Introduction

Tour de France Fantasy is an online manager game, where you become the manager of your own cycle team. You receive 50.0000 imaginary Swush Pounds that you use to buy riders with. Your team must consist of 9 riders and you can have a maximum of 2 riders from any actual team.

The value of all the riders change according to how they perform in the real Tour de France, and that’s how your team increases in value. The goal of the game is to increase the value of your team as much as possible. A stage in Tour de France makes up one round in Tour de France Fantasy, and after each round your team will get a change of value according to the point system:

See point system for value change

It’s generally a good idea to orientate yourself in the game. Navigate around and get to know the game and it will become much easier to find the information you’ll use during play. We also strongly recommend that you read the rules before starting out, so you get a good overview of how the game and the point system work. Use the rider's statistics, rounds etc. These tools can indicate which riders will have the best chance of value increase in the upcoming rounds. If you click on a rider, you will see a page with his statistics from the previous rounds.

How to play

• You must chose a team consisting of 9 riders.
• You will also chose a Captain among your 9 riders.

You can freely swap around your riders and experiment to find the best team until the prologue starts Sat. July 3rd 2010, 04:15 p.m.

After the prologue has started all player changes entails a transfer fee of 1% of the bought player’s value. See "Buy and sell / Transfer market".

Note! The final rider list will be released approx. 24 hours before the Tour start. Until the Tour start there will be a running update of the participating riders for Tour de France 2010. Riders that will not participate will be deactivated (marked by a red cross over the rider). Deactivated riders can always be sold (but not bought) and they no longer change value.

NB! It is up to every participant in the game to keep up-to-date with real life changes of the riders and to change their fantasy teams accordingly, exchanging riders that will not participate in Tour de France 2010. Naturally, we try to keep our rider list up-to-date, but we cannot guarantee that it will be 100% accurate.

Captain

You will chose one of your 9 riders as Captain of your team. Your captain gains value in the same way as other riders, but you receive an additional doubling of this value as a “captain’s bonus”. Don't worry if your captain drops in value, only positive growth is doubled.

You don't pay anything for changing captain, so always chose the rider whom you expect to have the biggest value increase. The choice of captain is a part of the team set-up, and because of that it’s only possible to change captain during the times when the transfer market is open.

Be aware of that the captain bonus is not shown in your captain's general value, but in the ”captain bonus field” on your team page. This is because the bonus is not a general value increase of the rider, but exclusively a bonus for your team (many teams will have the rider in their set-up, but not all of them will have him as captain).

Buy and sell / Transfer market

If one of your riders is omitted or doesn’t meet your expectations you might be better off selling him. It is exciting to buy new riders, but do it with care, since it will cost you a transfer fee (see "Point system for value change"). Read more about transfer periods in the section about rounds.

When you sell a rider, you receive his current value and can use it to buy another rider. This means you get to keep any value increase the sold rider has earned since you first bought him.

Every purchase costs a “transfer fee” of 1% of the purchased rider's value. When you buy a new rider, their actual price will therefore be slightly higher than shown. For example, a rider with a cost of £5.000.000 will actually cost £5.050.000, where the transfer fee makes up the last £50.000.

You can sell and buy riders until approximately 5 minutes before each stage starts. After that, the transfer market will be locked as described in the section rounds. Read more about transfer period in the section "System update".

All transfers are free of charge until the start of the prologue July 3rd approx. 04:15 PM!

Rounds

Every stage of Tour de France is represented by a round in the game. When a stage/round starts, the transfer market locks and it is no longer possible to buy new teams, buy or sell riders or to change captain. This is of course, to make sure that you cannot buy riders based on already known results.

You can view them here.

System update

At the latest 2-3 hours after a stage is completed the results will appear in our system. The transfer market will stay locked until approx. 10 P.M. This is to make sure that the results are correct before the transfer market is opened again.

When the validation process of the stage is complete, the stage will receive a green flag in the rounds overview. When the teams are next unlocked and the transfer market re-opens, it is these results which are reflected as player values, and not any subsequent changes which may occur afterwards in the real Tour (like changed positions, disqualifications etc.). If there is any uncertainty or inconsistency surrounding results, Swush.com alone will decide on the final outcome.

Choice of riders

No simple recipe to success exists in Tour the France Fantasy 2010, because you cannot be sure of how a rider will perform during the coming stages. Some considerations might help increasing your chances when choosing a rider though:

• - What is his price compared to the value increase you can expect? It’s easy to assume that expensive riders might earn a bigger increase, but there will always be a few riders who are relatively cheap to buy, in relation to how much they earn in growth. A key part of the game is finding these cheap riders who can earn well.
• What does the next stage look like? Is it a flat stage, where the outcome is decided in a sprint at the end, or is it a mountain stage where an all-round rider typically has an advantage?
• What real team is the rider on? Does he run for a good team where he can earn value increase thanks to his team’s gathered effort, or does he run for a team that is assumed to have a harder time so that he might earn his increase based on his own accomplishments?

Hidden teams

• All teams are hidden to other players until the start of the Tour July 3rd approx. 04:15 P.M. After that you can view your opponents' teams but only until 8 hours before the next round starts. This is added so that it will be possible to make adjustments without the risk of getting copied by your opponents (for example in a league). When a round starts and the transfer market closes, the teams become visible to everyone again.

When viewing your opponents teams, you will always be shown the last locked team. Hence, it is not possible to see your opponents' teams for the upcoming round, before the transfer market closes. All teams will be locked for the first time according to the appointed time of round 1. Up until then all teams will be hidden and if you try to view an opponent's team you will recieve a message saying "This is an overview of the team from the previous round".

Game ending

Tour de France Fantasy 2010 ends on July 25th 2010 when the last stage of Tour the France is completed and updated/verified in the game.