Inhouse 9 ball handicap system

south51 · Apr 21, 2018

hello all !
i play in a very fine establishment's friday night 9 ball $20 tournaments...
the format is arbitrary in that players are assigned handicaps 3-7+ and match races are as an example a 6 vs a 5 then the race is 4-3 ...
i am quite a bit older than when i formerly played there (65 now) but i was assigned a 6 handicap based on my play from 10 years ago ... and yes it has declined with age ...
im not complaining it just occurred to me much like our golf course handicaps back in the day were self adjusting (for gambling we did not use USGA we had our own sheet of one's last ten scores IN THE GAME and that determined your number NO NEGOTIATION ... but it was extremely fair
that said I have noticed a decline in players at our 9 ball tournaments and i suspect that , like myself , some are just weary of the fact that they cannot play to their handi and are making a weekly donation ...
my premise here is that if players believe in and actually do have a fair self adjusting handicap system they will be repeat customers for life ...
So my question is "Does anyone or is anyone aware of a handi system that adjusts every tournament based on results and if so what is it ?"
my idea is to add a half point to a player that say goes 3-2 and add a full point for a 4-2 ...while subtracting a half for 1-2 and subtracting a point for 0-2 etc with the limit beind a 1 point move per tournament...
this is in house so we can control our own data base
suggestions ? we need database info software and we also need a new hopefully online tournament bracket software

thx

RiverCity · Apr 21, 2018

There is a lady in Alaska named Ann Wilson. She ran the weekly tournament at the Anchorage Billiard Palace for quite some time, as well as the state and Fur Rondy tournaments.

For the weekly tourneys, she had a system that was about as fair as I have ever seen. She ran the tourneys as a multi week season, with a playoff tournament at the end for people who took either 1st or 2nd during the season. One particular playoff stands out in my mind as a perfect example of the system working. The player who won was a "C" player who is currently a 400 Fargo rated player, with one player who is currently a 722 in the tourney.

The system goes like this

0-2 in the tournament = Minus 4 points
1-2 in the tournament = Minus 2 points
2-2 or better in the tournament = Players rating stays the same unless player places 1st though 4th

1st = Plus 10 points
2nd = Plus 8 points
3rd = Plus 6 points
4th = Plus 4 points

The attached sheet shows the 'games on the wire' handicaps by point differences in players ratings.

Assigning starter ratings can be done multiple ways, and rules can be put into place to have a standard starter rating for new/unknown players. Thats up to you to figure out.

As a rough guideline on assigning ratings:
Strongest player in the room is in the 100-120 range, the weakest players are typically in the 30-40 range. "A" players typically 80-100 range, and "B" players 50-80 range.

south51 · Apr 23, 2018

came up with this

ok thought alot about this and did alot of research
here is where i am thinking (just for consideration and thoughts)
in order to transition from the current system to an adjusting system with the least amount of frustration ... and using the info you already have i would possibly suggest the following
i would go to a quarter point system where every tournament match won or lost is worth a quarter point adjust ... so
if i go 0-2 tonight i say to derek im 0-2 and a half point (2x.25) is deducted from my handi and noted in the present sheets...
if i go 1-2 then a .25 is deducted
2-0 is plus 1/2
3-2 plus one quarter
6-0 is plus 1/2 ... plus or minus 1/2 is the max move per tournament
i would also say that a player gets a game on the wire or the higher ranked player plays to one more game IF AND ONLY IF they are a full point higher in handicap and 2 games more if they are a full 2 points higher ... lower ranked players can go down as far as one ... but god forbid if they never win like that no lower lol no zeros please
no differential for loswer brack or winners bracket handicap races ... it gets confusing and is arbitrary and doesnt really make sense ... its actually saying well " our handicaps are usually accurate but because you are doing well it shouldnt apply " ... this adds to player angst in general and a good handi system wont need this
until software or new and better equipment and smarter ppl with a lot more energy are available i would say its up to the players generally to say to the tournament director "hey im 0-2 make me a minus a quarter next week .... but the director should take the results each night and adjust the participants accordingly ...
the reason i like the .25 adjust is to slow it down
so if a 5.25 is playing a 6.0 then no gm on the wire ... 5.25 vs 6.25 yes one gm on the wire
4.75 vs 6 ... one gm on the wire
has to be full point differential
i would write out a short doc /sheet explaining and have it laying around or posted in the building for ppl to look at ... simple and clear
SAT 7:39AM
I like it.
min field 8 players for adjusting or no adjust ...
Payouts % needed to be fixed ... based on # of entries ...
U gonna be up there later ? When ...
7

Bob Jewett · Apr 23, 2018

Chuck Fields said:
There is a lady in Alaska named Ann Wilson. She ran the weekly tournament at the Anchorage Billiard Palace for quite some time, as well as the state and Fur Rondy tournaments.
... .

So far as I can tell, this is the NPL system that I developed in the early 1980s for an in-house league. Here is a pretty good explanation (with math at the end, even) of its adaptation to eight ball: http://www.sfbilliards.com/Misc/argonne8.pdf

My explanation of the system is at http://www.sfbilliards.com/Misc/NPL_info.txt

However, I would recommend using the FargoRate rating scale instead. FargoRate uses the same basic math for the rating scale as the NPL but has finer gradations of rating which is useful. In the NPL a rating difference of 30 points means that the better player will beat the weaker player by a factor of 2:1, while in FargoRate, players 100 points apart have that same 2:1 skill difference. If you use any of the NPL material, just multiply all the rating points numbers by 10/3. And if you have any players who have Fargo ratings, start them at those ratings with the other players adjusted to match according to the differences in skill.

All three of the systems use a basic idea from Arpad Elo who developed the rating system used for chess. Here is a historical note from FargoRate.com:

There were two implementations of ELO-type schemes in the 1990s. One was by Ron Shepard, a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago, who implemented the scheme for 8-ball players in the Argonne Pool League. The other was by Bob Jewett, who used an ELO-type scheme as the basis of the NPL (National Pool League) rankings for 9-ball players largely in the San Francisco area. More recently the idea of an Ab Initio Global Optimization of ELO-type ratings was described by Michael Page in a 2002 Billiards Digest article, Sizing up with the Pros. Fargo Ratings were later implemented without the global optimization at Fargo Billiards in Fargo ND.

Bob Jewett · Apr 23, 2018

south51 said:
...
i would go to a quarter point system where every tournament match won or lost is worth a quarter point adjust ... so
...

I urge you to use the same rating scale that FargoRate uses. If two players are supposed to play at 6-3, for example, put them 100 points apart.

Inhouse 9 ball handicap system

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