The Arizona Rating System

Lots of good thoughts and no real bashing. Good to read. I am also on the committee, along with one of my tourn directors. I like ABCD format and use it for tourn's other than 9-ball. Works well for 8-ball, and one-pocket. (We don't use AZ rating numbers for One-pocket)

I think ABCD would solve/create some issues, and it's something that should be brought up for discussion at the next meeting.

I feel that SOME tourn players are a bit selfish in their attitudes toward room owners. Our goal is to provide the best atmosphere, equipment, and services possible for ALL our customers. I hold tournaments to try and keep the place full and busy, but weekly tourn's don't pay the bills. Bar box leagues, and the casual players are our bread and butter.

We have had good turnouts for our DCT events, which we sponsor twice a year, and the AzWBT annual tourn is always a huge success. Thanks to both those organizations for being a class act. You will always be welcome.

I have thought about charging green fees to all big table tourn players for years, but have not done it. the reason? A couple bucks a player is not that much money coming in, and I really don't want to hear the whining from the cheapskates about how "greedy" we are.

Having the opportunity to come in to our house, and play all night for a $10 entry fee, with a chance to leave with more than you brought is a hell of a bargain for an evening's entertainment, and many players approach it as some kind of God-given right. While they are over there being serious about their pool (which is ok), the bar box crowd is playing music (that the players want turned down), buying food and drinks, and basically keeping the doors open, so the tourn players have a place to play.

And as long as I'm on the subject, why do people object to green fees on the big tables, (which are much nicer to play on), yet they chunk $$ in the tables to play in a bar box tourn, without giving it a thought? Tradition, I guess.

Lastly, I want to thank all our customers at "Pockets" for being mostly supportive and thankful that we provide them a high quality room to enjoy. We do not get tired of being thanked for having, arguably, the best tables in AZ.

Lenny, Pockets-Tucson
 
Arizona pool drama.......this has been missing for too, too long....

Continue please :grin:
 
CocoboloCowboy said:
First off let me say your post is very good. I too think Pool for the most part is a lot more shall we say dyeing than when i first got my “rating card” from Jazz at Metro in 2005. Jazz rated me playing 8 Ball on a Big Table back than.

IMHO the Rating System should not a NUMBER 4-10-2, but:

A-Pro Caliber Players/Short Stop Caliber Players (now 10's 10-1's & 10-2's)

B-Advanced Players (now 8’s-9’s)

C- Intermittent Players (now 6’s-7’s)

D-Beginners (now 4’s-5’s)

Also I was recently told over 12,000 Players are listed in the Arizona Rating book, many are dead, moved away, or Just don’t play Pool no more. So the book is a cemetery full of names, and nothing more.

Also if you Rate someone on a Big Table, are they the same on a BAR BOX? how about One Pocket, or 14/1 what is there Rating in those games played on big Table if they are Rated on a Bar Box?

How many visiting players have gone looking to play a Local Tournament to play in and been turned away because they have NO CARD!

Your statement below is so true:

“The flaw (in my opinion) is not the ratings but the way the bar owners and tournament directors misuse them. They use the ratings to keep good players out of their tournaments. So the good players have nowhere to play (except against each other in an occasional monthly tournament) and the weaker players have no competition to improve against. All the good players in town spend their pool time practicing alone or casually with a friend, and all the weaker players have their weekly 12 player $35 added to look forward to. Yes, there have been over 10,000 players rated by the Arizona Rating Committee but I venture that only about 300 or so are actively playing tournament pool around the Phoenix area. I think this is a direct result of a system that promotes players up and out. What successful sport (or business) is based on excluding its best players (or customers)?

I've heard the bar owners' argument that letting the good players in will kill their tournaments. "The 6's and 7's won't play and there's a lot more 6's than 10's that drink our beer!" Four points come to mind regarding this assumption: 1) you cannot kill something that is already seriously dead 2) the number of new players that come out of hibernation may indeed exceed the number of 6's who would rather drink beer than compete 3) maybe the 6's will come and drink beer anyway just to watch these good players and 4) you can still handicap your tournaments using the ratings if you want to create more parity. And while we're on the bar owners here's another thought. Maybe they could form a Arizona Pool and Bar Owners Association whose goal is to promote pool by coordinating tournament schedules, forming a travelling tour, and opening up tournaments to all players.

