Handicapping a barbox 9 ball tournament

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bazkook said:

I am thinking about running a small local barbox 9 ball tournament and I need some advice on handicapping the players. There is a local APA league but the APA 9 ball ranking system has room for error(i.e. sandbagging) so that would be an unreliable system to handicap players on. Also there are some players who do not play in the APA,therefore they have no APA ranking.
I also need to keep the tournament fairly short. It would have to be over by midnight. I was thinking about starting at 7:30 PM since the tournaments that were held before were started at that time. In other words,no long races.
I was thinking something along the lines of the following.
A players would go to 5 games.
B players would go to 4 games.
C players would go to 3 games.
D players would go to 2 games.

What do you think of this system? Thanks in advance.

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You need to have at least 8 tables in order to get it done, double elimination? I would use a 2 game seperation between handicaps. 2/4/6/8.

Unless you just want the A players to win all the events.

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Have you thought about doing ball handicapps in addition to games on the wire? So you can have shorter races but an A would give the 7 or 6 to a D and they can play 4-2. A-B may be 4-3 in games with the B getting the 8 or 7. Something like that.

You could try this to give others a chance to win make it:
A.6
b.4
c.3
d.2

Unless you want the A's to win the money every week.

You could go with the "Ball Weight" option. Some tournaments like Kolby's Tuesday Night here in Tempe, AZ runs this very successfully.

You could do a race to 4 on the winners side, 3 on the losers side.

Difference in Handicap determines the handicap given.

A = 4
B = 3
C = 2
D = 1

An 'A' player would give a 'B' player the 8-ball
An 'A' player would give a 'C' player the 7-ball
An 'A' player would give a 'D' player the 7 OUT (Meaning they can make either the 7, 8 or 9 ball to win the rack)

An 'B' player would give a 'C' player the 8-ball
An 'B' player would give a 'D' player the 7-ball

An 'C' player would give a 'D' player the 8-ball

If you find that that is not enough weight because the 'A' players are just too strong you could space it out a little more by moving the weight down 1 rating. In that case the 'A' would give a 'D' player the 7 OUT and 1 game on the wire.