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SPL IX - Commencement Thread
- Thread starter OP
- Start date
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Inspired by the Players Guide to Tryharding
Managerial Guide to Tryharding - by Finchinator
Index
Picking your assistant manager
The biggest part of tryharding is being ready for each and every situation that could come your way, especially as a manager of a team of 14+sweaty teenage boys players. With that in mind, picking the optimal assistant is crucial to getting off to the best start possible. Given this, I decided to make a Google Form in order to gauge who was the best pick for the job - a genuine tryhard approach to the situation. Among the users I humbly asked to answer this form were none other than Valentine, Star, rozes, ADVANTAGE, and Acacia. Unfortunately, some unknown outside circumstances prevented any of these prospects from actually becoming the actual assistant manager of the Bigs this season! With my main choices no longer available, I resorted to Tokyo Tom, who happened to score perfectly on the google form -- answering the questions: Extra GSC players, None, Posting timely memes in tournament threads, and Yes respectively.
While some may believe that wanting a balanced roster, prior managerial experience, a well-established presence throughout the tournament community, and a lack of odd personal connections to other users might be optimal, I personally acquired advanced knowledge that led me past these common pitfalls of novice managers. After personally experiencing what Tokyo Tom was capable of (see: 1 and 2) and seeing his perfect score to this perfectly crafted test, I knew he was the right choice for the position of Big's assistant manager!
Planning your draft
I knew that going into the draft, I would have to be thoroughly prepared with a clear plan and a number of back-ups for each slot. As a tryhard manager, I knew that I absolutely had to look into each and every sign-up, ranging from the proven superstars who play six different metagames and will be the center of attention all tournament to the one-post wonders on page seventeen of sign-ups who may never log into Smogon again. On top of this, I had to acquire a general idea for how much I thought everyone in the pool would cost in the auction in order to have a basis for my plan,especially some of the older, more proven players like Mr.E.
Moving forward, we employed a reactive, tryhard friendly spreadsheet in order to lay all of our options out on the table. Most importantly, the spreadsheet was color coded as you will see below, which is a big plus for any tryhard that makes organizational graphics for competitive Pokemon (this is a must, btw) as you can highlight and emphasize points that may be marginally more important than everything else! While team supporter crayon pop aka Osgoode aka Sauga aka a7x came up with an appealing, thematic plan with this spreadsheet, we elected to delve deeper into our options in order to satisfy superstar retain Posho and help build a winning team!
After sitting down and attempting to formulate an alternative plan to field a line-up filled with skillful, active competitors, I soon noticed that, no matter how much research I could do, managing SPL would actually prove to be challenging and started to panic, much like I may or may not have during the auction after I acquired my third GSC player! After eating dozens of chicken wings to calm me down, I finally had a stroke of genius, which all tryhards will eventually have if they dedicate each and every day to their craft. I decided that we should just dump as much money as needed on Bro Fist and then see what happens from there; he wouldn't get mad if our team seemed shitty anyway (reference: the log in this glorious post).
Setting the tone and building team synergy
Once you have tirelessly planned your draft and executed flawlessly in the auction itself, you have the awkwardly long waiting period between the draft and the first week of the tournament. During this period, some of your tryhard energy can and should be devoted to preparing for opponents that may not even be in the tiers you expect them to be come the start of the tournament! Worry not as even if people on the opposing team are not in their expected tiers, this is a great exercise of tryhardery and you will undoubtedly be more efficient/less verbose in sharing your thoughts as the season progresses! Make sure to do your best to motivate your players to follow your foot steps and use your assistance to better their chances of winning as well.
Once you have indoctrinated your entire roster in the philosophies of tryhardism and set the tone for a season full of essay reading, it is time for the fun part -- building team synergy. Depending on the outlook of your roster, this can be relatively easy or quite challenging. Thankfully for my own sake this time around, it wasn't too challenging. While this was not intentional, I happened to draft five active chatters that speak Spanish and every other day they happened to do so in the Discord chat. I was unsure as to if they were being productive, having casual conversation, or just shitting on me in front of my own eyes without me knowing the entire time due to the language barrier, but I simply assumed the best and was glad that everyone was getting along so well! As time elapsed, it became clear that members of the team were anxious to win, as the following logs show (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19). With a sense of friendship and togetherness forming, I knew the SPL 9 Bigs were ready to storm into the next step!
