soyale
Well-known member
No, i didn't say everything needs to be fair.
again, i don’t care. I just dont think you can compare the NFL to low level pool.
Should All Skill Levels Have an Equal Chance to Win a Weekly 9-Ball Handicapped Tournament?
- Thread starter ChrisinNC
- Start date
If you think this “everything needs to be fair” mentality is only directed toward low level pool, you haven’t been paying attention.
soyale
Well-known member
there are no handicaps in any of our major tournaments among high level pros as far as i am aware ? please correct me if i am mistaken.
Bottom line, if our weekly tournament was an open on handicap tournament, how many players do you think we would get? Yeah, it might be an awesome small tournament for the 6-8 players we would get, but not a whole lot of $ in the purse, even if we held an auction to bid off all the players.
We already have two tournaments a week, one in which the higher skilled players are not allowed to play in. Yeah, I guess if I wanted to have another late night here, I could make that 3 tournaments a week and have an open non-handicapped tournament.
I'm speaking of society in general.
I get it, you are running a business and have to look at the big picture. I'm generally not opposed to a typical handicapped tournament if the handicaps are reasonable, but when it turns into a situation where the TD is catering to the whining of the weaker players to make it even more "fair" is what I have a problem with. I've seen it happen to the extent a player didn't think the spot was fair (post match) and literally cried (shed tears) and the TD allowed the match to be replayed.
DeeDeeCues
Well-known member
How is that fair? Talented and hardworking people should have an advantage, of you might as well toss coins.
I would not run a handicapped 9-ball tournament... too much whining about who gets what handicap.
My solution is to restrict the winners from playing the following week(s).
Let's assume that you pay the top three finishers.
If so, restrict the 1st place finisher from playing for 3 weeks... 2 weeks for 2nd place and one week for the 3rd place finisher.
That way, the lesser skilled players stand a better chance to finish in the money without having to handicap your tournaments.
My solution is to restrict the winners from playing the following week(s).
Let's assume that you pay the top three finishers.
If so, restrict the 1st place finisher from playing for 3 weeks... 2 weeks for 2nd place and one week for the 3rd place finisher.
That way, the lesser skilled players stand a better chance to finish in the money without having to handicap your tournaments.
Many here seem to be complaining about handicapped tournaments, I don't understand why though, if you don't like them don't play in them, find an open tournament, simple as that. I understand why there must be handicapped tournaments, pool players aren't exactly breaking the doors down to shoot pool and business owners have bills to pay if they are to stay in business. When I played league there was always a bar or 2 that had open tables before league, the places were always packed by people who don't play for that bar and were not playing there that night, they just came for the free pool, the place cleared out 15 minutes before the start of league. The owners were lucky if the players even bought a drink. Then there are the players who talk to bar owners to get them to sponsor them by paying their entry fees to tournaments if the bar owner also buys them a shirt with the establishments name. I don't know how many pool players go to a new bar because they saw someone wearing a shirt with the name of the establishment on it, I know that I never did, doesn't seem like an effective way to be profitable. Now the elite think that tournament's should cater to them. The bottom line is that it seems room owners need to draw in a fair amount of people to be profitable, if you shut out the biggest percentage of players, the casual players, they only hurt themselves. As far as a low level player "learning" by getting his ass kicked in tournaments or gambling with higher level players what exactly do they learn from the better shooter? Even if that better shooter verbally tells them something they still need to put it in practice and learn on the table what they were told. If someone aske me "how do you draw the cue ball" me simply telling them to hit it low doesn't mean they are going to walk up to the table and draw the cue ball a full table length, they need to put in a lot of practice with that new info.
tomatoshooter
Well-known member
I agree, you don't learn much from getting run over. I do think you learn from playing better players and getting beaten but there Is a limit. Then again, a big handicap doesn't seem like it would teach much either. I'd rather have two divisions.
I prefer the Fargo limited tournaments the best, like 625 and under, 540 and under etc.
This is only possible in a location/area where there are enough players to fill more than one division. For many rooms, there are not enough players to do that.
If you are going to do handicapping, I think using FargoRate is the best way to go:
It keeps track of player performance and so reduces the complaints about rating favoritism. It is automatic if you report matches so there is less work to do. It is easy to report matches as only the game scores are entered.
