Handicap League Formatting - Ideas Needed for Standings

[stevekur1]

Hey Guys,

As you all know, I run a succesful handicapped 14.1 league at Bayshore Billiards.

I am looking for ideas on how to measure the standings.

right now i use the Win/Loss and the BPI to determine the standings.

with the amount of players we have and with the amount of weeks/matches we play i cannot use the scenarios of ( results of when Player A and Player B played) because they might not have played each other during the season.

And because the leaague is handicapped i cannot use Total Pocketted Balls because depending on thier Handicap they might not be able to reach those higher numbers.

Does anyone have any other ideas on what else i can use to help to determine the positioning for the standings ?

I am thinking of changing a few things for the upcoming summer session.

Thanks In Advance
-Steve

 

[John Biddle]

In my handicapped 14.1 league we use win/loss record, and then handicap points.

Our handicaps are a two part system with handicap points going up or down (or possibly staying the same) after every game by an amount determined by how close the loser came to achieving his target.

For the 1st 6 weeks a player is in the league these amounts are +/- 10% for loser not achieving 75% of target, and +/- 5% for loser getting 75% or more. Both winner and loser move by same %age amount, winner up, loser down.

After 6 weeks, with handicap points "well seasoned" so to speak, we drop the numbers to 0% if loser >90% of target, 3% for loser >=75% and 6% for loser <75%.

We have 18 Skill Levels, each of which is associated with a range of handicap points, 50 point ranges from our lowest to the 3rd highest. Two top ranges are 100 points.

This makes it relatively easy to use an objective (though surely imperfect) formula to adjust handicaps over time. We publish a grid of skill level vs skill level to determine the matches. Each skill level goes to 90% of the skill level one up from it, but we compound, so a 5 level difference isn't 50% but 36%. A 13 level difference is ~75%.

I've vetted this system by examining the results of every match played looking at stronger player vs weaker player (both within division and intradivision) and it stays very close to 50%, indicating to me that we're not giving weak players too much, nor too little.

We also have a 3rd tiebreaker, called bonus points, which is based on things like wins, and by how much, timeliness of matches (remember we don't all play on the same night we schedule our own, weekly high runs compared to handicap points (to normalize), etc.

It's not half as complicated to use as I've made it sound.