Does anyone remember the last big tournament at Pappy's in (I think) 2004 or 2005? Over 100 players. All players invited. Nice crowd with girlfriends and wives and entourages all enjoying the weekend activities. I recall Alan telling me it was the biggest business weekend they had since he owned the place.”
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Using your formula, a person rated 10-2 would play a 10 rated player even up. Ask all the 10's how they like a even race to 9 playing a 10-2?

Another scenario, the 9's and 8's would play even? The 9 has a big advantage here also.

Do you know the difference between any ratings? How do you come up with these ideas?
 
PocketsPro said:
Lots of good thoughts and no real bashing. Good to read. I am also on the committee, along with one of my tourn directors. I like ABCD format and use it for tourn's other than 9-ball. Works well for 8-ball, and one-pocket. (We don't use AZ rating numbers for One-pocket)

I think ABCD would solve/create some issues, and it's something that should be brought up for discussion at the next meeting.

I feel that SOME tourn players are a bit selfish in their attitudes toward room owners. Our goal is to provide the best atmosphere, equipment, and services possible for ALL our customers. I hold tournaments to try and keep the place full and busy, but weekly tourn's don't pay the bills. Bar box leagues, and the casual players are our bread and butter.

We have had good turnouts for our DCT events, which we sponsor twice a year, and the AzWBT annual tourn is always a huge success. Thanks to both those organizations for being a class act. You will always be welcome.

I have thought about charging green fees to all big table tourn players for years, but have not done it. the reason? A couple bucks a player is not that much money coming in, and I really don't want to hear the whining from the cheapskates about how "greedy" we are.

Having the opportunity to come in to our house, and play all night for a $10 entry fee, with a chance to leave with more than you brought is a hell of a bargain for an evening's entertainment, and many players approach it as some kind of God-given right. While they are over there being serious about their pool (which is ok), the bar box crowd is playing music (that the players want turned down), buying food and drinks, and basically keeping the doors open, so the tourn players have a place to play.

And as long as I'm on the subject, why do people object to green fees on the big tables, (which are much nicer to play on), yet they chunk $$ in the tables to play in a bar box tourn, without giving it a thought? Tradition, I guess.

Lastly, I want to thank all our customers at "Pockets" for being mostly supportive and thankful that we provide them a high quality room to enjoy. We do not get tired of being thanked for having, arguably, the best tables in AZ.

Lenny, Pockets-Tucson
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Hey Lenny, welcome aboard.

As a room owner and pool player, you can see both sides of the story.

I like the greens fee idea for big and borbox tournies, for a couple reasons. On big tables it throws a bone to the owner and helps keep em in business. On the barbox, it keeps us from tracking down somebody with the key, in case a ball needs to come back up. Plus, I like the idea of not putting $1 in for each game, that adds up.
 
12310bch said:
In the last 12-months I have played:

>The SW regional at Mcdowell
>Kitty's monthly S/D 4 times
>Kolby's Sun. handicapped 9-ball 5 times
>Kolby's barbox 8-ball once
>Kolby's Tuesday wild ball once( actually played off against Nick DeLeon for first place- lost of course)
>Preacher Ronn's 1-hole
>Stinger's 9-ball 3 times
>Metro S/D 9-ball once
>Metro barbox 9-ball 4 times
>Metro 9-footer 9-ball once
>Ox singles 8-ball & S/D 9- ball so many times I can't count them.

Now I got a bunch of firsts, a couple of seconds, a lot of losses
close to the money, and I had my share of 'two and outs". I'm not bragging but I am making a point.

I WOULD NOT HAVE PLAYED IN ANY OF THESE TOURNAMENTS IF THEY HAD NOT BEEN USING ARIZONA'S HANDICAPING SYSTEM...PARTICULARLY IF THEY WERE 'OPEN' TOURNAMENTS.

