Me too. But we were in the same region mostly.
A concerning change in average tournament payouts.
- Thread starter u12armresl
- Start date
I was at a tournament one time and a friend of mine bought a big name player in the Calcutta. The player did not buy half himself. So he offered it to me. I bought in.
In the money round our player dogged his ass off to the guy he rode with. It could not have been more obvious.
I looked at my buddy and he says “I knew that SOB would screw me over, he hates me!”
“Why did you buy him then?”
“Because it gives me a better chance to win the tournament if he’s trying to screw me over.” He was a favorite in the tournament too.
lol. Some friend huh?
I was going to post something similar. The losers in a tournament are more important to the success of the tournament than the winner. Because the more losers the more money. But there is only one winner. And there will always be exactly one.
I have found people doing strange things because of some interesting twists in how their mind works. I could be tempted to buy somebody that didn't like me just to piss them off. I totally wrecked one guy's weekend with a joking comment on the internet. He steamed about it all weekend totally blew his chances!
I see it pretty similarly. There are usually a small handful of people with the potential to win. Without the dozens of people behind them with no chance of winning there would be no event. You have to keep the middle group happy. There are going to be a few whiners you can never make happy too, I just write them off.
You mention the ugly thing about tournaments, only one winner, a lot of losers! If one person gets on a long hot streak it can get old. I had to quit playing in the events at a friend's bar. Too many people moved themselves back a position when I showed up. The tournaments were to attract business not annoy people!
Hu
That's only true for the smaller player-funded tournaments. There is no gate (ticket sales) because few people are interested in watching.
Compare this to a pro tournament like the Florida Open. 256 players at $250 entry. $200,000 prize fund. That's 2/3 added money ($136k added), and that's only because people are willing to pay to watch (or for the right to broadcast).
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There's a price to winning. Most won't pay it.
Being right there reminded me. The local dirt track had a rule that if you were one of the top six cars timing in you had to run in the trophy dash if you were able. I never got one component or one tank of gas for a trophy and the dashes didn't pay one red cent. The final straw, six cars flipped over in the trophy dashes one night, two end over end which usually meant heavy damage.
After that I would pull in from qualifying and tell the pit crew to pull the left front tire. I would go in the stands and watch the dashes sitting with friends that always sat by the flagstand. The flagman would ask if I was running the trophy dash. "Can't, the left front wheel fell off!" The track owner was a friend of mine and we discussed things in private. I never did run trophy dashes. A few years later I was running one shaking down a new car. A year and a half and twice what a nice new street car cost building it, sure enough somebody cut both right side tires off. Over I went!
To keep things slightly on topic, I didn't shoot pool for chrome either. I did fill a shelf to go behind the counter of my cue shop, just marketing. If a trophy came with cash I gave it to a child normally.
Hu
Trophy's didn't fit in the wallet very well. Makes sitting difficult. And painful.
