What is BikeDork?

Bikedork is an online fantasy cycling game that allows you to build your own team of riders to compete in a virtual race alongside other online competitors. Like anything designed by dorks and engineers, this thing started simple and has grown ever since. As part of the game you pick riders and trade them in and out of your team from stage to stage and score points based on having riders in your team each stage that finish in the top 10, hold a major jersey, or score one of several other bonuses along the way. However, you must be frugal with your trades since you are limited to 35 trades (a trade is defined as a purchase) for the entire race -- including your starting squad. At the beginning you also select your podium for who you think will win the specific Grand Tour race. These points will be added on at the end of the race to your stage points.

And just because it was easy and we could, we also added a "Fixed" competition where you can use a limited budget to buy a team of nine riders to compete from prologue to final stage without any changes. This little side competition is ideal for folks that simply don't have the time or patience to check in and trade riders over the course of the race.

If you would like to join the game, select the Register link on the left.

Quick Start Checklist:

Don't care what the rules are and you just want to play? Here's what to do:

1. Register (if you have not played before)
2. Login
3. Click "Trade Riders" to pick your starting squad
4. Click "Podium Selection" to pick your podium
5. (optional) Click "Fixed Team" to pick a static team for the Fixed Team competition

Getting Started:

Refer to the Start List for both the available riders as well as their price. You will be alotted 10,000 units to use as your budget for buying a team. The idea is to spread out your picks a bit to cover each of the major types of riders because as you will see in a minute, there are limitations on trading out your riders, so you will really want to build a sprinters team, a climbers team, and GC/ITT team or some sort of balance. You can pick a max of 15 (Ideally there is a minimum of 10 riders, but you can go below that if you wish).

Here is an example team (not real prices...):

Only once the race has started will the system post your team composition on the site. That way, we will all start out on our own when it comes to picking teams, but you can always hit up other people for their picks to help. But after the first stage, you can all see what other people have picked and know what you are up against in the stages. Of course, you won't know how they may have changed the team going into the next stage.

Playing the Game:

As mentioned above, there are limitations on changing your team. You will get 35 total trades for the three weeks, including your starting squad. A trade being simply defined as a buy of a rider without regard to whether you sell another. But in any case you must have the money available at the time of trade to make it work. However, buying new riders at any point will cost you a trade.

Another feature is that you will be able to enter trades for future stages. Meaning if we are between stages 3 and 4, you can enter a set of orders to sell rider Swifty McSwift for Pokey McPokey for stage 15. The only thing to note is that you must have the money today in order to perform the trade. And in fact, your budget will reflect this transaction from the moment you enter it. As for budgets on future stages, you can go into the red, however if you start a stage with a stage budget in the negative you will receive zero points on the stage.

Also, you can cancel a trade any time before that date and get back the trade you spent, but once the day of the stage arrives, that rider is yours and the transaction is spent.

The deadline for making a trade for a stage is 5:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time (New York time) on the day of the stage.

Now scoring. You get points for stages according to the following scale:

For a Team Time Trial (if the race has one...). You get points for each rider in a team that makes the top 5 according to the following scale, even if the rider does not actually finish on the team time. The only exception would be if you had a rider that already abandoned prior to the team time trial:

Additionally you get points if your rider gets/keeps/does one of the following at the end of a stage:

+ The first winner of a jersey will receive only 10 or 5 points, not the full 50 or 40 points, as they have not taken the jersey from anyone.

* Unlike the others, this only applies to your Podium riders, and at the end of the race.

And if it wasn't clear, all the other awards only go for a rider on your squad for that stage. They do not apply to the riders you picked for the podium (see below). So if you had Robbie McEwen for the podium (and smoked a lot o' dope), but dont have him on your stage team, you cannot get the points for leaders jersey should he get it (which might only happen if the rest of the peleton smoked a lot o' dope...).

There is one other place you get points that I forgot to mention. Along with your initial team picks, you get to submit a list for your podium picks. This is a ranked list of five riders that you think will be on the podium at the finish. At the end of the race, we will add any points you get from picking the podium to your final score, and these podium points are significant. They break out as follows:

The important thing with these points is that they have nothing to do with the riders you pick for your stage race team, and are not counted against your budget. You can have 12 riders in your team, and none of them are on your podium picks. This is just your prediction of the ultimate podium. The way we score the podium is as follows. Imagine that from your list you picked 3 of the ultimate top 5. You will get points for all three of these, however your ranking matters. Lets say you pick the ultimate 3rd place rider to be in 1st. For this rider you will get 150 points. For another you picked 2nd and he actually finished 2nd. So you get 180 for this rider. The last rider you picked as 3rd, but he really finishes in 1st place. For this rider you also get 150. Basically, you get the points assigned to the lower of the two places between what you pick, and what they ultimately finish at. Obviously the best case scenario is that you get all five in the right order, but the more out of order, likely the fewer of the points you will get.

All of these points not only go to your overall points total, but additionally add to your budget (of course these last points don't really matter for the budget part). You are playing for points, but your ability to enhance your team is partially enhanced by the success of your squad.

As far as winning, we will make a point of indicating both the winner in stage points as well as the final winner once you calculate in the GC points. Think of it as a Green jersey winner and Yellow jersey winner. Hell, assuming I have the time I will try and find some way to make all of you feel like winners with some obscure statistic about your team... even if you are not indeed a winner in any way. Just cus I care. X0X0

Fixed Teams:

Based on popular demand, we will be adding an optional fixed team competition that runs along with the main game. This will allow you to pick a static team of nine riders with 6000 points. This team, selected before the first stage, cannot be changed over the course of the event and will score points in much the same way the regular team scores. You can access the selection screen for this team via the main menu. On this first run of this feature it will likely be very simplistic, but should at least allow us to add a little side competition to see who can put together the best all-star team.