I am a good '5' and feel I have a chance at cashing on most of these tourneys because of the handicap system. (playing in Preacher Ronn's at $35.00 a pop was just plain stupid!)

The Cowboy just doesn't have a clue and is using his argument as a rationale to not compete in order to hide his lack of cajones.
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Sounds to me like you are a decent 6 playing as a 5. Most likely the reason you haven't totally heisted most tournaments is better players out running the nutz when playing you.
 
center pocket said:
I understand what your saying op and wish it would change as well. Just this last year I started placing in top ten or better in most of the Desert Classic tour events, so I expect my rating to go up in the future. This means I will have to pay the higher entry fee and wont be able to participate in the B/C side pot.
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Evan, I haven't heard anybody say that you will be raised to a 9. You played in a couple of the B/C tournaments and I don't beleive you won?

I think you are good to go as a B player at least one more season.
 
Green fees

Chris,
We're ok with opening up bar boxes for tournys, if the green fee makes up for the lost coins. We actually open the tables for the Monday night BCA league, if I'm not mistaken. Thanks, Tracy Elliot and Jack Murray, for your efforts in promoting that league. It's been a rousing success.

Lenny
Pockets-Tucson
 
So much to talk about. And some good bits of information from many.

I believe 12304bch is a really good 5, and has the ability to play 6 speed sometimes, but for very short bursts. I've seen him play in my league and in a few tournaments. He is in no way robbing anything :rolleyes:

The reason the AZ System hasn't even converted backwards to an ABC format is because it just doesn't make enough sense. Right now you have a 10 point scale (3 - 10-2) (Yeah, they added 3's last year). So if you want to strap Letters on it call is the ABCDEFGHIJ Scale.

For it to make sense you would have to say that 9's, 10's, 10-1's and 10-2's are all equal and are your A players. 7's and 8's would have to be equal to be B players, 6's and 5's would be the same (which you've all clearly pointed out are different based on 12304's rating) and be your C players. 4's and 3's would be D players. It just doesn't make sense. (You know what happens to an ABC format right? Pretty soon it's the Master, AA, A, B, C format, then it's the Pro, Master, AA, A, B, C, D format, etc. until you have your 9 or 10 levels that AZ currently has.)

To the point about high rated players not being allowed to play. Rooms didn't just make a rash decision on excluding players one day. Almost every room has tried the OPEN and 9 & Under formats numerous times and the results are always the same. We tried OPENS and 9 & Unders about 15 different times at Alexanders, Sweet Tooth and Stingers. Same result everytime. We get little to no support from the 9's and 10's to start, the 7's and below don't come running either. We did have 6 or 7, 9 rated players come a few times at Alexanders, and after 2 or 3 weeks the tourney was down to 7 or 8 total players and then pretty soon it was dead.

You have to understand that a large majority of lower rated players don't have 'becoming the best pool player I can' in their top 5 goals. They want to go out and play with friends, have fun, compete, and have a chance to win a little cash.

Overall I really like the Arizona Ratings and can appreciate all the thousands of hours over the past 20+ years that went into creating and morphing the system.

I jumped on the committee around 5 years ago because I hated to see all the BS Political crap between rooms ruining a good thing. It got better and then worse and better and worse. It got to a point where members only want to talk about their handful of players and everyone is too scared to hurt someones feelings by raising them. It's a no win situation for the committee. You raise someone and that person gets pissed off and stops coming to your room. So rooms stop raising people and then lose credibility with the committee and those rooms become places where people don't want to play at because people are underrated. It's a vicious cycle.

The only real way to have a steady good rating system here is to have a Paid Committee that works together as 1 solid unit. They get stat's from every TD around the state and use those along with judgements of how people actually play to come up with a report of that persons rating over a length of time. (not 1 or 2 tourneys, or a hot streak, but real stat's over months of time.) Just because someone wins 1st place in a local tourney a bunch of times, doesn't mean they should be raised. It's based on competition, race, money, turnout, draw, how they won, etc. etc. This committee would have to be made up of NON ROOM OWNERS, and have a way to show players it can be trusted.

