finally, with endurance, does this happen twice? Keeping the same player, if his endurance is 2.0, will his final endurance be (2.0/0.7)/0.7, or 4.1?

On a different topic, when it comes to trainers, there is a formula in the help file which defines the trainer rating. So I was looking around, and found a guy who looked to be a good candidate down the road when I get enough points. But I noticed he had a 70% next to his age. Does that mean he is declining? And will his actual ratings will be much better, or are the tennis ball ratings what are determining his trainer value?

Also, when hiring someone to be a trainer, my guess is that you can't make him one right away. You need to build up 7500 experience points. If it is a guy in his twilight, is that difficult to do?

You're dead on with the formulas for strength/speed and endurance.

If you're calculating a player's potential trainer rating with balls, then divide by his age% to proceed accurately. (For instance, to have a 5.0 skill rating when a player is at 80% of his peak, he would have 125 skill points.)

Getting those 7500 XP typically takes several months of practice sessions (with tournaments interspersed to keep a player's form in the experience-maximizing range.)

[britrock88]

Additional data for context with Mark's breakdown...

My GW2 guys, Sean Mendez and Andrei Lebedyenko, are cresting right around the #16 spot in the world at 27yo and 90% athleticism.

Mendez had a peak of 4.4 talent, 3.3 endurance, 4.1 strength, and 2.6 speed. That made him a 7.7 TE + 6.7 SS = 14.4 TESS player.

Lebedyenko had a peak of: 4.4 talent, 3.5 endurance, 3.9 strength, and 3.0 speed. That made him a 7.9 TE + 6.9 SS = 14.8 TESS player.

[MarkBGregory]

Originally Posted by britrock88

Additional data for context with Mark's breakdown...

My GW2 guys, Sean Mendez and Andrei Lebedyenko, are cresting right around the #16 spot in the world at 27yo and 90% athleticism.

Mendez had a peak of 4.4 talent, 3.3 endurance, 4.1 strength, and 2.6 speed. That made him a 7.7 TE + 6.7 SS = 14.4 TESS player.

Lebedyenko had a peak of: 4.4 talent, 3.5 endurance, 3.9 strength, and 3.0 speed. That made him a 7.9 TE + 6.9 SS = 14.8 TESS player.

Interesting. Both players are pretty high in the world, considering I said above to "not bother" with players with a TE below 8.0! I wouldn't even say their SS stats are that exceptional either. You must have trained them exceptionally well, britrock. I think they also have the advantage of peaking late, which very few of my players have. I've buddied you in game, btw.

It makes me feel confident of success with some of the players I have. Igor Borowski, for example, should be heading towards a TE of 8.3 + SS of 7.6 = 15.9 TESS. Even Elezgueta, who I'd perceive as my worst player, has a TE of 8.0 + SS 7.3 = TESS 15.3. But Elezgueta has 104% aging factor, so that will probably hold him back.

Obviously all this stuff above is pure conjecture, and I could be overestimating or underestimating certain abilities, but it does seem Endurance and Talent are crucial to training up a top, top player.

[Umbrella]

Dumb question. How do you fire a player?

[MarkBGregory]

Go onto "Your Players" on the left side bar.

Click "Fire".

[Umbrella]

OK, I knew that was a dumb question. Thanks.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by Mark B Gregory

it does seem Endurance and Talent are crucial to training up a top, top player.

Definitely, and thanks for your contributions. It's interesting to read the perspective of someone who has also been around for a while but has a slightly different approach. I don't value speed and strength as much, mentality more so, and most importantly I can confidently say that endurance is more important than talent. They are the most vital though, no doubt about that. None of my players has ever reached 7.0 SS(my latest will be the closest, at 6.8). They've been a little below 9, about 8.6-8.9 I think all are on the TE 'scale', which at least in a relatively low-competition world has been enough to challenge for #1.

[law90026]

Thanks for the shared approach Mark!

I think what I'll try to keep track of soon is to play around with Teo's training on his off weeks. I'm thinking of testing:

a) just coaching;
b) pushing past 300 fatigue every day on a practice tournament week;
c) keeping fatigue at not more than 250 at the end of each day on a practice tournament week.

For (b) and (c), I will be testing out using tournament weeks using just singles vs singles + doubles.

So here are my thoughts:

a) I want to see how viable pure coaching is versus a practice tournament. Reason being that a practice tournament is somewhat random at times;
b) I want to see whether it makes sense to keep fatigue below 200 in a practice tournament week because I've found that players have a higher chance of sitting out once they hit 200 fatigue;
c) I want to see whether it makes sense to play only singles because doubles matches have a xp penalty and they may therefore render a practice week more inefficient because of the increased fatigue.

