Fabian Cancellara time trialled to an Olympic gold medal today ahead of Gustav Erik Larsson, Levi Leipheimer, Alberto Contador, Cadel Evans and Samuel Sanchez - but how has this affected the Fantasy Olympics standings?
Well at the top remain the same two teams, the only ones with the two gold medallists Sanchez and Cancellara in their lineup, but thanks also including David Zabriskie in their 3rd road slot, Team Schleck93 move ahead of Team France.
Moving into 3rd (Going the wrong way if we are to believe their name) is Team "We're Going For Last Place!" who scored points from 4 riders today: Nibali, Schumacher, Gesink and Cancellara.
Not every team scored points in the time trial - but all the teams are now off the mark. Here is the current top 10 (Previous position is in brackets):
Olympics and Weekly News - it doesn't get any better, does it? ;)
CLE-ditor - new easy-to-use editor Clecorda, a known member of the Italian community, has released an editor for PCM08, CLE-ditor. It's just as easy to use as the editor which is released with the game, but it has even more functionality. For example, you can easily add new teams and riders with it, and you're guided through the entire process. The downside is that the editor is only available in Italian - luckily for us, though, Dax, a member of this site, has translated some of the most important words, and I'm sure he's willing to translate more if needed. Other than adding new teams and riders, it can also do the usual stuff such as stat editing, stages, names, etc. It can also be used with save games.
More databases for patch 1.0.2.3 Since last time, we've added more databases for patch 1.0.2.3. First of all, Addy patched Dankan's Plus Package, so it now works fully with the new patch. He also moved the latest dopers to the Free Agents-section. Also, Oleg Tinkov and his team released their A.S.O.DB 2008. It didn't get off to the best start since it had some crash problem, but this was fixed with this patch. That said, it has some pretty good features. It's fully updated, meaning that it has new team names (e.g. Scott - American Beef instead of Saunier Duval), it has more equipment, manager photos have been added, etc. Also, there's a fantasy DB, mojoFutureDatabase 2011, which, as the name says, tries to predict how the world of cycling is going to look like in 2011. So, you do get a bunch of real riders, and you will also see teams which exist today, but there's also new teams and riders, and you also get a new calendar.
First historical DB for PCM08 Remember the 2003 Tour de France? The one with Hamilton's broken collarbone? The one with Beloki's crash? The one where Lance Armstrong was actually in trouble? Well, here's your chance to relive all that with nico42's 2003 Tour de France DB, the first historical database for PCM08. With it, you get all the right teams and riders, you get the jerseys from back then, the team logos and a lot of rider photos. You don't get everything since it's mostly based around Le Tour, but it's worth a try anyway. You can get the 13 MB large package from PCM.daily's download section.
PCM.daily isn't dominating the world Despite positive thoughts and lots of self-confidence, PCMBenelux proved to be a stronger team than PCM.daily in our elimination match Thursday night. However, it was a close match, and after three rounds of elimination, just 38 points divided the two teams. More importantly, the match also gave some experence for similar projects in the future. Both PCMBenelux' 'leader', Savo, and the participants here at PCM.daily agreed that it's basically impossible to have these 8 vs. 8 matches, since the pace is incredibly high, meaning that tactics are non-existant - it's just full power all the way through in every round. Therefore, races in the future will also include some AI riders. Next up? We have been challenged by the Italian community, and it's been decided that we're going to try out a keirin match. However, a bunch of us are going on vacation now, so this won't be organized until in a few weeks' time.
Samuel Sanchez has won the Olympics road race ahead of Davide Rebellin, Fabian Cancellara, Aleksandr Kolobnev, Andy Schleck and Michael Rogers so it is time for the first rankings update for the Fantasy Olympics.
As Kolobnev was a late selection for the Olympics, he did not feature on the rider lists but the rest of the top 25 were all available for selection. 5 teams has Samuel Sanchez on their lineup so it is no surprise that they make up the current Top 5. Of those 5, 2 also picked Fabian Cancellara and thanks to the inclusion of Christian Pfannburger aswell, Team France go top with a 28 point lead over Team Schleck93.
The best team to score without having Sanchez was Humle's Olympic Team, who is in 6th after Andy Schleck, Pfannberger, Niemiec and Leipheimer all scored points. This was the only team to have 4 points scorers in the road race.
As you are probably well aware, the Olympics are drawing near and PCMdaily is launching it's own Fantasy game for the Olympics, for everyone to join in!
The format is simple, you have 100 points to spend on a total of 10 riders from 5 different rider categories. The categories are as follows (click on the links to view the riders in each category and their price):
Each team will contain 3 Road riders, 1 Mountain Biker, 1 BMX rider, 2 Track Sprinters, 2 Track Endurance riders and 1 wildcard to make up the 10. (The wildcard can be chosen from any of the categories).
To enter, take the following template and fill it in, then either post it as a comment to this news article or PM it to SportingNonsense. Remember that you must not exceed 100 points in your team.
