BCA pool league Fargo drama

CSI Media said:
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.
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I think "we do not dictate" is a major problem.

Come up with something...... ANYTHING...... and make EVERYONE use it.

If you guys keep leaving the "loophole" schemes that some leagues obviously use.... lol... well, it will continue to suck with or without fargo.

Stop DUMBING DOWN pool for the masses and the most all of the problems will go away. Not to mention, I believe the leagues would start producing stronger players in general.
 
jrctherake said:
I think "we do not dictate" is a major problem.

Come up with something...... ANYTHING...... and make EVERYONE use it.

If you guys keep leaving the "loophole" schemes that some leagues obviously use.... lol... well, it will continue to suck with or without fargo.

Stop DUMBING DOWN pool for the masses and the most all of the problems will go away. Not to mention, I believe the leagues would start producing stronger players in general.
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ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!

The flexibility to choose whatever match format and whatever handicapping scheme for your league is the BEST feature of the BCAPL. (Our league uses no handicapping)

CSI also runs the USAPL, which DOES require each league to adopt the same match/handicapping format, utilizing Fargo ratings.
 
Sounds like your league goofed. If you use CSI LMS software you have a lot of systems you can use, e.g. 1-point, 7-point, 10-point, 14-point or FargoRate-based. All those systems will report to FargoRate to establish robustness. But only the last one will use the FR to determine handicaps. In my opinion I wouldn’t use that last one until the majority of people in your area have 200+ robustness. If the majority do not, I’d use one of the others.


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MattPoland said:
Sounds like your league goofed. If you use CSI LMS software you have a lot of systems you can use, e.g. 1-point, 7-point, 10-point, 14-point or FargoRate-based. All those systems will report to FargoRate to establish robustness. But only the last one will use the FR to determine handicaps. In my opinion I wouldn’t use that last one until the majority of people in your area have 200+ robustness. If the majority do not, I’d use one of the others.


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The plot thickens.
 
MattPoland said:
Sounds like your league goofed. If you use CSI LMS software you have a lot of systems you can use, e.g. 1-point, 7-point, 10-point, 14-point or FargoRate-based. All those systems will report to FargoRate to establish robustness. But only the last one will use the FR to determine handicaps. In my opinion I wouldn’t use that last one until the majority of people in your area have 200+ robustness. If the majority do not, I’d use one of the others.


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I don't agree with this. Whatever local knowledge you would use WITHOUT Fargo Ratings you could just use in setting Starter Guesses, and then you are no worse for the wear.

You can use FargoRate handicaps with 1-point, 10-point, or 14-point scoring.
 
We had the same problem with usapl when it first started here but to be fair to the lo he was pretty accurate with the starter ratings of most players. A few were off then we had guys who decided to sandbag .

How do I know they were sandbagging ? I was an apa 5/5 at the time ....now a 5/6 and after the second session I was spotting an apa 7/8 and an apa 7/9 points. And another 7/9 was only spotting me 4 points.
 
mikepage said:
I don't agree with this. Whatever local knowledge you would use WITHOUT Fargo Ratings you could just use in setting Starter Guesses, and then you are no worse for the wear.



You can use FargoRate handicaps with 1-point, 10-point, or 14-point scoring.
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In my opinion that’s kind of a big IF. I bet you or I could setup reasonable starter ratings but I definitely wouldn’t expect that from my current league director. If the teams on this thread had bad starter ratings then it kind of serves as an example of my point. I’m not saying it can’t work but I do feel my statement would be a reasonable strategy.


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MattPoland said:
In my opinion that’s kind of a big IF. I bet you or I could setup reasonable starter ratings but I definitely wouldn’t expect that from my current league director. If the teams on this thread had bad starter ratings then it kind of serves as an example of my point. I’m not saying it can’t work but I do feel my statement would be a reasonable strategy.

[...]
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I don't know what "if" you are referring to.

I think I need to explain my point more clearly. Let us assume you have a league and that you want to handicap the play. That's a given.

If you have well established Fargo Ratings, then all is good.

But suppose you have the opposite extreme--nobody had any games at all in FargoRate. What is the best thing to do?
I contend the best thing to do is to convert ANY knowledge you have about how people play from ANY mechanism as well as you can into Fargo-Rating Guesses. Import those, and let the system take over.

