IndyOrganizer
New member
Does anyone have a good system to use for a APA Skill Level Handicap 9 ball tournament that doesnt use the ball count method and instead a Game count method?
APA Skill Levels Non Ball Count Tournament Handicaps
- Thread starter IndyOrganizer
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IndyOrganizer
New member
whats regular 9 Ball rules?, The point of using apa skill levels is to have a handicap
Smash break, slop counts, you have to hit the lowest ball on the table first or it is a foul, ball in hand anywhere for any foul even on the break, the nine ball is the only ball that counts and when it is made legally the shooter gets one point and the game is over. There are some other relatively unimportant details you can find here:
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As for an answer to your question....
Use the same number of racks won as for eight ball. Like if a 3 plays a 7, how many racks does each need in your normal matches?
Use the same number of racks won as for eight ball. Like if a 3 plays a 7, how many racks does each need in your normal matches?
IndyOrganizer
New member
Just add extra games for the 8-9 skill levels that 8 ball doesnt go to?
Probably a good idea. You may have to adjust the spots from experience after the first event.
FargoRate is going to give you more accurate spots and has three levels of handicap -- mild, medium, and strong -- depending on how much advantage you want to give to the better player. If you are going to run handicapped nine ball, FargoRate will probably work a lot better. It has much finer divisions of skill level.
It would probably be simpler to win the number of games in your Sill Level (i.e. an SL3 has to win 3 games). If you start to try and use the 8-ball games-to-win chart, it will get confusing for certain matchups, and doesn't accommodate SL8 and SL 9 anyway. Easier for a non APA tournament to just "play to the handicap".
That can be a bit long if there are more than a handful of players. A 6-5 race or 7-6 or something can take a while if things are not setup for that long of a race.
I would translate APA ratings to Fargo and then use the Fargo matchup scaling like this, with maybe dropping the even races to 3-3 if there is a time limit. R4 is a decent race to use that is a good balance between a fair matchup and time constraints.
This has a pretty comprehensive chart of matchups https://poolplayermatchups.com/appa/fr-race-charts/8-Ball/ Note it does not go by Fargo ratings but by the difference between the players, so it's not like a 550 goes to this and a 650 goes to that, it's by a point difference between the payers.
I just came back from of year tournament, 8 ball. We played the session using the R4 races, the tournament was R3, I had to play a 4-2 race then three 5-2 races in a row to win, so the R3 favors the the better player a bit more than the higher races. I do have to say if this was 9 ball the results would very likely have been different due to the nature of 9 ball being much tougher on the player if you make a mistake on the last couple of balls. I feel pretty safe with a 5-2 race with someone a 100 pts bellow me in 8 ball since I know they still need to run out if I make a mistake, if we played 9 ball, a missed 9 puts them on the hill and who knows what can happen after, 9 on the break, early combo for them, I can make another mistake in the 5 racks I need late in the game and set them up. 9 ball is a game more suited to longer races for higher handicaps than 8 ball has to be.
The point here is that if this is a 9 ball tournament, the longer the race that is picked, the more it will favor the better player, while for 8 ball it can be OK with a shorter race where the better players don't need to play perfect every rack to survive.
The point here is that if this is a 9 ball tournament, the longer the race that is picked, the more it will favor the better player, while for 8 ball it can be OK with a shorter race where the better players don't need to play perfect every rack to survive.
I agree, and that's the reason games on the wire isn't used much as a spot in 9-Ball when players match up. 9-Ball and games like it are games where it's not unusual to win while doing much less "work" than your opponent, so handicapping based on wins/losses alone is very hard and won't always give you a good idea of who is the better player or by how much. Interestingly enough, the better the two players are the truer that handicap will be. But if you're using the handicap to spot games, it's probably best to use a handicap based on games won/lost, and not APA handicaps based on balls made.
In my area, they ran a handicapped 9-ball tournament that was pretty fair and worked well.
All of the player skill levels were between SL3 and SL7. Everyone races to their handicap. So a SL3 playing a SL6 would be a 3-6 race. A SL5 playing a SL7 would be 5-7 race. Very simple.
The tournament director would assign the skill levels to each player based on his own opinion and feedback from others. It roughly related to APA rankings as follows:
APA 1-4 (C players and below): SL 3
APA 5-6 (Borderline B/C players): SL 4
APA 7-8 (Solid B players): SL 5
APA 9 (Borderline A/B players): SL 6
APA 9 (Solid A players): SL 7
If someone showed up who was exceptionally strong they would be a SL8, but that was rare. We never made anyone a SL2 because a race to 2 in 9-ball is too short and people rarely played tournaments who were that bad.
This tournament was played on barboxes. If playing on 9-footers I would reduce the race lengths.
All of the player skill levels were between SL3 and SL7. Everyone races to their handicap. So a SL3 playing a SL6 would be a 3-6 race. A SL5 playing a SL7 would be 5-7 race. Very simple.
The tournament director would assign the skill levels to each player based on his own opinion and feedback from others. It roughly related to APA rankings as follows:
APA 1-4 (C players and below): SL 3
APA 5-6 (Borderline B/C players): SL 4
APA 7-8 (Solid B players): SL 5
APA 9 (Borderline A/B players): SL 6
APA 9 (Solid A players): SL 7
If someone showed up who was exceptionally strong they would be a SL8, but that was rare. We never made anyone a SL2 because a race to 2 in 9-ball is too short and people rarely played tournaments who were that bad.
This tournament was played on barboxes. If playing on 9-footers I would reduce the race lengths.
There were two successful handicapped nine ball leagues in this area that had game spots. It worked well. Now that we have FargoRate it is dead simple to set up nine ball spots by wins/losses.
I think the Arizona system (prior to their changeover to FR) was all game spots.
Which skill levels do you expect to show up? A “race to your skill level concept” works unless you have a bunch of 6’s and 7’s showing up, along with a single SL-1 thrown in the mix.
You can modify by saying SL-1 through SL-3 need 3-racks. However, if you’re expecting nothing but SL-1 through SL-4 to show up, you’re better off retaining the differentiation in the lower skill levels.
You can modify by saying SL-1 through SL-3 need 3-racks. However, if you’re expecting nothing but SL-1 through SL-4 to show up, you’re better off retaining the differentiation in the lower skill levels.
I know nothing about the leagues of which you speak, but my first guess is they were all or almost all better players. Game spots in 9-Ball get better when the players are better (as I said previously). But then again, if you're scoring by game and you want to have a league, game spots are just about your only option so it doesn't surprise me that there are some successful ones. It's not very good but it's all we have and we want to have a 9-Ball league, so we'll make it work, that kind of thing.
If you really want to get something steady and reliable going, and can run your tournaments from online brackets, you should start using Fargo. Even if people in your area are don't have ratings, you can assign them. Contact the people at Fargorate and they can start tracking your tournaments.
The leagues were the USPPA and the NPL. There was a wide range of players. I used to give the weakest player in the room 10-2.
I've heard of those. Funny though, I've never heard the word "successful" associated with them. Popular, maybe. But I do believe the system you use and the races don't matter as much as the people in the group and the person running it. If you make it fun players will play. Conversely, you can have the best and most accurate system in the world and the wrong person in charge, and it's hard to sustain.