[Brian Swartz]

For C, doubles matches do have an xp penalty but they also have a fatigue penalty. I found the ratio to be the same.

[kingfc22]

Is there any benefit to registering for multiple tournaments in a single week? Seems like the game lets you sign up and register for more than one tourney but not quite sure what the implications may be.

[britrock88]

Originally Posted by kingfc22

Is there any benefit to registering for multiple tournaments in a single week? Seems like the game lets you sign up and register for more than one tourney but not quite sure what the implications may be.

Ooh, yes, there is! This is particularly useful in fast game worlds, where you may not have the chance to check in on your guys every few hours.

First, a couple things that the game ALWAYS does if you sign up for multiple tournaments:

1) It places you in a highest-level tournament. For instance, if you sign up for a 500 and 2 250s, you'll end up in the 500.
2) If you register multiple players for the same tourney(s), they'll end up in a tourney together. This is true regardless of whether they're playing doubles together. The game is also not perfect about maximizing your players' seeds when they're in a tourney together.

Otherwise, the site will place your player(s) in a tournament that gives them the best seed. I believe it does so irrespective of surface, host nation, etc., so you'll want to exercise some judgment about signing up for multiple tournaments.

Multi-signups can work well, though. If I know I want Lebedyenko to play an indoor 250 and don't care which one, I'll just sign him up for both and let the site sort out the best option. It's also useful with young players, when there may be 10 JG4s or FT3s on the schedule.

On net, I do this pretty often, and try to refine my choices as each game Sunday draws closer.

[daahdeedaa]

So longtime lurker, previously had an FOFC account which I posted like twice and forgot the e-mail associated with it.

Anyway, I started playing rocking rackets because of the Sri Lanka dynasty .

This is in reference to Law90026's pure trainer > practice idea.It's like Brian and other have been saying, practice > training. I ran a study on 3 of my players. I basically followed how much experience they got per point of fatigue and compared it to this same ratio when training with a 5.1 trainer. Note I took a sample size of around 50 practice matches over an 8 week period per player.


Player A 4.4 Endurance (I did not not distinguish between singles and doubles practice of this player)


0.84 xp/fatigue from trainer
1.07 xp/fatigue from practice matches

11% of total practice matches were noticeably less efficient than trainer (that is they had <0.79 ratio)
17% were about just as efficient (~0.79-0.90 range)
72% were noticeably more efficient (>0.90)


Player B 3.8 Endurance


0.63 xp/fatigue from trainer
0.83 xp/fatigue from practice matches

0.86 Singles xp/fatigue
0.75 doubles xp/fatigue

6% matches less efficient than trainer in singles
12% matches less efficient than trainer in doubles


Player C 2.0 Endurance


0.37 xp/fatigue from trainer
0.38 xp/fatigue from practice matches

0.32 Singles xp/fatigue
0.50 doubles xp/fatigue

69%!! less efficient in singles
7% less efficient in doubles

-----------------------------------------

So I think you can see from the data, that on practicing beats out training even though some of your practices end up poorly. The only real outlier is player C singles and I think have an adequate explanation (curiously enough player C's crappy singles practices is what lead me to do this study in the first place).

Player C is currently the #3 ranked doubles player in the world. He is also an unranked singles player. That means in singles practice he is matched up with other unranked singles player. This is usually 19 year olds or super washed up players (either way players with low service/skill). While player C is 34 years old he still has relatively solid 4.4 skill rating and 3.6 service rating. So he is being matched up with pure scrubs even though basically still has the skills/service game of a top 100 singles player. The only time he has decent matches is when similar high ranked doubles player with really low single player ranking is in a practice match with him. As a result, I've basically stopped entering him into singles practices and just spam training him as a supplement to doubles practice matches.

For Player B, I suspect a similar scenario as to why the doubles practice lags noticeably behind single (though still more efficient than using a trainer). Player B is the #23 singles player in the world and ranked #192 in doubles. His doubles rank is a bit lower than it should be because I started omitting him from doubles tournaments when he hit the top 50 in singles. So while the disparity is not as great as player C, his doubles ranking is lower than it should be resulting in him being placed in "lower level" doubles practices then he should be playing in. Still, he still gets more xp practice from doubles practice than if I would use that fatigue through my 5.1 trainer.