Getting the most out of your draft picks
As your team gets ready to tackle the three month grind known as SPL, a proper tryhard would attempt to get as much as he could out of each roster slot in order to maximize chances of winning those pixels on his post-bit at the end of the tournament! Any given player can contribute so much to their team on a plethora of different fronts, ranging from advice giving to teambuilding to testing. Given this, I made sure all of my players were ready to bounce ideas off of each other, as seen by Bro Fist consulting our key to SM success here. In addition, our entire roster and group of helpers are trained in the art of teambuilding across generations and throughout lower tiers so that we can tackle all of the challenges we face this SPL in any given tier without any issues whatsoever -- this is another must for tryhard managers as you cannot buy three players in every single tier, just a select few, so you must make sure that there is no lack of input/support. Finally, when bright minds put their thought processes to the test, they often come up with innovative, potentially future shaping ideas as can be seen here -- needless to say, if you position your team in the right way as a tryhard, then you will be able to decipher the various metagames your players struggle in and work your way to victory!
Moving forward -- with maximum effort!
If you have reached this point, congratulations, you are almost a true warrior of managerial tryhardery. However, we saved the most important and challenging step for last: moving forward into the regular season and maintaining the same level of tryhard intensity throughout the tournament. It might seem easy in theory to try your hardest on a consistent basis to keep up with your team of competitive Pokemon players, but in practice it can become quite challenging when you notice all of the wild things you might encounter along the way such as Assault Vest Toxapex. Thanfully, Mr.E's genius Choice Banded Tapu Lele from the section before can deter the utilization of such beasts, but as a manager you must stay alert and try to guide your players into using standard Sand in as many metagames as possible because this is clearly the best team choice every single week, right? With this said and everything above taken into consideration, I hope that the next generation of managers is now equipped with sufficient tools to manage the proper way -- the tryhard way!
Managerial Guide to Tryharding - by Finchinator
Index
- Picking your assistant manager
- Planning your draft
- Setting the tone and building team synergy
- Getting the most out of your draft picks
- Moving forward -- with maximum effort!
Picking your assistant manager
The biggest part of tryharding is being ready for each and every situation that could come your way, especially as a manager of a team of 14+
While some may believe that wanting a balanced roster, prior managerial experience, a well-established presence throughout the tournament community, and a lack of odd personal connections to other users might be optimal, I personally acquired advanced knowledge that led me past these common pitfalls of novice managers. After personally experiencing what Tokyo Tom was capable of (see: 1 and 2) and seeing his perfect score to this perfectly crafted test, I knew he was the right choice for the position of Big's assistant manager!
Planning your draft
I knew that going into the draft, I would have to be thoroughly prepared with a clear plan and a number of back-ups for each slot. As a tryhard manager, I knew that I absolutely had to look into each and every sign-up, ranging from the proven superstars who play six different metagames and will be the center of attention all tournament to the one-post wonders on page seventeen of sign-ups who may never log into Smogon again. On top of this, I had to acquire a general idea for how much I thought everyone in the pool would cost in the auction in order to have a basis for my plan,
Moving forward, we employed a reactive, tryhard friendly spreadsheet in order to lay all of our options out on the table. Most importantly, the spreadsheet was color coded as you will see below, which is a big plus for any tryhard that makes organizational graphics for competitive Pokemon (this is a must, btw) as you can highlight and emphasize points that may be marginally more important than everything else! While team supporter crayon pop aka Osgoode aka Sauga aka a7x came up with an appealing, thematic plan with this spreadsheet, we elected to delve deeper into our options in order to satisfy superstar retain Posho and help build a winning team!