The system today has good people coming and going from the committee. They try hard to get people rated correctly, it works for a bit, but then they get resistance, or guidance from the room owners, or whatever, and they stop giving it all. They do it for free on their own time, they call, email and meet with other members frequently, come together quarterly, discuss issues, sit with their competitors, and put their reputations on the line. They love this game and want it to succeed, often times their own pool games take a beating because of it.

I removed myself from the committee last year for various reasons.

Sorry so long.....
 
tucson9ball said:
Evan, I haven't heard anybody say that you will be raised to a 9. You played in a couple of the B/C tournaments and I don't beleive you won?

I think you are good to go as a B player at least one more season.
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Put another way, if you can't beat Jude.... you are not in jeopardy of being bumped to a 9 anytime soon. imo. <grin>
 
Just my opinion but I don't think you can have just A-B-C etc. You have to break those down as well. A player can be a C but be unable to compete evenly with other C if he is on the low end of the scale (or B or D etc) I used to have a system with 4 categories within each division. So you would have A1, A2, A3, A4; B1, B2 and so on. Every two separations in a category would be a handicapped game based on a race to seven. In other words a C4 would get 1 game from a C2. A C2 would get 2 games from a B1. So the C2 would go to 5 and the B1 to 7. The lowest number of games a player must win to win the match would be 3. In the case of a wide separation in ratings, for instance an A1 and a D4- the D4 would go to 3 and the A1 would go to 11.

Once upon a time I had a program for it but after I closed my poolroom I kind of lost track of it and it is gone forever.

Bob
 
I agree with Jerry find a way to pay maybe two members and have them do the ratings. maybe each bar throws in 10 dollars a month to do this. find two retired guys that love pool. One for the East side and one for the west side of town.
 
MIC FLY AZ said:
I agree with Jerry find a way to pay maybe two members and have them do the ratings. maybe each bar throws in 10 dollars a month to do this. find two retired guys that love pool. One for the East side and one for the west side of town.
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There was a retired guy who love pool, he is dead, BILL MOORE on the Member AZ Rating Committee, he made the round to the Bar to see player playing to help rate people fairly.

Bill had nothing to gain finically or power wise from being on the AZ Rating Committee

Bill did it because he like many player loved pool. Bill move on to the big pool room 11/2009.....RIP BILL!

One other benefits I see with NO Rating is People can not play games with their PLAY, they can not com to town get a Rating Card hiding true ability or speed, go take down a BUNCH OF TOURNAMENTS, and Leave town with a bunch of money.

Also Open Play forces you to play your best, or you will be out of the tournament 2 and out.

Open play is the rule in most places, and it seem to work well in California, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. Places I have been in the last 6 years, and play in several Pool Tournaments in these other States.

When my friend had his Two Pool Bars in the Valley years ago his Tournaments were for his customers, he catered to the C & D player, and told B’s and A’s who should up to play in the tournaments. They were not his regulars, and they could not enter his events, as they were as he said “for his Customers Only”!
 
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oneballeddie said:
OK, I'll start a new thread on this. The goal is to see if it is possible to reach consensus on what if anything should be done to improve pool in Arizona. I for one think pool is moribund if not already dead in Phoenix and the reason is not the Arizona Rating System but the way the bar owners and tournament directors implement it. Two assertions:

1. The ratings (the numbers) are actually pretty good.

When I think about it I really cannot think of any player who is grossly overrated or underrated. By and large the numbers assigned to the 10,000 or so rated players seem pretty accurate.
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I don't know how much collective will and organization exists within the AZ rating committee. But it's a no-brainer to me they need to move to Fargo Ratings.

Here's how it would work in a nutshell

(1) convert existing ratings to initial Fargo Ratings

this might be, appoximately

10 - 650
9 - 600
8 - 550
7 - 500
6 - 450
5 - 400

etc

Each of the 10,000 or whatever players in the system would have, besides an ID number, two numbers, a Fargo Rating, like 571, and a Robustness, like 200. The 200 means the player has played 200 games that have contributed to updating his rating. The higher the robustness, the slower the rating moves. But the rating moves with every match--every game even. The ID number and the Robustness are behind-the-scenes numbers. A player doesn't need to pay any attention to them.