It provides a set of handicapping charts that allows you to choose how much advantage the better player has (small, medium, large). Note that the charts never give the weaker player an advantage.
There are good handicapping systems and bad handicapping systems.fair means everyone gets an equal chance handicap.
then how they do that day decides by how well they played in that days tournament.
that is fair.
fair isnt letting the best players take most or all of the weaker players money on the premise that they have to pay to play with them.
then how they do that day decides by how well they played in that days tournament.
that is fair.
fair isnt letting the best players take most or all of the weaker players money on the premise that they have to pay to play with them.
Going back to the original question, which I'll rephrase as: Should 100% handicaps be used in local weekly tournaments?
Several local leagues of both nine ball and 14.1 have used 100% handicaps successfully. I think it increases the number of players you get even though you will lose some at the high end. Another local league gave some advantage to the better players (65-35?) and it was successful too.
(Going back to the FargoRate handicapping charts, you could have some days/events with "mild" handicaps and some with "hot" handicaps. "Hot" gives less advantage to the better players but not zero. "Mild" gives a considerable advantage to the better player but still makes it possible for the weak player to win with much better than usual play and/or bad play by the better player.)
Several local leagues of both nine ball and 14.1 have used 100% handicaps successfully. I think it increases the number of players you get even though you will lose some at the high end. Another local league gave some advantage to the better players (65-35?) and it was successful too.
(Going back to the FargoRate handicapping charts, you could have some days/events with "mild" handicaps and some with "hot" handicaps. "Hot" gives less advantage to the better players but not zero. "Mild" gives a considerable advantage to the better player but still makes it possible for the weak player to win with much better than usual play and/or bad play by the better player.)
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DeeDeeCues
Well-known member
That isn't what fair means. That is socialism.
Just about everything in the NFL is handicapped. Hard salary cap. That handicaps rich owners and leads to parity. The worst teams draft first. Waiver wire goes by record. Schedule set giving worse teams easier schedule. Franchise tag. Why? Because parity leads to interest which leads to TV ratings and money. So what is likely to build interest in pool. Best pool players and best run NFL franchises still have an edge. And the NFL owners know that the “handicapping” has made them billions.
It’d be nice if @mikepage could add an “Even” category to the app which creates races as close to 50:50 odds as possible. “Hot” races still tend to give the stronger player a 55-60% chance of winning, even on races to 11.
For example, for a 500 vs a 600, the Hot race to 11 is 8-14, which gives the stronger player a 60.1% chance of winning, while a 7-14 race gives the weaker player a 52.1% chance of winning.
Side note: this screen confused me for a long time, as there’s no handy help function or intuition to know what Hot-Medium-Mild mean:
It also has three other UX issues: redundancy in the 3 columns, race lengths get returned which are longer than the one you specify, and no ability to specify races longer than 11.
My suggestion to simplify it would be to have an entry field for as long a race as you wanted, then a single column of race setups with odds to the right, something like this, where the race closest to 50:50 is highlighted:
Race to: 20
| Race Setup | Odds of Stronger Player Winning |
| 8-20 | 27.5% |
| 9-20 | 37.7% |
| 10-20 | 48.3% Closest |
| 11-20 | 58.5% |
| 12-20 | 67.7% |
| 13-20 | 75.7% |
Willowbrook Wolfy
Going pro
Forget all this fargorate bs and all that. Who gives a shit?
Look at the numbers. A 6-2 race? Someone having to win triple the games is more than enough spot for anybody competitive in a tournament. Anyone who doesn’t feel so is just a loser or a crybaby. A tournament is supposed to be a competition. What happened to “May the best man win”? Now it’s more of “let me hold your hand to the finals”. Some of you all treat your competition better than you treat your significant others.
Look at the numbers. A 6-2 race? Someone having to win triple the games is more than enough spot for anybody competitive in a tournament. Anyone who doesn’t feel so is just a loser or a crybaby. A tournament is supposed to be a competition. What happened to “May the best man win”? Now it’s more of “let me hold your hand to the finals”. Some of you all treat your competition better than you treat your significant others.
There's some truth to that.
The OP does. That's why he brought the subject up.