Basically the conclusion is only use you trainer for extra fatigue not used in practice/knocked out early in a tournament (what Brian suggested), or if you somehow know you're gonna get super shitty practice matches (like Player C in every singles practice week).

Unfortunately this doubles/singles thing for high-ranked doubles player is the only repeatable scenario I've found for predicting potential poor practice. If you can more reliably predict a poor practice week than you might have something.

[Brian Swartz]

More great info, thanks! Another scenario that I think might be possible for is for a very high-ranked player. Practice sessions for my top singles players often suck, because there are very few players who can give them a good match. I would think also it is probably best for Player C to just do doubles practices, and then fill in with training if needed(shouldn't be needed much at a 2.0 endurance).

[MarkBGregory]

Daahdeedaa!

You've got one of my ex-players on GW12, Adam Tisserand. How's he treating you?

And welcome!

[daahdeedaa]

Not bad, he's probably going to end up #1 junior player for the beginning of next year. He's number 5 right now and the rest of the top 10 "graduates" this year. Long term, if only he didn't have that 105% aging factor...but I guess that also helps guarantees his stud junior player status.

Tisserand though apparently not of your standards, is one of the best 14 year olds I've been able to hire . I'm finding world 12 more competitive than the other one I'm in, 7. There seems to be 50% more people playing so not a surprise I guess. Not surprisingly all my players in world 7 are better potential wise.

[britrock88]

3D (that's your new nick ), nice data! Also... get that doubles champ a few singles points!

[law90026]

Love the info 3D!

[daahdeedaa]

Thanks for the kind words guys. Kinda interested in what Brian said about top-ranked players and their practices. May do a simple analysis similar to what I did with my players on the Hero/Villain (Mehul/Iglar) who inspired 1000 FOFC Rocking Racket players (ok probably like 10-20 more realistically haha).

Another small thing I examined when I first started playing was how much should I value talent over other attributes. Talent was easy enough to figure out. I just hired a bunch of people at different talent levels in a universe I wasn't playing and waited a day to see how much xp they got (you get the same amount every day).

Talent Chart (first number is talent, 2nd number is xp per day)

3.5 - 23
3.6 - 23
3.7 - 24
3.8 - 25
3.9 - 25
4.0 - 26
4.1 - 27
4.2 - 28
4.3 - 28
4.4 - 29
4.5 - 30
4.6 - 30
4.7 - 31
4.8 - 32
4.9 - 32
5.0 - 33

So the difference between a 5.0 and 4.5 talent player is 3 xp a day. Over a 13 year development (ages 14-27), this would be a difference of 14,196 experience.


Ok this is where my calculations get a bit rough but I think my logic makes some kind of sense. Looking at my #3 doubles player (a former #1 singles player) has 120 raw skill. Mehul who has been trained in a perfect 2:1 skill:service xp ratio and is a top player has ~120 raw skill based on his aging factors and current skill. At the 120 skill level, it costs 7289 experience to gain an additional skill point (120-->121). Therefore the talent difference between 4.5 and 5.0 player nets you approximately 2 raw skill. This is 0.1 tennis balls.

You can use this baseline to compare to strength which we know is worth 0.2 the value of skill according to the help files. So a strength difference of 1 tennis ball = 0.2 skill. Therefore 0.5 strength = 0.5 difference in talent at the 5.0 - 4.5. Therefore if I have 1 player with 5.0 talent and 3.5 strength, this is equivalent to a 4.5 talent player with 4.0 strength.

The chart isn't quite linear (4.2 talent is the same as 4.3 talent same for 4.5 and 4.6) so if you want to be sure you'd have to do calculations, but for the most part it follows this trend of difference of talent = difference in strength.

Something else I've thought about but was too lazy to calculate is how can we relate endurance to talent (and strength also)? I figured I would start with 350 fatigue per week to spend and relate it to endurance and xp gained/point of fatigue but I realized I would have to figure out that formula and also figure out what is a typical xp gain for a player over various stages of his career and said %#(@ this lol. Maybe someone more mathematically inclined could figure this out easier.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by daahdeedaa

Something else I've thought about but was too lazy to calculate is how can we relate endurance to talent (and strength also)? I figured I would start with 350 fatigue per week to spend and relate it to endurance and xp gained/point of fatigue but I realized I would have to figure out that formula and also figure out what is a typical xp gain for a player over various stages of his career and said %#(@ this lol. Maybe someone more mathematically inclined could figure this out easier.