A tournament with, say, 64 matches amongst 32 players would be reported match by match with the match scores, like

901234 903456 7 2
904431 902212 0 7

Each line is a match that says
player 1, player 2, # games player 1 won, # games player 2 won
 
mikepage said:
I don't know how much collective will and organization exists within the AZ rating committee. But it's a no-brainer to me they need to move to Fargo Ratings.

Here's how it would work in a nutshell

(1) convert existing ratings to initial Fargo Ratings

this might be, appoximately

10 - 650
9 - 600
8 - 550
7 - 500
6 - 450
5 - 400

etc

Each of the 10,000 or whatever players in the system would have, besides an ID number, two numbers, a Fargo Rating, like 571, and a Robustness, like 200. The 200 means the player has played 200 games that have contributed to updating his rating. The higher the robustness, the slower the rating moves. But the rating moves with every match--every game even. The ID number and the Robustness are behind-the-scenes numbers. A player doesn't need to pay any attention to them.

A tournament with, say, 64 matches amongst 32 players would be reported match by match with the match scores, like

901234 903456 7 2
904431 902212 0 7

Each line is a match that says
player 1, player 2, # games player 1 won, # games player 2 won
Click to expand...

Your system sounds like it could work well, it is easy to understand. I still like A, B, and C. Or A, B, C, and D.

Sadly the Arizona System is very complicated, and if you ask most who do the rating to explain the formula they use to come up with a NUMBER, they can not explain it in a simple way.

Also when I was interested in how it all worked, I noticed that some of the people doing the Rating were pure novices, and other where long time players. All representative a Bar or room, and there was no pay for being a committee member, so you got volunteers who were will to help out in some case with little real world experience.

The last glitch is the Rating are no where in Black & White but in a book for the EYES of the Committee Member ONLY.

Also in the Bars & Rooms there are no guides to how the system worked, or how a rating is assigned.

The best excuse I heard was the reason for the secret of the system was so road players could not come to town and find out who was a weak player, or strong player.
 
The AZ system is good. The only problem is when they raise someone based on the word on the street instead of raising based on facts. What they need to do is use score sheets on all tourney matches so there would be some form of stats to base their decisions on. Example, a few years ago they raised Lenny based on the word on the street. ABCD ratings are good but only if you use + and - so you can fine tune it. Then in the end it is the same as what we have now. Fact is, there is a big difference in the play of a 7 rated player vs an 8 rated player. If you used ABCD then they would be rated the same and the 9's would be in there too. IMO that is good because the 7 will have to step up and work on his game but the players in AZ will complain to no end because to them it is not fair and the with the current rating they would always get weight from an 8. So to fix that, the 8 would be a B player a 7 would be a B- and a 9 would be a B+. In the end it is the same thing we have now. The systems is great but it is abused and based on hearsay and politics. They need to use scoring and facts to rate players.
 
CocoboloCowboy said:
There was a retired guy who love pool, he is dead, BILL MOORE on the Member AZ Rating Committee, he made the round to the Bar to see player playing to help rate people fairly.

Bill had nothing to gain finically or power wise from being on the AZ Rating Committee

Bill did it because he like many player loved pool. Bill move on to the big pool room 11/2009.....RIP BILL!
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Bill and I were very good friends and spoke at length about numerous players for many years. We had a connection early on when I moved to the valley and he was part of the reason I joined the committee. Both of us had nothing financial to gain from the committtee. I was brought on as a Player Member and didn't represent any particular room.

I think the best thing the committee could do would be to have all the members be Player Reps and not room owners. (Although a large majority of the room owners on the committee are great representatives)

Here are a few stories about Bill.

http://www.azpoolscene.com/BreakingNews262.aspx (Picture is gone)
http://www.azpoolscene.com/BreakingNews161.html (He's pictured in top photo)

Bill had an extensive cue collection, but sadly they have all disappeared, many rumored to the Phillipines.

Bill let me shoot with many cues over the years and he'd often give me a cue for 2 - 3 months to, in his words "really get use to it so you know how to love a cue". RIP Bill!!!!
 
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