Why would you get 1 point per ball in an 8-ball league

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PocketPoint

Banned
Where did this scoring system originate?

Not to mention if the breaking player makes both solids and stripes on the break, he is giving points to the other player.

You should just get a win or a loss, no points!

Or if an opponent's ball is blocking a pocket and I have to hit it in on my shot, I am giving my opponent points.

Doesn't make sense to me.
 
PocketPoint said:
Where did this scoring system originate?

Not to mention if the breaking player makes both solids and stripes on the break, he is giving points to the other player.

You should just get a win or a loss, no points!

Or if an opponent's ball is blocking a pocket and I have to hit it in on my shot, I am giving my opponent points.

Doesn't make sense to me.
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No system is perfect. I think the handicap you are speaking of ( 1 point per ball) is from the VNEA league. It makes it much easier to keep track of the score after the game is over.

A win is worth 10 points and the loser gets 1 point per ball pocketed. For example: the loser has 3 balls on the table. the winner gets 10 and the loser pocketed 4 balls and received 4 points.

The average of pocketed balls during each game is also figured to be your skill level or SL. If you average making 5 your SL is 5. Hope this helps you out.:smile:
 
Right but in order to consistently win I don't want to just randomly pocket balls. And in a strategic game of 8-ball I might actually pocket 2 or 3 of my opponent's balls purposely.
 
PocketPoint said:
Where did this scoring system originate?
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Both the VNEA and the BCA (pool leagues) have had this system for decades. The PAPA in my area used something similar.

It's a good handicap for amateurs and it places more importance to team play, IMO.

Fred
 
It helps define the quality of the game played.Run Outs are generally rewarded in a larger discrepancy of score.
 
Where I play we have a huge range of skills, not only individually but team wise. In our BCA format where each player plays each player on the other team one time there has to be some way to account for differences in skill level. I actually prefer the APA method of needing to win a certain number of games before your opponent, the number of games each needing to win determined by skill level. Unfortunately this just doesn't work when you play each person once.

1 point per ball, 10 for the win, skill level = average points per game, handicap is difference in sum of all 4 players skill levels, play 4 rounds with a 5th point going to highest overall points (including handicap). It seems to work well within a given league. However, I can see this method really breaking down if someone's handicap is carried over to a tournament.
 
PocketPoint said:
Right but in order to consistently win I don't want to just randomly pocket balls. And in a strategic game of 8-ball I might actually pocket 2 or 3 of my opponent's balls purposely.
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Still holds true most of the time. I sometimes intentionally pocket an opponents ball - swapping even a 10-7 win is very often the difference between winning a round or not. Pocketing the 8 ball isn't just a 3 point difference, it's 3 more for one team and 3 less for the other - a 6 point turn around, more if other balls are still up.

It's far less often, quite rare in fact, that I play different in order to limit the number of points my opponent gets.
 
JMuck said:
It helps define the quality of the game played.Run Outs are generally rewarded in a larger discrepancy of score.
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Additionally, some people go thru the system and NEVER WIN a game.

At least they can score some points while they get beaten on!
 
skeptic said:
Still holds true most of the time. I sometimes intentionally pocket an opponents ball - swapping even a 10-7 win is very often the difference between winning a round or not. Pocketing the 8 ball isn't just a 3 point difference, it's 3 more for one team and 3 less for the other - a 6 point turn around, more if other balls are still up.

It's far less often, quite rare in fact, that I play different in order to limit the number of points my opponent gets.
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Skeptic, that's the way we score in the league I play...

It's tough playing anchor when you not only have to win, but you have to limit how many balls your opponent can make. In some instances, winning the game may not be enough. You'll have to 'win big' to win the round.

Even if you win the game, if your opponent made enough balls, thier team won the round. Tough pill to swalllow sometimes...

But the handicapping system gets newer players/teams in the league that more than likely wouldn't stand a chance in a straight-up, no handicap league. More teams are apt to compete because the handicap system GIVES them that chance.

And growth of a pool league is always a good thing...
 