Heh. Interesting. You are right on with Mehul, he is at 120 raw skill, and 90 service for what it's worth. On the endurance front, when I was looking into the talent and endurance thing(I made an absurdly long post about this, a couple of them actually, in my dynasty thread if anyone cares to look 'em up), I looked into just the weekly xp gains. Here's how that worked out.

** As your scale points out, a highly talented player gets about 30 xp a day. In my case, Mehul and Girsh each get 29, while Mooljee gets 31. We're talking here just over 200 xp a week; 203 to be precise for the first pair of players. I found that I could average about 500 xp a week total gain for a player with high endurance somewhere near maturity(say 4.0 or higher endurance, both were around 4.3 to 4.5 at peak). This depends on a number of things; long matches in Slams or WTC boost it, I've had 700+ xp weeks, and of course some practice weeks are lower but consistently getting at least 425-450 even on the low weeks was not difficult. So as an average, I think 500 is slightly low for a mid-4s endurance player, probably for a 4.0 endurance it would be about average. This is 'back-of-the-napkin' math stuff, but I wanted to get an estimate, not spend an amount of time on the subject that might be more appropriate to researching a doctoral thesis .

** The above stipulates a player with roughly equal talent and endurance, at their peak. In that circumstance, at least 60% of the weekly xp gain was coming from matches(endurance) not talent. And I must again mention the 'britrock caveat' that in a suboptimal environment such as you often have in a fast world where you can't maximize everything, talent may be relatively speaking more important. But assuming you have the time available to properly micromanage everything, one reason for playing in a slow world IMO, endurance is significantly more important.

** The 60/40 split is only one factor, since talent is static and endurance is the thing that changes the most due to it being 'divided twice' or however you want to look at it by the current aging %. This means endurance is less of a factor for a player that is quite young(or quite old, but by then who cares since they are 'past' the development curve). More of a player's experience is going to come from talent, relatively speaking, when they are younger -- they can't play as many matches and the ones they do play generally won't be worth quite as much, since they don't get the 'major events' bonuses that a top 'senior' player will get.

** As to how endurance is used formula-wise, I had that figured out at some point, or so I thought. Turns out what I wrote wasn't really accurate. I have a basic idea of how it works but not enough to narrow it down to a clear and simple formula. But basically, the more points you play in matches, the more tired you get. Sort of common sense there.

Conclusion

Players spend most of their developmental years(and earn most of their xp) at a level close to physical maturity. At that level, all other things being equal, endurance is more important. For example, using the 14-27 age range as noted, a player will be in their mid-80s or so in terms of age % at a minimum by the time they are out of juniors with still almost a decade left of improving. Talent's important, but endurance is #1. By my calculations, the incomparable Eric Gorritepe from my world that I've discussed, the unquestioned greatest of all time, wasn't that special of an athlete. He did have somewhere around a 5.2 endurance at peak, at least 5.1. Davydenko on steroids(hopefully that phrase isn't redundant) in other words. As a result of that and proper management, his ability to train up was basically off the charts.

[daahdeedaa]

I decided to test out the possibility that top ranked players get poor practices by examining FOFC tennis hero, Anil Mehul.

I looked at his most recent 7 weeks of practice, which consisted of 24 singles practice matches and 25 doubles practice matches.

For the trainer comparison I used a 5.2 trainer on a player who has 3.7 endurance (Mehul has 3.6). My 3.8 endurance player achieved a 0.63 xp/fatigue ratio, my 3.7 endurance player achieved a 0.62 ratio, I don't think it's crazy to estimate that Mehul would have an 0.61.


The Maths
---------------

0.61 xp/fatigue from trainer
0.69 xp/fatigue from practice matches

0.73 Singles xp/fatigue
0.59 Doubles xp/fatigue

0% matches noticeably less efficient than trainer in singles
48% matches noticeably less efficient than trainer in doubles

---------------------------------------------------

Mehul was pretty consistent in singles practices over these few weeks. Maybe because he's always playing the top players but he never destroyed anyone so badly he didn't get decent experience. He literally had 3 matches out of 24 that were below the trainer ratio and they barely under that ratio (0.59 and 2 matches that were 0.60).

Mehul likely suffers from the similar fate that my doubles player does except in reverse. He's an unranked doubles player but his true doubles skill level is greater than that. I think the effect isn't as bad because he has a partner to drag down his performance so he doesn't kill the opposition in practice as often. Overall he didn't lose much over this 7 week period by not skipping doubles practice and using a non-existent trainer.