If you have no knowledge at all of how anybody plays, give everybody the same starter guess and let things evolve from there.
If you have SOME knowledge, say APA numbers or local A,B, C ratings or averages from previous league seasons, then the best thing you can do is convert those to starter guess and let the system take over.

Why is this?

YOU may think John needs two games on the wire to five from Bill and John can give one game on the wire to 5 to Mary and so forth. By converting these estimates to rating differences, the system now knows reasonable--as reasonable as your guessed input--matchups between any of the people, like between Mary and Bill. That is, the system reflects your judgment for situations you have actually considered, and it extends your judgment in a consistent way to situations you haven't considered. There is internal consistency to everything. And the system can estimate points if you use point scoring. Further, this approach is self correcting. new data moves ratings in the right direction.

A key is you lose nothing by converting your judgment to effective Fargo Ratings and you gain a lot.
 
mikepage said:
I don't know what "if" you are referring to.



I think I need to explain my point more clearly. Let us assume you have a league and that you want to handicap the play. That's a given.



If you have well established Fargo Ratings, then all is good.



But suppose you have the opposite extreme--nobody had any games at all in FargoRate. What is the best thing to do?

I contend the best thing to do is to convert ANY knowledge you have about how people play from ANY mechanism as well as you can into Fargo-Rating Guesses. Import those, and let the system take over.



If you have no knowledge at all of how anybody plays, give everybody the same starter guess and let things evolve from there.

If you have SOME knowledge, say APA numbers or local A,B, C ratings or averages from previous league seasons, then the best thing you can do is convert those to starter guess and let the system take over.



Why is this?



YOU may think John needs two games on the wire to five from Bill and John can give one game on the wire to 5 to Mary and so forth. By converting these estimates to rating differences, the system now knows reasonable--as reasonable as your guessed input--matchups between any of the people, like between Mary and Bill. That is, the system reflects your judgment for situations you have actually considered, and it extends your judgment in a consistent way to situations you haven't considered. There is internal consistency to everything. And the system can estimate points if you use point scoring. Further, this approach is self correcting. new data moves ratings in the right direction.



A key is you lose nothing by converting your judgment to effective Fargo Ratings and you gain a lot.
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I understand 100% of what you’re saying. The “big IF” is that my league operator would understand absolutely nothing you just wrote. 0%. And the players in my league would have to live with the consequences of that reality. 200+ players with the same starter rating of 525 because my league operator doesn’t want help and doesn’t care to understand technology.


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MattPoland said:
I understand 100% of what you’re saying. The “big IF” is that my league operator would understand absolutely nothing you just wrote. 0%. And the players in my league would have to live with the consequences of that reality. 200+ players with the same starter rating of 525 because my league operator doesn’t want help and doesn’t care to understand technology.


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In your case, I would think it would take a LLLOOONNNGGGGG time for fargorate to self adjust the 525 starting point of 200+ players. It would eventually work itself out but it would most definitely be a nightmare for a while.

Just "1" more reason I literally hate league play in general.

Leagues, in general, guarantee one thing like clockwork. That one thing is always: "drama" with very little "action".

The best of luck to your league, Sir!
 
MattPoland said:
I understand 100% of what you’re saying. The “big IF” is that my league operator would understand absolutely nothing you just wrote. 0%. And the players in my league would have to live with the consequences of that reality. 200+ players with the same starter rating of 525 because my league operator doesn’t want help and doesn’t care to understand technology.

[...]
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Your league operator doesn't have to understand that. If your league does nothing at all now to rate your 200+ players, then there is nothing lost by putting in 450 for everybody, right? And halfway through the league season people would be falling into line.

If your league does anything at all to rate players now, then that information can be incorporated. Your league operator doesn't need to understand. One thing your league operator could do is put players into 3 categories

A. Known lower-level players
B. Unknown players and known middle-level players
C. known upper-level players

And we can help from there.
 
