We started a new type of pool league in our county of PA, which is catching on extremely quickly. In just over 1 month, we have almost 50 active members and it's still growing. Basically, it's a ladder challenge league where a committee of 5 members in the area give an initial ranking to incoming players based on ability. From there, the player can challenge the person above them and, if they win, they move up 1 spot. We instituted a $20 minimum bet, but the bet can be any amount that both players agree on. If either player doesn't want to play higher, the bet is $20. The person challenging picks the game (8b, 9b, 10b) and the player being challenged picks the table. All matches are even races to 8. A 10-day window is given to complete the challenge. If you lose a challenge, you can't challenge up again until you either defend a challenge or 5 days have passed without receiving a challenge from below you. A complete set of rules can be viewed at http://www.wchpl.com/challenge/rules
We initially began this on an existing ladder challenge website but ran into a number of issues so I decided to write our own site. This gave me the flexibility to really tailor the site to what we wanted. All challenges are issues through the site and the site controls when challenges can be made, when they expire etc. I also added a 'Side Action' page where you can place bets on matches and keep track of your profit/loss, who you owe and who owes you, mark bets as paid etc.
I'm still working on the site, dressing it up, adding functionality/options/etc, but it's pretty solid and functional as is right now. Just know that I won't be stopping work on it anytime soon and will continue to improve it. It's only about 3 weeks in the making right now.
So my thought is to make this available publicly, for people to be able to start them up in their area in a turnkey fashion. If anyone has any interest, PM me for details. I haven't decided on a price structure yet, but I'm leaning towards a nominal setup fee to start the league and then a low yearly membership fee for players. My fee per player would be set, and a league operator could have the option to charge whatever they wanted on top of that (or nothing as is the case for our area).
The site can be viewed at http://www.wchpl.com/challenge/
A lot of the site is private, so I've included some screenshots of the different areas to give you an idea of what we have so far.
We initially began this on an existing ladder challenge website but ran into a number of issues so I decided to write our own site. This gave me the flexibility to really tailor the site to what we wanted. All challenges are issues through the site and the site controls when challenges can be made, when they expire etc. I also added a 'Side Action' page where you can place bets on matches and keep track of your profit/loss, who you owe and who owes you, mark bets as paid etc.
I'm still working on the site, dressing it up, adding functionality/options/etc, but it's pretty solid and functional as is right now. Just know that I won't be stopping work on it anytime soon and will continue to improve it. It's only about 3 weeks in the making right now.
So my thought is to make this available publicly, for people to be able to start them up in their area in a turnkey fashion. If anyone has any interest, PM me for details. I haven't decided on a price structure yet, but I'm leaning towards a nominal setup fee to start the league and then a low yearly membership fee for players. My fee per player would be set, and a league operator could have the option to charge whatever they wanted on top of that (or nothing as is the case for our area).
The site can be viewed at http://www.wchpl.com/challenge/
A lot of the site is private, so I've included some screenshots of the different areas to give you an idea of what we have so far.
