APA SL Q - Based on 'Bud Light'

[Janhaus]

I've now had some experience with APA, having played a couple of seasons and want to ask perhaps a dumb question - how do people actually drop SL in APA?!
There's numerous posts about sandbagging and handicap manipulation etc. but assuming the bud light "https://billiards.colostate.edu/faq/rating/apa-equalizer/" system is accurate, the 'applied score' mechanism pretty much prevents that, i.e. you can only sandbag if you actually lose, not just play a lot of innings.

Help me out in my thinking here with a scenario. From simplicity, suppose a player new to APA has played 20 matches with a 100% winrate and is now a SL7 (8-ball).
If the bud light system is correct, then any match player wins for the next 20 matches will have inning score of 1.1~1.9 applied, regardless of actual innings, i.e. their average innings will be <2 for any won game regardless. B/c system takes the 10 best scores from the last 20 scores... the only way for the player to drop is to accumulate 'losses' that will factor into the calcs, i.e. get on hill and lose, for a 1-2 score in APA, while playing poorly in those games and getting a high average innings count. Unless the inning count is super high, they may need a good number of these in the next 20 matches, while averaging higher than a 2+ inning/game.

Example, over the next 20 matches, player gets:
10 Lost matches
5 Won Matches at ~1.5 innings/game (via applied SL)
5 Lost-But Got-1-Point Matches at ~3 innings/game
Best 10 out of last 20 games = 5*1.5+5*3 = Avg innings/game of 2+ <- finally drop to SL6

In thinking through the implications of this, it appears that the system will move players up over time, fairly quickly too...but this doesn't seem fully right with what I'm observing. For example, I have a teammate with 10+ years in APA, currently a SL3, with a winrate that's about 40%. He has auto-magically have been able to achieve what I've described above over the course of 10 years, naturally?

Is this right? Does this align with what you've seen?

 

[BigBoof]

If you play in nationals in Vegas, you lock your skill level. Otherwise, you can only drop one level back. I think anything else requires LO intervention. A friend had a stroke and was reduced.

I bet a factor in play for your 10-year 3 is that he is also facing 3s. He can win a match in lots of innings, while a 7 is facing low innings, win or lose. I bet a 7 would have to face low SLs also for them to have a chance to drop. Again, the system does not want that to happen.

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[Janhaus]

Hmmm I've seen a couple players drop 1 level across the last season, but the highest I've seen was from a 6 to a 5. Too bad I'm not on their team, no visibility into their inning stats

 

[hang-the-9]

I am always amazed how someone can play in a league for more than a few years, and not rise up above basically beginner levels. 10 years as a 3, you should improve past that even by accident just by the time spent randomly learning to make balls even if there is no learning behind it.

Only way to stay low is to have a high inning count, combined with a smaller factor of win/loss ratio. I know, and heard about, many players with a very good win record that are still low because they take 3-4-5 turns each game. It should not be very easy to go up or drop unless the player has just started league and has a small number of games in the system so the handicaps are not bouncing around every week. I am not sure how long it takes, but I know in TAP when I went to a 7, it has taken me a about 4 weeks of bad results to drop to a 6 briefly.

 

[Zerksies]

I'm not an APA handicapping expert, but I think they are going with the 50/50 win rate. If you win half your matches at your current level your staying the same hanidicap. If you start winning more then half you're going up. If you start losing more you might go down a level. But no one is ever going to go from a SL7 to a SL2

 

[Tom1234]

Don’t waste your time guys. Straight from St. Louis; your hcp is what your LO “THINKS” it is. Notwithstanding the health issues I’ve had, with the accompanying loses, my hcp has not dropped. I even went one session without winning a single match; no change. I rarely make above 40 balls in nine ball, still a seven. It sucks having to spot people better than me 8-10 balls.

 

[Rickhem]

I have a guy on my 8 ball team that dropped from a 5 to a 4 last session. Multi year player, in the league since 2013, with well over 300 matches in the system. He went 0-8 prior to that drop, and it was feeling pretty suspicious to the rest of us on the team. He also plays on at least one team in another APA league operator's area, and apparently he's doing well there. I don't know if "the equalizer" takes account of all matches played, or just those in a specific league operator's area, but he dropped in our league, not in the other. Others on our team kept asking if he was loosing on purpose, and he sure did find ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory a few times, but he told me he was trying.
He's a good shooter, I played him first in the playoffs, and he got us a sweep, so he delivered when we needed it. But if the question was can you drop handicap from poor play, I'd say it's yes, cause I saw it happen.

 

[BigBoof]

I have a guy on my 8 ball team that dropped from a 5 to a 4 last session. Multi year player, in the league since 2013, with well over 300 matches in the system. He went 0-8 prior to that drop, and it was feeling pretty suspicious to the rest of us on the team. He also plays on at least one team in another APA league operator's area, and apparently he's doing well there. I don't know if "the equalizer" takes account of all matches played, or just those in a specific league operator's area, but he dropped in our league, not in the other. Others on our team kept asking if he was loosing on purpose, and he sure did find ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory a few times, but he told me he was trying.
He's a good shooter, I played him first in the playoffs, and he got us a sweep, so he delivered when we needed it. But if the question was can you drop handicap from poor play, I'd say it's yes, cause I saw it happen.

Like I had said, one level is possible. I think you even see it in your account, lowest achievable level or something like that.

Your player looks like the definition of sandbagging. Did he get raised immediately after that playoff round?

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[Rickhem]

Like I had said, one level is possible. I think you even see it in your account, lowest achievable level or something like that.

Your player looks like the definition of sandbagging. Did he get raised immediately after that playoff round?

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He's still a 4. And yes, classic sandbagging if you ask me. He played for years on a team that is full of them. He's a nice enough guy but definitely has his own agenda for some things.
I've had a guy on his old team miss an 8 ball with ball-in-hand on an empty table. My player made her last ball but scratched, so he got BIH on the eight. This is a guy that's been a 6, but is now a 5, and it was in a weekly match where they had just won the first three matches, and he was shooting for a rackless.....except that he missed that 8.
Unfortunately, there are many different strategies for the different definitions of success in APA pool.

 

[Janhaus]

Don’t waste your time guys. Straight from St. Louis; your hcp is what your LO “THINKS” it is. Notwithstanding the health issues I’ve had, with the accompanying loses, my hcp has not dropped. I even went one session without winning a single match; no change. I rarely make above 40 balls in nine ball, still a seven. It sucks having to spot people better than me 8-10 balls.

I think you're in the situation I showed in my example, having to lose like 75% of your matches to drop. The revealed system doesn't show what 9ball calcs look like but if it's similar then man, that's a lotta losses...