BCA pool league Fargo drama
- Thread starter Luxury
- Start date
I think your league should try out the system in place for a while. One night isn't a great sample size to evaluate a change.
Our league uses Fargo ratings. Here's how I understand it:
Fargo is a penalty on the back end based on an average rating of 600. For example, if you would normally spot 7 balls, and your 4 player roster has a Fargo rate under 2400 (600 X 4 players), then you keep your spot. If you're fargo rate is over 2400, you spot an additional amount. Every 10 points, or 20, or 50, or whatever, is an additional amount. There is no downward movement on the spot. Only the stronger team is "penalized" by giving extra balls.
That is, we kept our old system and added a Fargo based correction for the strongest teams.
It seems to work for our league and I haven't heard any complaints. If you have a ringer team and 10 balls actually makes a difference, well...
-td
Our league uses Fargo ratings. Here's how I understand it:
Fargo is a penalty on the back end based on an average rating of 600. For example, if you would normally spot 7 balls, and your 4 player roster has a Fargo rate under 2400 (600 X 4 players), then you keep your spot. If you're fargo rate is over 2400, you spot an additional amount. Every 10 points, or 20, or 50, or whatever, is an additional amount. There is no downward movement on the spot. Only the stronger team is "penalized" by giving extra balls.
That is, we kept our old system and added a Fargo based correction for the strongest teams.
It seems to work for our league and I haven't heard any complaints. If you have a ringer team and 10 balls actually makes a difference, well...
-td
We give up so much weight that if we lose a single game we lose that round. It’s tough but we adjusted to it. It will make you focus better and play tighter.
You guys now need to play great to win. The difference is that now the weaker teams can play great and win too.
In the beginning, yes. First session to session and a half seemed like the handicaps were way out of whack. They do adjust though and once they do it seems very fair. Actually more fair than any other handicap system I have played with.
This is what I was hoping to hear
So 2 teams have the best players in the area? And they win first and second 95% of the time? Hardly an incentive for the other teams to even bother playing. Should the other teams name themselves “Fighting for 3rd?”
Looks like they are trying to straighten up the handicap system to make it more of a level playing field. They might be on the right track but they may also need some time to fine tune everything.
Looks like they are trying to straighten up the handicap system to make it more of a level playing field. They might be on the right track but they may also need some time to fine tune everything.
Yes. It will get better. We have been all over the map - losing to the weakest teams on nights we didn't play great and beating the other strong teams by wide margins.
Now we are in 2nd place with 4 weeks to go. The added pressure has really made everyone on our team step up their game. It's been a net positive for us even if we don't win as much.
Fargorate
Here is an article that helps explain how FargoRate improves the 10-point system. We hope this helps.
It sounds like your league uses the 10-point system which previously used the "simple average" method to calculate handicaps but now it uses FargoRate to calculate handicaps. This article should help explain things.
Also, just to clarify, the BCA Pool League is a sanctioning body and we do not dictate any specific format, scoring or handicap system. Leagues are free to structure things the way they see fit.
Please contact us at 702-719-POOL if you have any questions.
Thank you.
Here is an article that helps explain how FargoRate improves the 10-point system. We hope this helps.
It sounds like your league uses the 10-point system which previously used the "simple average" method to calculate handicaps but now it uses FargoRate to calculate handicaps. This article should help explain things.
Also, just to clarify, the BCA Pool League is a sanctioning body and we do not dictate any specific format, scoring or handicap system. Leagues are free to structure things the way they see fit.
Please contact us at 702-719-POOL if you have any questions.
Thank you.
Can you post more information or send me more information privately? That's a surprising difference and leads me to think there may be an issue.
Here is roughly how it works. To get 15 points per round for 5 players using 10-point scoring requires a pretty big gap in skill, like shown here.
When the average gap is 160 points, the better team s expected to win 75% of the games. That's 3.75 out of 5. The weaker team will win 1.25. Of course you can't get fractional games in a round. But this is how it will average in the long haul.
So the better team will get 37.5 points for the games they won. And they will also get some points for the games they lose. If we guess that to be 4 points per lost game, that's another 5 points for their lost games. So an average round score for them will be 42.5
The weaker team will get 12.5 points for their wins and about 15 points for their losses. So an average round score will be 27.5.
If you are finding things way out of whack, there are a few possibilities:
(1) something is not set up right
(2) players who really play at 400 speed are playing by starter ratings of 300 or something.
???
Seeing an actual example might help clear things up. The image below comes from leaguecalc.fargorate.com
Attachments
Here are the Fargo ratings for both teams I will also attach the score sheet
Attachments
What's fargpage?!
A few comments looking at your scoresheet
(1) The two teams are almost 200 points apart in average rating. If the ratings are accurate, then in the long hall this higher-rated team will win games at nearly a 4-to-1 ratio over the lower rated team. Here they won only at a 2-to-1 ratio. So they under-performed and/or the low team over-performed.
(2) There are only 16 games in a match, so you will see some big fluctuations.
(3) Many of the players on both teams do not have established Fargo Ratings, and so starter guesses are playing a role here.
Take Joe Morris for instance.
Joe has a starter rating of 375 and a "play as" rating of 404. Here he won 3 of his 4 games beating a 620, a 534, and a 654 in rounds 2, 3, and 4. Had Joe LOST the games in round 2 or round 3, like he usually would, those rounds would have gone the other way. And had Joe lost the game against the 654 by a score of 10-3, that round too would have gone the other way.
So we're just Joe's three pretty big upset games away from the good team winning three of four rounds.
Joe, playing as a 404, not only beat the 620, 534, and 654. But with 36 points for the night, he scored higher higher than any of them overall.
I think we have a night that was supposed to be a blowout by the lower-rated team.
So it sounds like we may have started the Fargo rating system too soon before player’s actual ratings were established.
To go from giving seven balls to giving 15 balls is a bit of a shock but it sounds like it will level out thank you so much for everyone’s input
To go from giving seven balls to giving 15 balls is a bit of a shock but it sounds like it will level out thank you so much for everyone’s input
Follow up question: we live in a small county (Kitsap County) and the top two teams are all rated nines. We are fully aware that if we went and played in a more populated county that we would most likely be rated eights.
Would our Fargo ratings also be over rated Because we are consistently playing weaker players?
Would our Fargo ratings also be over rated Because we are consistently playing weaker players?
No I don't think you started too soon. I think things are about right. Your league operator might want to review his or her starter guesses.
For instance Joe Morris, who I talked about earlier has a starter of 375, and he has been performing at 456-speed for 96 games. Your league operator can bump up that 375 anywhere up to 456. But this is not that big a deal.
No. That is an effect for averages, as you say. But not for Fargo Ratings.