02-20-2022, 02:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-20-2022, 02:01 PM by Crodyman. Edited 1 time in total.)
(#4)
I didn’t believe in sim luck when I first arrived in the league, but now that I’ve seen it with my own eyes I know that it exists and it is to be feared. I got my first taste of it when we used the previous sim engine DDPSF18, and there was a consensus among sim testers that you never wanted to submit a strat with an 80% win rate–those sort of odds would only tempt the sim gods to strike you down.
Then there was ISFL S28 for the Chicago Butchers. As I had been sim testing in Minny, I took over the testing responsibility for my ISFL team as well when my player was called up. Every week I poured over strats, burning the midnight oil. But as fate would have it, it would all be for naught.
9 Games Chicago lost by a touchdown; 10 if you count a game we lost by 8. It wasnt just that we lost, but rather it was how we lost that cemented that season as a “cursed by sim luck” situation.
Take Week 3, for example, against Philidelphia. A game that will live in infamy forever in Butchers history, Chicago managed to march down the field and score the go ahead 53 yard field goal with only 5 seconds remaining on the clock.
5 seconds was all the sim needed to humble our squad, as Liberty player Flash Panda returned the kickoff all the way to the house from the back of the endzone for a 105 yard TD. Liberty wins.
Coming off of a 12-4 season, and another playoff season before that, plus two victories in week one and two, Chicago hoped it would bounce back from the defeat to prove they were still every bit as dangerous as pre-season speculation had made them out to be. The sim had other plans in mind.
The loss to Philidelphia kickstarted a 4 game losing streak for the Butcher squad, with 3 of the games being decided by less than 6 points. Week 5 saw the butchers go down with less than a minute in the game to a 48 yard field goal by YKW kicker Blago Kokot. Week 6 would prove equally as heartbreaking when another field goal by AZ kicker JJ Jaymison sunk the Butchers in OT.
Finally the Butchers snapped their skid with two victories in week 7 and 8. With a lot of season left to play, the early playoff favorites knew they could right the ship and still make it if only the sim would allow.
It did not.
A loss to SJS off of an incredible 63 yard field goal in the 4th quarter by Matthew McDiarmid ended the game with 19 seconds left, and would be the harbinger of another 4 game losing streak.
More of the same continued with Chicago losing nailbiter-after-nailbiter, and a little beyond the halfway point in the season it became clear that Chicago’s playoff predictions had been grossly exaggerated, and that the season was doomed by sim luck.
Chicago would go on to post a 6-10 season–their worst since going 7-10 in s24–as Butchers front office scrambled to find a solution for their woes. On paper the squad boasted the 3rd best offense in yardage, but found issues in both scoring with an average of 26.9 points per game, as well as overall on the defense where they allowed 28.2 points per game (11th in the league.)
Though the season was a gut check to Chicago, who had so vehemently believed they were a contender, it was perhaps the first inklings that the franchise would be in rebuild mode for some time while it waited for its younger players on both sides of the ball to develop into future ISFL stars.
However, S28 will forever live in infamy as the season that the sim betrayed us in Chicago, allowing an unprecedented amount of close losses, opposing kickoff returns, and improbable defeats.
(664 words)
I didn’t believe in sim luck when I first arrived in the league, but now that I’ve seen it with my own eyes I know that it exists and it is to be feared. I got my first taste of it when we used the previous sim engine DDPSF18, and there was a consensus among sim testers that you never wanted to submit a strat with an 80% win rate–those sort of odds would only tempt the sim gods to strike you down.
Then there was ISFL S28 for the Chicago Butchers. As I had been sim testing in Minny, I took over the testing responsibility for my ISFL team as well when my player was called up. Every week I poured over strats, burning the midnight oil. But as fate would have it, it would all be for naught.
9 Games Chicago lost by a touchdown; 10 if you count a game we lost by 8. It wasnt just that we lost, but rather it was how we lost that cemented that season as a “cursed by sim luck” situation.
Take Week 3, for example, against Philidelphia. A game that will live in infamy forever in Butchers history, Chicago managed to march down the field and score the go ahead 53 yard field goal with only 5 seconds remaining on the clock.
5 seconds was all the sim needed to humble our squad, as Liberty player Flash Panda returned the kickoff all the way to the house from the back of the endzone for a 105 yard TD. Liberty wins.
Coming off of a 12-4 season, and another playoff season before that, plus two victories in week one and two, Chicago hoped it would bounce back from the defeat to prove they were still every bit as dangerous as pre-season speculation had made them out to be. The sim had other plans in mind.
The loss to Philidelphia kickstarted a 4 game losing streak for the Butcher squad, with 3 of the games being decided by less than 6 points. Week 5 saw the butchers go down with less than a minute in the game to a 48 yard field goal by YKW kicker Blago Kokot. Week 6 would prove equally as heartbreaking when another field goal by AZ kicker JJ Jaymison sunk the Butchers in OT.
Finally the Butchers snapped their skid with two victories in week 7 and 8. With a lot of season left to play, the early playoff favorites knew they could right the ship and still make it if only the sim would allow.
It did not.
A loss to SJS off of an incredible 63 yard field goal in the 4th quarter by Matthew McDiarmid ended the game with 19 seconds left, and would be the harbinger of another 4 game losing streak.
More of the same continued with Chicago losing nailbiter-after-nailbiter, and a little beyond the halfway point in the season it became clear that Chicago’s playoff predictions had been grossly exaggerated, and that the season was doomed by sim luck.
Chicago would go on to post a 6-10 season–their worst since going 7-10 in s24–as Butchers front office scrambled to find a solution for their woes. On paper the squad boasted the 3rd best offense in yardage, but found issues in both scoring with an average of 26.9 points per game, as well as overall on the defense where they allowed 28.2 points per game (11th in the league.)
Though the season was a gut check to Chicago, who had so vehemently believed they were a contender, it was perhaps the first inklings that the franchise would be in rebuild mode for some time while it waited for its younger players on both sides of the ball to develop into future ISFL stars.
However, S28 will forever live in infamy as the season that the sim betrayed us in Chicago, allowing an unprecedented amount of close losses, opposing kickoff returns, and improbable defeats.
(664 words)