Our BCA, league operator asked us players what handicap system we preferred. We all as a league voted too keep using the regular ball count system. The reason we didnt go with Fargo is it takes too long like 200 games too average out. That takes too long if you only play 1 or 2 nights a week. You all should talk too your league operator. Or call Ozzy Reynolds @CSI/BCA he can handle most of your questions and concerns. He's an awesome guy and very knowledgeable about league concerns. Hope this helps. Harry Munro, Nitewolf Billiards
 
Luxury said:
Our local BCA league has converted to using Fargo ratings for handicaps. If you’re not familiar with how the BCA league works the handicap system used to be you were rated 1 to 10. If you were on a team that had players that were all rated eight and he played a team that had players that were all rated sevens you would give up four balls per round.

Well we are now using our Fargo ratings for our handicap and last night was the first night. My team would have given up seven balls using the old handicap system but using the Fargo rate system we gave up 15 balls.

There are two teams in our league that has the top rated players and we have taken turns taking first and second place 95% of the time. Both of these teams lost every round last night. Everyone thinks it is way out of line and there are some people that are very upset.

Is this going on nationwide?
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I find that the Fargo ratings, if the handicaps are actually correct, and in league play, makes the better player play better than the weaker player to win. It also depends on the rules. If the game winner ball is nothing but another point or two, the handicap is very little. In USAPL the game winner is worth 14 pts and the loser gets 1 pt per ball they made. So a high handicap can run out the rack, miss an 9 ball and the other player can be on the hill already with the better player needing to basically shut them out from making any balls for next 4-5-6 games. 8 ball is a bit easier but with the ball count and handicaps it's still possible to win almost every game as a high handicap and lose because the weaker player ran some balls on you. I have beaten players 5-1 in games and still lost.
 
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Nitewolf said:
Our BCA, league operator asked us players what handicap system we preferred. We all as a league voted too keep using the regular ball count system. The reason we didnt go with Fargo is it takes too long like 200 games too average out. That takes too long if you only play 1 or 2 nights a week. You all should talk too your league operator. Or call Ozzy Reynolds @CSI/BCA he can handle most of your questions and concerns. He's an awesome guy and very knowledgeable about league concerns. Hope this helps. Harry Munro, Nitewolf Billiards
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Fargo should be able to input the existing matches and handicaps into their system form the old league games. When my USAPL league went from their handicap system to Fargo all the players ended up with all their games played in the system. So day 1 of Fargo I had over 1,000 games in the system.

I am just guessing here, but that is how our change over to Fargo went, all the existing players were automatically established.
 
hang-the-9 said:
Fargo should be able to input the existing matches and handicaps into their system form the old league games. When my USAPL league went from their handicap system to Fargo all the players ended up with all their games played in the system. So day 1 of Fargo I had over 1,000 games in the system.

I am just guessing here, but that is how our change over to Fargo went, all the existing players were automatically established.
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That is correct. When Fargo ratings first came out I was able to input almost 10 years of old games, and instantly our entire league had a qualified handicap.
 
sbpoolleague said:
That is correct. When Fargo ratings first came out I was able to input almost 10 years of old games, and instantly our entire league had a qualified handicap.
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How long did it take you to do that and how many 4 man teams did you have in the league?


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Luxury said:
How long did it take you to do that and how many 4 man teams did you have in the league?


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We have on average 24 five-player teams in our league. We play one session per week. Each player plays three games per session. We play on average 36 weeks of regular season play per year. Our league has input data from as far back as October 2007.

Because I wrote my own database and database access software, it was fairly easy for me to extract the game info from my files and create a properly formatted Excel spreadsheet to send to Mike Page at FargoRate. The whole initial process took a couple of hours. I then wrote web-based software that will allow me to choose a date range on our league website, push a button, and have the whole properly formatted spreadsheet created in seconds for download.

I have the Excel spreadsheet format if you want it. You basically need 10 columns with the following data:
PLAYER 1 FARGO ID
PLAYER 1 NAME
PLAYER 1 MATCH SCORE
PLAYER 2 FARGO ID
PLAYER 2 NAME
PLAYER 2 MATCH SCORE
MATCH DATE
GAME TYPE (8/9/10 BALL)
TABLE SIZE (7/8/9 ft)
EVENT (eg. Winter 2019 Week 7)

Let me know if you need help.

Chris
 
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wow, that seems very simple, that's one row for each match?

...so, on Mikes end, excel is recognized by his setup and inputs as it reads?
and, if there's 2 games per matchup, would it be as simple as an 11th column with GAME 1, 2, rowed in order?
 
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