I was actually wondering if the league management system has all of the functionality you just described (and the ones I mentioned) that is missing from the fairmatch site. I’d buy it in a minute if it did, even though I’d never play in a league again if you put a gun to my face!
Realistically, I think Mike Page is missing a HUGE revenue stream, with the way he is handling Fargorate... The entire Fargorate system maps extremely closely to the rating system used by the United States Chess Federation (USCF).
The USCF allows local clubs to run tournaments of any size, and the results of the tournaments are inserted into the USCF database and do affect ratings.
It seems like it would be simple enough to write a $20.00 app that charges $5.00 per tournament, and inserts results directly into the Fargorate database. That way, players can set up their own tournaments and get THEMSELVES into Fargorate, without having to worry about going to a national level event, or to worry about whether their particular league operator pays for the Fargorate league management software. It would only take 1 or 2 players with preexisting Fargorates in the tourney to get valid ratings for the rest.
I mean, realistically, Fargorate has the potential to make Mike Page a millionaire within 2-3 years, with minimal work required past getting the software out there. Given that the value is in the database itself, no one can come in and write another app to displace him.
There are a very large number of European players with no Fargorates, because they never play in tournaments/leagues that use Fargorate. I can pretty much tell you right now that Germans would JUMP at the chance to run their local tournaments/leagues and get the results into Fargorate, if they could just get the software. The Germans LOVE measuring their improvement, and they don't gamble much, so I doubt they'd care much about getting their speed "clocked".
Shoot, if Mike Page would let me buy a franchise or something like that, I would actually work on getting Fargorate out to the German league system.
Fargorate has been around WAY too long for it to be as small scale as it is. The USCF rating system is the one thing responsible for keeping people involved with chess. People will study/practice for many hours just to see a 50 point increase in their USCF rating. I see no reason why this would be any different with pool. The issue is, the only way people have of getting themselves into the system right now is through national events, and national leagues. If this were the case in chess, USCF ratings would not be nearly as attractive.