After sitting down and attempting to formulate an alternative plan to field a line-up filled with skillful, active competitors, I soon noticed that, no matter how much research I could do, managing SPL would actually prove to be challenging and started to panic, much like I may or may not have during the auction after I acquired my third GSC player! After eating dozens of chicken wings to calm me down, I finally had a stroke of genius, which all tryhards will eventually have if they dedicate each and every day to their craft. I decided that we should just dump as much money as needed on Bro Fist and then see what happens from there; he wouldn't get mad if our team seemed shitty anyway (reference: the log in this glorious post).
Setting the tone and building team synergy
Once you have tirelessly planned your draft and executed flawlessly in the auction itself, you have the awkwardly long waiting period between the draft and the first week of the tournament. During this period, some of your tryhard energy can and should be devoted to preparing for opponents that may not even be in the tiers you expect them to be come the start of the tournament! Worry not as even if people on the opposing team are not in their expected tiers, this is a great exercise of tryhardery and you will undoubtedly be more efficient/less verbose in sharing your thoughts as the season progresses! Make sure to do your best to motivate your players to follow your foot steps and use your assistance to better their chances of winning as well.
Once you have indoctrinated your entire roster in the philosophies of tryhardism and set the tone for a season full of essay reading, it is time for the fun part -- building team synergy. Depending on the outlook of your roster, this can be relatively easy or quite challenging. Thankfully for my own sake this time around, it wasn't too challenging. While this was not intentional, I happened to draft five active chatters that speak Spanish and every other day they happened to do so in the Discord chat. I was unsure as to if they were being productive, having casual conversation, or just shitting on me in front of my own eyes without me knowing the entire time due to the language barrier, but I simply assumed the best and was glad that everyone was getting along so well! As time elapsed, it became clear that members of the team were anxious to win, as the following logs show (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19). With a sense of friendship and togetherness forming, I knew the SPL 9 Bigs were ready to storm into the next step!
Getting the most out of your draft picks
As your team gets ready to tackle the three month grind known as SPL, a proper tryhard would attempt to get as much as he could out of each roster slot in order to maximize chances of winning those pixels on his post-bit at the end of the tournament! Any given player can contribute so much to their team on a plethora of different fronts, ranging from advice giving to teambuilding to testing. Given this, I made sure all of my players were ready to bounce ideas off of each other, as seen by Bro Fist consulting our key to SM success here. In addition, our entire roster and group of helpers are trained in the art of teambuilding across generations and throughout lower tiers so that we can tackle all of the challenges we face this SPL in any given tier without any issues whatsoever -- this is another must for tryhard managers as you cannot buy three players in every single tier, just a select few, so you must make sure that there is no lack of input/support. Finally, when bright minds put their thought processes to the test, they often come up with innovative, potentially future shaping ideas as can be seen here -- needless to say, if you position your team in the right way as a tryhard, then you will be able to decipher the various metagames your players struggle in and work your way to victory!
Moving forward -- with maximum effort!
If you have reached this point, congratulations, you are almost a true warrior of managerial tryhardery. However, we saved the most important and challenging step for last: moving forward into the regular season and maintaining the same level of tryhard intensity throughout the tournament. It might seem easy in theory to try your hardest on a consistent basis to keep up with your team of competitive Pokemon players, but in practice it can become quite challenging when you notice all of the wild things you might encounter along the way such as Assault Vest Toxapex. Thanfully, Mr.E's genius Choice Banded Tapu Lele from the section before can deter the utilization of such beasts, but as a manager you must stay alert and try to guide your players into using standard Sand in as many metagames as possible because this is clearly the best team choice every single week, right? With this said and everything above taken into consideration, I hope that the next generation of managers is now equipped with sufficient tools to manage the proper way -- the tryhard way!
Last edited:
A proper tryhard is never bored.
:ZOOM: your brain to pasta
pasy_g
Banned deucer.
Quite Quiet and I will be hosting this year. A reminder of rulings that hold true for this year:
- Managers are allowed one (1) assistant Manager.
- Teams are only allowed three (3) retained players from last year's SPL.