He had a great doubles practice week in Great Britain as he was placed in the first doubles group despite usually being in one of the worst doubles groups. No prominent doubles players practiced there that week and he got a randomly decently ranked partner.

As a side note, these are the scores in terms of points that produced poor xp (they were all doubles wins):
48-20, 51-18, 51-27, 52-27, 55-30, 48-19, 48-14, 48-23, 49-13, 57-29, 48-13, 52-16.

I think everyone knew it already but to reiterate you can achieve good xp by losing by any score, barely winning, or even handily winning. You just can't completely demoralize the other player .

[britrock88]

This is making me think that it may be fairly useful to have every competitive player enter a couple futures tournaments during the year-end dead period in whatever they don't play, singles or doubles, so that their practice sessions will be more effective for the next year.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by dsomethingorother(3D)

I think everyone knew it already but to reiterate you can achieve good xp by losing by any score, barely winning, or even handily winning. You just can't completely demoralize the other player

Actually, you get penalized for losing badly also. Anything less than 40% of points won by the loser will start dropping how much xp you get. It's better to lose badly than win badly of course, but really close matches are what is best. The rest of that was quite valuable though, perhaps I'm not doing as poorly as I thought in practice weeks.

[daahdeedaa]

Originally Posted by Brian Swartz

Actually, you get penalized for losing badly also. Anything less than 40% of points won by the loser will start dropping how much xp you get. It's better to lose badly than win badly of course, but really close matches are what is best. The rest of that was quite valuable though, perhaps I'm not doing as poorly as I thought in practice weeks.

Losing badly actually seems to be the equivalent of winning a close match or even losing a close match. The real xp apparently comes from losing comfortably but not getting destroyed.

Recent 2 week singles practice results for one of my players:

32-65 L - 32/33 xp/fatigue = 0.97
103-101 W - 68/69 xp/fatigue = 0.99
54-27 W - 18/27 xp/fatigue = 0.67
88-89 L - 60/60 xp/fatigue = 1.00
59-42 W - 28/34 xp/fatigue = 0.82
45-64 L - 43/37 xp/fatigue = 1.16
49-71 L - 48/41 xp/fatigue = 1.17
58-31 W - 21/30 xp/fatigue = 0.70
62-36 W - 24/33 xp/fatigue = 0.73
54-30 W - 20/28 xp/fatigue = 0.71

I think the only real concern with getting destroyed is that you may not use enough of your fatigue if you get destroyed and/or destroy the opponent in multiple matches a week. You'd have to use the inefficient trainer to use up the fatigue.

If you're a young junior player or older player, I'd argue it might actually be beneficial to getting destroyed every week since you're going to use your fatigue up anyway. Now just have to figure the proper strategy to place yourself in a spot to get destroyed in practice all week . This is all theory crafting though based on numbers though. I'll be the first to admit I'm fairly new to the game and haven't experimented much.

On a side note, if you could somehow partner Mehul with someone who had decent doubles rankings, you could gain an xp benefit from playing better competition. Probably not practical because any manager who was actually persuing doubles probably doesn't want Mehul as a partner and it's not worth one of your roster slots to function purely as a mehul doubles practice drone lol. What britrock suggested seems like a more reasonable solution, just try to increase doubles rankings when possible.

Finally a stupid question, how do you get the rankings year to date that you use to track which players are on pace to be in the WTF in your dynasty?
I've been searching forever but I only see current rankings based on the last 52 weeks and not YTD.

[Brian Swartz]

If I may demonstrate though, none of your examples are bad losses though. Remember the minimum 60-40 split. The worst of any of your listed matches was the one you bolded, in which you won a third of the points. Note how the xp gain was worse than any of your other losses and in fact even worse than a close win listed next. Now it's a lot better than winning big, that I grant you. But close matches are still better. The first round of a Slam event is a good place to find such mismatches. There was one in the most recent Wimbledon in my world where the point count was 74-17. The loser in this particular case did about the same in terms of xp as they did in a decent practice match loss ... even with the considerable bonus that you get for a Slam match. Such lopsided scores don't happen often of course, but ...

Anyway, as to the other question:

how do you get the rankings year to date that you use to track which players are on pace to be in the WTF in your dynasty?
I've been searching forever but I only see current rankings based on the last 52 weeks and not YTD.