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PocketPoint,

In my BCA handicapped league, we get 1 point per ball and no extra points for a win. In a four-person league, your best possible score for the night would be 32 points (40 in a five-person league). In my league, I have a 28-point average. The averages of the four players on my team are calculated against the averages on our opponents team for that given night. If our team average is 105 and our opponents is 102, then we spot them three balls for the night. Each team member on my team plays each member on the other team once per night (a round-robin type of format). Without a ball count, it would take a more complicated way of handicapping the players. Our system seems to work well and makes it difficult to "sandbag" (oops, there's that dreaded "S" word again :sorry:). I mean, you can dog a shot on purpose, but you might not get back to the table again and winning is what is rewarded in our league. If you were going to dog shots to keep your average down, it could only be done in the last frame of the scoresheet when you KNOW your team has the nights match sewn-up. But, most matches (due to handicapping) are rarely sewn-up by the last frame, and on top of that, we have a good group of players in our league that pride themselves on table etiquette and winning. Also, our league gives out awards for Highest Average and an award for most Individual Wins, so this keeps our league players thirsty for "blood" :)!

It's a system that is uncomplicated and works well to boot.

I hope this helps to explain why "1 point per ball" a little better.

Maniac
 
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I've played many of these leagues, and just hated it. I thought that it brought my game down to know that I need to make 4 balls this one game to win the round.

The game of 8-ball isn't about who can make "Most" of your balls first. It's about wins and losses.

For low amateur players this might be a little incentive to play as they only need a few points instead of wins.

But overall I think it takes away from the game.

I liked win/lose leagues 2nd best, where it's 5 vs 5 and everyone plays everyone one time. Although, it's not the perfect team event as people look out for their own stat's instead of the team pressure.

The league I run is in the Race Format of Wins and Losses. Handicapped. Two teams race to 13 games as a team. If one team has a higher handicap than the other the race is changed. Maybe 13 - 11, or 15-10 depending on the differences between the two teams. All games are Win or Lose!
 
It's a terribly flawed system. Our league plays 1 point per ball with no extra for the 8. Max points per match is 40, with 5 games played. Take a team who has 5 players who are all 8 handicap and play them against a team who has 5 players with 7 handicap. This means the 8 team is giving one point per game, 5 points per round as handicap. Let's say every game is won by the team of 8's but it's down to the wire every game with the 7 team making every ball except the 8. The score before handicap each round would be 40-35. Add the handicap & the score is now tied. There's absolutely no incentive for winning. If it were a 8 team playing a 6 team them the score would be 40-45, with the 6 team winning the match & never having won a single game.
 
PocketPoint said:
Right but in order to consistently win I don't want to just randomly pocket balls. And in a strategic game of 8-ball I might actually pocket 2 or 3 of my opponent's balls purposely.
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Balls pocketed in your opponents pocket in 1 pocket count for your opponent, why not 8 ball.

I guess that's something you have to keep in mind if it's a close match. In a tournament I played in, my team was down 20 points coming into the last round, by the last few games we needed to run out our opponents with out sinking any of thier balls.

We did, so we got the glory. Yay us.
 
qbilder said:
It's a terribly flawed system. Our league plays 1 point per ball with no extra for the 8. Max points per match is 40, with 5 games played. Take a team who has 5 players who are all 8 handicap and play them against a team who has 5 players with 7 handicap. This means the 8 team is giving one point per game, 5 points per round as handicap. Let's say every game is won by the team of 8's but it's down to the wire every game with the 7 team making every ball except the 8. The score before handicap each round would be 40-35. Add the handicap & the score is now tied. There's absolutely no incentive for winning. If it were a 8 team playing a 6 team them the score would be 40-45, with the 6 team winning the match & never having won a single game.
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What's worse is if the lower rated team snaps in an 8-ball break and/or has a table run. Now the higher rated team has to all play way above their heads and get lucky enough that their opponents don't make 5 or 6 balls to even have a chance.
 
stuckart said:
I've played many of these leagues, and just hated it. I thought that it brought my game down to know that I need to make 4 balls this one game to win the round.

The game of 8-ball isn't about who can make "Most" of your balls first. It's about wins and losses.
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This is a near-sighted point of view. Winning 1 round isn't the be all end all. When it comes to season end 1st place goes to the team with the most points, not the most round points.

Round points in my VNEA league are only used for seating in the season end playoffs. The team with the most points at the end of the season takes the vegas trip and everybody else has to playoff in order to win the remaining trips.

