What ??? There is money in amateur pool ? Shhh....dont tell the pros...they will start sandbagging to get back to the amateur level.
APA....How does it work?
- Thread starter I Got Lucky
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What ??? There is money in amateur pool ? Shhh....dont tell the pros...they will start sandbagging to get back to the amateur level.
Thanks for all the replies. I now have a better understanding of how the league works.
If TAP is in your area.. ..
..go with TAP. Its call pocket and not slop. It has a app for score keeping and not pen and paper. TAP nationals are different locations every year unlike the APA. 25 point team limit and not 23. More data on scoring which means tighter handicaps. I could go on and on. One example of a TAP league in my area, with 2 weeks to play has 10 teams and 7 are within 2 matches from first. The tight race reflects close handicaps. Other divisions here are like this.
..go with TAP. Its call pocket and not slop. It has a app for score keeping and not pen and paper. TAP nationals are different locations every year unlike the APA. 25 point team limit and not 23. More data on scoring which means tighter handicaps. I could go on and on. One example of a TAP league in my area, with 2 weeks to play has 10 teams and 7 are within 2 matches from first. The tight race reflects close handicaps. Other divisions here are like this.
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IMHO the biggest problem with APA is not the LO but rather the team players and captains that do not mark score cards correctly. Intentional safeties are often marked incorrectly as a missed shot. A skilled player is able to rearrange the furniture without penalty when this happens, thus leading to accusations of "Sand Bagging". When the team works as a team and helps the scorekeeper by watching for infractions or deliberate safeties, it improves the experience for all players. There will always be those that try to "one up" on officials, but if they are caught and called on it, they will eventually quit.....have their skill level increased.....or be thrown off the league for unsportsman like conduct. Play your best.....do your part....and enjoy the experience.....Dan
I've seen players call impossible shots so it would get marked as a miss. Bank at a pocket that was blocked by 2 balls, no way it's going in.
USAPL got rid of marking misses or innings, they just mark wins and points, not how many times you missed or played a safe, so you can't sandbag by "calling" a shot then missing but in reality playing a safe. It's too easy for a good player to just string along a low ranked player and still win, which is where we see all those 5s playing like 6s and 7s at national events.
Not sure how all APA leagues run. Not sure what it takes for one team to win their way to Vegas opposed to another APA league. Just curious how some players can play for 20 years and never win their way to Vegas. While it appears it's a yearly vacation for other. I mean what are the odds of winning a trip to Vegas between different APA leagues and should there be a level playing field.
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Put together a Masters team with the best 4 players in your area and it's a yearly vacation.
Although I play in the APA and enjoy myself and the company of my friends on league night, this is exactly the reason the APA's handicapping system fails to work properly.
I cannot even begin to tell you how many times where at the end of the night's play that upon comparing scoresheets, the other teams scoresheets have way less (sometimes none) defensive shots than our scoresheet shows. Many times they have a disproportionate amount of innings played, with theirs showing more innings played than ours. We do amongst scorekeepers confirm between each rack as to how many innings that the previous rack was and many times their numbers are two, three, four innings higher than we had, and on rare occasion more than that.
Some say to "report this to your league operator", and I have on more than one occasion with nothing ever happening, so yes, the LO can be a part of the problem too.
I fully realize after many years playing in the APA (13), I've come to accept it for what it is...an amateur league with amateur scorekeepers. Even the APA officials know that scorekeeping is an ongoing problem as the actually have a video on their national website showing how to properly keep score (which I'd bet that a small majority of APA members have ever watched).
These days I just show up for league night with no expectations and if I play someone who I think should be ranked higher, I just try to bear down and outrun the "spot"
. I cannot see the shortcomings of the APA scorekeeping system ever changing.Maniac (should get an MVP patch for scorekeeping :thumbup
I've seen this too. In fact, I've many times seen players attempt a near-impossible shot when there were obvious easier shots on the table.
To tell you the truth, I don't think there is anything I haven't seen in all my years of APA league play. I no longer think that I will ever be surprised again.
Maniac
So who on each team keeps score?
I have to disagree. I contacted St. Louis about my handicap and was told THEY could do nothing about it - it's up to the LO to determine a handicap. If math were truly the deciding factor, then St. Louis could have looked at my winning % (currently) and made the determination of whether or not my SL should have been a seven. The comment about losing to a better player and not dropping in SL is SOOOOOOO true. If I keep losing to a player one SL higher by a score of 5 to 1, there is no way I should be a SL 6!!!!!!! APA is notorious for trying to get as many players to a much higher SL so they can get more teams. What they don't understand is that many players are raised to SL WAY above their true ability. Then they get frustrated and quit. Go figure.
Anybody can. Usually gets passed around. You get people scoring who don't mark safes which is why handicaps can be so screwy.
Of course the huge advantage of scoring down to the level of innings and safeties is that players can cheat on the sheet. Some people, or maybe a lot of people, will only play if they feel they can work/manipulate the system.
The only info to calculate ability they need is the win/loss score. Fargorate has this figured out.
I've played under several handicapping systems that used detailed inning scores. Fundamentally evil.
The only info to calculate ability they need is the win/loss score. Fargorate has this figured out.
I've played under several handicapping systems that used detailed inning scores. Fundamentally evil.
A lot of it is just a crock, the LO will raise people simply because it would look to obvious that the player is not a 7 or 8 if there wining every week, but will rate others high so that their buds that are a true 5 to 7 can keep winning by being given half a rack of wild balls and the guy they rated at a 9 but should be a 7 will never get a chance at making it to the money, it sucks but they don't care they figure that if you don't like it you can go somewhere else and play.
This is an example of a “symptom” that I hear quite a bit, as readers/posters on this
website I think we all do. I’m sure there are are some LO’s that lack the necessary
conviction to be LO’s and maintain their position and business the way it was meant to
be maintained. On the other side of that same coin there are some that are really good
at what they do and have earned the praise and respect of their customers/clientele.
I think that if people with a similar opinion to Ron Padilla stop to consider this for a
moment, they might find that unless their APA area less than 20 or 30 players, altering
this system and skill levels would be more trouble than it’s worth. When you gather that
most APA areas have multi-hundreds of players, no one player is so important that the
LO would on a weekly basis devote the necessary time to go in and change scores,
skill levels, stats, etc... I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but I don’t believe it happens to
the extent that some here would claim. When you have teams playing every night of the week,
paperwork involved, data entry, and whatever else is involved, there just isn’t
the time. I mean, what a pain in the ass it would be to constantly take time to manipulate
the numbers of a few players that are probably doing nothing in return, why do it at all.
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In the case of our LO, he did it to convince some new players to join an 8-ball team (for "survival" of that team). I got this information from one of the players that he did that for, a man, that came into the APA as a SL3 (a woman on that same team also came in as a SL2). The captain of this team confirmed the story as true. Our team had the misfortune of having to play this team on the first night the new players joined it. It wasn't pretty.
So yes, there more than likely is more than one LO on this big ol' continent of ours that doesn't play by the rules. I'm convinced that our LO did what he did as to not lose that team and the income it generates. Funny thing is, he just did it again with 2 men on a team he and his son just happen to be a member of.
That said, our LO is certainly the exception rather than the rule as I am fairly confident that most LO's are fair, hard-working people.
Like I've stated before here on AZB, an APA league can be just as good as the LO allows it to be. They may not all use it, but they have more power than we think they do.
Maniac