The hardest one to "cheat" is the 17 point system.
10 points for a win, and a point for every ball your opponent has left.
Loser gets a point for every ball they sank.
It also separates the very good players from the great players. In most leagues, they are bunched together. With this system, there is deviation between all players.
In our league, the bottom players might be around 32 avg. The top players will be about 55 avg.
Thus, when a weak team is playing a strong team, they are getting so many HC points, that the strong team needs to do more than win, but win convincingly. The 10-7 win for the strong team is almost like a loss due to the amount of HC points.
You need to hit 12s and higher to outrun the HC. And actually, it's fun to have the pressure, you need to play well, with few mistakes not to let anyone score 5, 6 or 7 points against you.
Start everyone as a 50 HC, and after 3 weeks, use their averages. Thus all subs are a 50 until they get 3 weeks in. Thus, if folks wanna bring in someone stronger for certain teams, that's fine, but they are going to be a high HC to start.
Keep the stats continuous from one session to the next.
Five or three person format. You play each player one time. 3-person you can play each person twice.
You have 5 rounds for 5-person team, and 6 rounds for 3-person team.
And the over all points wins the "bonus" round. Thus, if you are playing the last game of the round and you already know you will win the round with no points, go ahead and sandbag, because those precious points might have put you over the top for the "overall" and won you the sixth round.
Every round counts, like a Win/loss record, and at the end of the season, those 3 or 4 rounds you pissed away trying to lower your score is going to cost you big when you miss 1st by 1 or 2 rounds, or even miss 3rd by a few rounds.
To keep it even more fair, we have "knockdown" rounds at mid-season and end of the year. There are no playoffs. You finish in first, you win.
Knock-down means you play the team next to you in the standings. 1 plays 2, 3 plays 4, etc.
Thus, the good teams have to play each other more often. the weak teams get to play other weak teams more often.
And end of year, with 1 playing 2 and beating up on each other, the 3rd place team could actually leap frog them both if they are in striking distance and kick the crap out of the fourth place team
I've played in lots of leagues, and this is by far the best format I've ever encountered.