Team Name: Team Example Road: Stefan Schumacher (GER) 20 Road: Laszlo Bodrogi (HUN) 8 Road: George Hincapie (USA) 6 Mountain Bike: Jakob Fuglsang (DEN) 8 BMX: Ivo Lacuks (LAT) 4 Track Sprinter: Ross Edgar (GBR) 10 Track Sprinter: Jason Kenny (GBR) 8 Track Endurance: Bradley Wiggins (GBR) 24 Track Endurance: Taylor Phinney (USA) 8 Wildcard: Jurgen van den Broeck (BEL) 4
Wow, two Weekly News editions in two consecutive weeks - that's unbelievable! :P
Databases for patch 1.0.2.3 Patches are not 100 % good. For example, they often make all databases incompatible, meaning that the database makers got to do a lot of work again to make it compatible. Luckily for us, they don't mind this, and throughout this week, several databases have been released for the latest patch. First of all, there's Justin's Good Ol' Fan DB which is based on Dankan's Real Name Package. It's nothing but a .cdb-file, but to get the most optimal experience it's recommended to download and install the Real Name Package before using Justin's DB. PepsiLight, who has made the very succesful PepsiLight UltimateReal Package, followed up by releasing an update for his package making it compatible. Compared to the previous version, it also includes a stat update, new name for Saunier Duval, and the dopers have been removed. The Dutch Divinity Project had timed it perfectly. They had planned to release an After-Tour update, and they did so just after the patch was released, thus making it compatible too. It doesn't include any other new stuff except for new stats. The German Eeyor has also updated his package to make it compatible with the patch. As with the Divinity Project, the update also contains some stats updates, but that's also pretty much it. Last, we have two French packages, one update and one new. The updated package is Heras61's package, the new one being Pack Complet. They have pretty much the same features, so choosing between them, I guess, is a matter of looking at the stats.
So what about the historical databases? A lot of you like to play with historical databases, bringing you back to the "good ol' days", but unfortunately, we are still yet to see any historical databases. That said, there's a lot of them in the making, so it's just a matter of hanging on and have patience. On the official forum, you can find 4 projects: TdF-2005, 2004, TdF-2003 and a 98-08 DB. Of course, you can never know how many of these will actually be made, but the 98-08 DB is very likely to become reality someday as it's made by the quite experience databaseur, dj-cycloteck. On PCMBenelux, you find two interesting projects: Another 2003-package, which has Ruben as a part of the "crew", and the so-called Vertigo DB, which take the best riders from 1990-2008. Unfortunately, both projects haven't progressed very far yet.
There's probably more out there, so it will be interesting to see what's released in the future.
PCM.daily vs. PCMBenelux - qualification reminder This is basically just a reminder. As I mentioned last week, we have been challenged by PCMBenelux for some rounds of elimination, and some of you signed up to become a part of the PCM.daily team which will meet PCMBenelux. The qualification will begin tomorrow at 19:30 British time - mrlol, Ruben and Alex153 are all pre-selected, so they won't have to show up. This leaves 5 spots for the rest of the 16 players who take part in the qualification. You can read more about it in this thread.
PPDB to release databases for PCM08? This is rather old news, but since it hasn't been mentioned here until now I guess it's still relevant. PPDB, known for its Giant databases for PCM06, didn't make any databases for PCM07, but has already released one DB for PCM08, a real name package, based on the stats from their PCM06 projects. This happened a while ago, and since then, they haven't said much - they haven't updated the DB either to make it compatible with the patches. So question is, will PPDB continue making databases for PCM08, or is their main focus still on PCM06?
New Slovakian PCM Website For the first time in 8 years, a Slovakian CyM/PCM-related website has opened. As always, we are happy to get more "collegues", and we wish tomco3131, the owner of the site, the best of luck with it. At the moment, it has PCM-news, an online gaming clan, a small downloads section and a tagwall, and you can access it at this link: http://www.pcm.gigapc.sk
PCM.daily's Management Game to reach the first Grand Tour PCM.daily's Management Game has been progressing a lot during the summer holiday, and after a Michael Boogerd killing spree in the Ardennes classics, it's finally time for the first Grand Tour of 2009, the Giro 'd Italia, which as always has Damiano Cunego as the favourite for the overall win. He will be challenged by Emanuelle Sella, dope-boy Ricardo Ricco and Domenico Pozzovivo -- time will tell. For now, you can discuss the race in this thread.
Still site problems Last week, I mentioned that we have a couple of site problems at the moment. There's a few PHP errors here and there, and we can't accept any submitted photos at the moment. Unfortunately, none of this has been fixed yet, so there's still no reason to send in screenshots - they won't work anyway ;) We are still working on fixing it.
Speaking of "site problems", we have been mentioned on the sarcastic blog, DerailedUK. According to them, PCM.daily is "Worst of the web", and, well, it's really a lot of fun to read. Hurry up and visit the blog before next month's issue takes the place: http://www.deraileduk.com/