- There will be a severe penalty for any team that picks up a known alt of a banned player, or any player masquerading as another person to lower their cost in the auction. This has not been a big issue in the past, but it is important to establish that both parties will be penalized immediately and harshly if they are found doing so.
literally first page
If you're like me, you eagerly anticipate Finchinator's weekly prediction post or video. Why won't your name be bolded this week? You can't wait to read Finch's carefully considered, factually based assessment of your (lack of) skills in competitive Pokemon.
As Smogon's most revered, try-hard prediction poster, I found myself asking: just how good is Finchinator? Is he the best to ever do it?
I asked our ape to predict the winners of each match for the past 5 weeks of Smogon's Premier League. The ape deliberated on each match for a couple seconds and selected his winner, repeating the process until all 240 matches had been predicted. The ape correctly predicted upsets like Poek vs. p2, but it also blundered on obvious selections like z0mog vs. John. Overall, the ape managed to predict 50% of matches correct.
I then examined Finchinator's SPL 9 predictions thus far and compared them to the actual results of the past 5 weeks. Surely Finchinator could give our ape some pointers, right?
Well... actually, no. Finchinator's predictions come in at a staggering 46.63% accuracy. In fact, Finchinator hasn't outperformed our ape in even one (1) week this SPL yet! The closest Finch has come to beating our ape is 50% accuracy in Week 3 when he only posted four predictions about his main tier, BW. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), we can only conclude at 82% statistical significance that Finchinator is worse than an ape at predicting SPL matches. There's still an 18% chance our ape outperformed Finch purely by chance.
I wasn't quite finished with my investigation. I asked Finchinator what it takes to be considered a good prediction poster. Would a 55% prediction success rate suffice? Higher? Lower?
In order to be a good prediction poster, you need to correctly predict 65%? A tall task indeed. If we take this 65% requirement and run a statistical test for "Is Finchinator a good prediction poster?", we can conclude with over 99.99% certainty that he is not a good prediction poster. Over 5 standard deviations of certainty!
The Finchinator Challenge
Finch, there are the facts my man. Numbers don't lie. Here's my challenge to you:
First, post better predictions than an ape (>50% correct rate)
Second, finish the season better than an ape (>50% overall for the season)
I'll even let you edit that week 6 video if you need to. Conduct your analysis. Crunch the numbers. Give it your best shot. Good luck!
As Smogon's most revered, try-hard prediction poster, I found myself asking: just how good is Finchinator? Is he the best to ever do it?
I asked our ape to predict the winners of each match for the past 5 weeks of Smogon's Premier League. The ape deliberated on each match for a couple seconds and selected his winner, repeating the process until all 240 matches had been predicted. The ape correctly predicted upsets like Poek vs. p2, but it also blundered on obvious selections like z0mog vs. John. Overall, the ape managed to predict 50% of matches correct.
I then examined Finchinator's SPL 9 predictions thus far and compared them to the actual results of the past 5 weeks. Surely Finchinator could give our ape some pointers, right?
Well... actually, no. Finchinator's predictions come in at a staggering 46.63% accuracy. In fact, Finchinator hasn't outperformed our ape in even one (1) week this SPL yet! The closest Finch has come to beating our ape is 50% accuracy in Week 3 when he only posted four predictions about his main tier, BW. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), we can only conclude at 82% statistical significance that Finchinator is worse than an ape at predicting SPL matches. There's still an 18% chance our ape outperformed Finch purely by chance.
I wasn't quite finished with my investigation. I asked Finchinator what it takes to be considered a good prediction poster. Would a 55% prediction success rate suffice? Higher? Lower?
In order to be a good prediction poster, you need to correctly predict 65%? A tall task indeed. If we take this 65% requirement and run a statistical test for "Is Finchinator a good prediction poster?", we can conclude with over 99.99% certainty that he is not a good prediction poster. Over 5 standard deviations of certainty!
The Finchinator Challenge
Finch, there are the facts my man. Numbers don't lie. Here's my challenge to you:
First, post better predictions than an ape (>50% correct rate)
Second, finish the season better than an ape (>50% overall for the season)
I'll even let you edit that week 6 video if you need to. Conduct your analysis. Crunch the numbers. Give it your best shot. Good luck!
Brazilian hit of this week, ENVOLVIMENTO
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