My other league doesn't use round points at all. Most points scored takes first place so, it would be point less to let the other team off once you know you've won the evening. My team doesn't even think of an evenings play as a win or loss, we have a weekly set amount of points for a goal and this has brought us top ranking finishes for the last few years.
 
qbilder said:
It's a terribly flawed system.

Our league plays 1 point per ball with no extra for the 8. Max points per match is 40, with 5 games played.

Take a team who has 5 players who are all 8 handicap and play them against a team who has 5 players with 7 handicap.

This means the 8 team is giving one point per game, 5 points per round as handicap. Let's say every game is won by the team of 8's but it's down to the wire every game with the 7 team making every ball except the 8.

The score before handicap each round would be 40-35. Add the handicap & the score is now tied. There's absolutely no incentive for winning. If it were a 8 team playing a 6 team them the score would be 40-45, with the 6 team winning the match & never having won a single game.
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This is why you should get 3 points for the 8 ball. I don't have a problem with giving away handicapp points, in fact my team hasn't played a match this season where we haven't given away handicapp points.

A few weeks ago, we had to give 9 points a round away. That's like getting run out on 1 game around without even plugging the table.

At the end of the evening we got our points goal, but we lost the evening by a few points. This moved us up the standings because we all scored well.

End result, we were able to maintain our position near the top and in the end that's all that matters.

So the weaker team got some free handicapp points from us, they aren't anywhere near being in contention.
 
supergreenman said:
This is a near-sighted point of view. Winning 1 round isn't the be all end all. When it comes to season end 1st place goes to the team with the most points, not the most round points.

Round points in my VNEA league are only used for seating in the season end playoffs. The team with the most points at the end of the season takes the vegas trip and everybody else has to playoff in order to win the remaining trips.

My other league doesn't use round points at all. Most points scored takes first place so, it would be point less to let the other team off once you know you've won the evening. My team doesn't even think of an evenings play as a win or loss, we have a weekly set amount of points for a goal and this has brought us top ranking finishes for the last few years.
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My point was that playing for points for making balls completely takes away from the game itself. If you are playing to not allow your opponent to make any balls, you are not playing good 8-ball. You run out or you lose.

And your system favors the higher rated teams. Why wouldn't the standings be based on most round points? That way lower teams would be able to win rounds whether it's based on handicap or not, and thus could actually advance in the standings. 'The team with the most points, not the most rounds gets 1st place' sounds like a scam to me.
 

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stuckart said:
My point was that playing for points for making balls completely takes away from the game itself. If you are playing to not allow your opponent to make any balls, you are not playing good 8-ball. You run out or you lose.

And your system favors the higher rated teams. Why wouldn't the standings be based on most round points? That way lower teams would be able to win rounds whether it's based on handicap or not, and thus could actually advance in the standings. 'The team with the most points, not the most rounds gets 1st place' sounds like a scam to me.
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I don't know, seems fair to me. You win more games you (by playing good 8 ball) you get more points. pretty simple.

I do have to also point out that it's total points without handicap points that wins the trip.
 
supergreenman said:
I don't know, seems fair to me. You win more games you (by playing good 8 ball) you get more points. pretty simple.

I do have to also point out that it's total points without handicap points that wins the trip.
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Does it make sense that a Lower Rated team plays your team, and because of the handicapping they beat you barely. But then in the overall standings it doesn't matter at all, your team still got their points so you remain in 1st place.

Let's say you have 8 teams, in week 1, the top handicaps all play the lower 4 handicaps. Team 5 beats Team 1 with the handicap by 1 pt. Team 6 beats Team 2 with the handicap by 2 pts. Team 7 beats Team 3 and Team 8 beats Team 4.

In your standings all 4 of the top teams Lost their matches, but you will still rank them the top 4 teams and all the teams that won would still rate 5th-8th place.

1st Place, Team 1, Most Points, 0-1 record
2nd Place, Team 2, 2nd in Pts, 0-1 record
3rd Place, Team 3, 3rd in Pts, 0-1 record
4th Place, Team 4, 4th in Pts, 0-1 record
5th Place, Team 5, 5th in Pts, 1-0 record
6th Place, Team 6, 6th in Pts, 1-0 record
7th Place, Team 7, 7th in Pts, 1-0 record
8th Place, Team 8, 8th in Pts, 1-0 record

(I know this is a very extreme case, but it mathematically could happen this way.)

Imagine winning your first match and seeing that you are still in last place.
 
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