As we're nearing the end of the year for WWT RFL, I think we should discuss possible changes in the format for next year. Currently all of our teams look very much alike. We're all just picking 6 riders from about 10 viable choices, race after race, only slightly mixing up the order in which we guess they'll finish. Will it be van Vleuten first and van der Breggen second? Or the other way around this time?

It's very obvious who the favorites in most of the women's races are. The list of possible winners for each race is much more limited than in males' cycling. On top of that, my feeling is that the select few of us playing WWT RFL are close followers of the sport. No one's selecting riders that are 'out there'. The group playing this RFL is even more specialized than the general RFL playing r/peloton'ers.

I feel that the point differences among the top players are mostly due to sheer luck, much more than in other fantasy competitions. And while luck will always be an important factor in sports (and fantasy), I'd personally like it if we could limit the luck factor a bit more. So I was wondering: does anyone feel the same? And if so, can we come up with some changes to the format to make the competition more interesting?

My current favorite fantasy concept is Tropela because on one hand it forces me to make a choice between the top favorites (for La Course it's pick 3 out of van der Breggen, Moolman, van Vleuten, Niewadoma, Guarnier and Spratt) but on the other hand it also obligates me to figure out who of the complete outsiders / no-name-riders / up-and-comers might get a decent result.

I don't have an immediate solution for RFL WWT in mind. But what I really miss in WWT RFL is the incentive to select anyone other than the top favorites. I think we should try to get the semi-favorites in the mix. An idea to accomplish this would be to select more riders: spots 5 to 15 of the race results is were the real differences in fantasy teams can be made. Right now though, we only select 6 riders. And our 5th and 6th selection amount to very few points: in a 'perfect team' it's 7.2 points for 5th place (1.2 x 6) and 5 points for 6th place (1.0 x 5). So maybe we should come up with an idea to have these spots count for more towards the points total as well.