That's something I put together myself, it's not in the game. Under each players' ranking detail(VIP) you can see what tournaments they've played in the past year, organized by type and week and points and so on. The Race is composed of all the Slams, Masters, up to 4 500s, and up to 2 250s from the current calendar year. I just ignore all the ones from the previous year when I add it up. After you get used to doing it, it only takes seconds to put each player's total together.

What britrock suggested seems like a more reasonable solution, just try to increase doubles rankings when possible.

The problem here is doing that consumes form, which you then can't use for singles matches, and a top player needs to maximize their ability to play well in the big singles events. There are very few places in the calendar where it really is feasible to do so. The relatively small amount of experience that better doubles practice would add isn't worth it in my estimation, particularly considering the bonus you get for matches in the Masters and Slams. I do still do it from time to time, but it's once in a blue moon really. If Mehul wasn't one of the top few players in the world it would be different, but since he is there's a little different dynamic at work.

[daahdeedaa]

I have a feeling I'm not just interpreting correctly what you mean by 60-40 split? I mean my player won 33% of the points, isn't that a 67-33 split?

[law90026]

Just a little anecdotal information re training: do not maximise your fatigue on practice weeks because that reduces the chance of your player getting games. If you can get it around 200-249 max, that's good.

As illustration: I did 2 practice weeks where I maxed out fatigue after my practice matches and got very few matches. Averaged about 350 xp or so these weeks.

The week where I consciously kept fatigue at not more than 250 each day, Teo got 4 singles matches and his xp for the week was around 450+.

Stool going to test but it suggests use your Trainers only if your fatigue is really low or from Friday onwards.

[daahdeedaa]

I have a question on junior eligibility and practice strategy.

I'm starting to notice one of my top ranked 17 year old junior players is getting more frequent bad practice weeks. I imagine this is only going to get worse next year when the current crop of 18 year old is no longer in junior.

I've thought about having him play some AMA or FTs in lieu of JG1 events to increase their singles (non-junior) rankings when they need form. I imagine this will let me get them ranked or at least out of the junior practice pool where he can practice against 19 year olds.

2 questions, can I still play JGA/JGS events or will I have "lost" my eligibility? Has anyone tried this and found better practice results than staying "pure" junior and practicing only with your age group?

[digamma]

I'm fairly sure you can play other tournaments and still play JG tournaments the normal graduation day.

[MarkBGregory]

Originally Posted by daahdeedaa

I have a question on junior eligibility and practice strategy.

I'm starting to notice one of my top ranked 17 year old junior players is getting more frequent bad practice weeks. I imagine this is only going to get worse next year when the current crop of 18 year old is no longer in junior.

I've thought about having him play some AMA or FTs in lieu of JG1 events to increase their singles (non-junior) rankings when they need form. I imagine this will let me get them ranked or at least out of the junior practice pool where he can practice against 19 year olds.

2 questions, can I still play JGA/JGS events or will I have "lost" my eligibility? Has anyone tried this and found better practice results than staying "pure" junior and practicing only with your age group?

If you're talking about Tisserand, then I suggest you play him in AMA events, maybe even Futures, before he graduates the junior tour.

I've done it before, on GW12 I had Anton Barth ranked around #700 in the world, and at the same time he finished the year ranked #1 in juniors too.

However, unfortunately it doesn't mean your player will start playing practice events with other seniors. Until Week 52 of the final year of junior eligibility (i.e. after the Casablanca Cup), all U18s play junior practices. It was a bit of an issue for Barth, because he was significantly better than most of the other juniors at the time, and so his practice weeks were barely scraping any exp, because he was winning 6-0 6-1, 6-1 6-1, 6-0 6-2 etc. all the time.

I know some managers deliberately hold back on using their experience points in the final year of junior eligibility if this looks like it's going to be the case, i.e. "store" exp (up to 20000 points) without using them to boost skill and service. That keeps things a little more even and, while it might mean you don't sweep all the junior competitions, it probably works better for long-term growth.

[Umbrella]

Interesting reading on trainers here. I finally have my first trainer, and I think I did it right, since he is rated a 5.0. It seems like the consensus here is practice>training. I guess his use would be if a player got bounced early from a tourney.

ETA: I just picked up a new junior player, and set my trainer to train him on Friday. Does this train for the whole week, or just one day? It's now Saturday, and it says he is training, but both of my players are available on the pull down for the trainer.

[daahdeedaa]

It doesn't train him for the week or even day, it's one training session that lasts around 2 minutes real time and uses variable fatigue based on your players endurance, usually 20 to 60 range. You can train multiple times in one day. So if the trainer has a drop down available he's get to train your player again