Handicapping a High Run Contest in a League

Dan White

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I'm playing in a little 14.1 league lately with about 10 players. The current handicap has players going to different point totals. One guy plays to 90, some to 75, down to the weakest who plays to something like 43 balls. The top two are in the money, and now that there are 10 instead of the usual 7 or 8, there will be a nominal payout for 3rd place.

Given that there are now so many players (10 :embarrassed2:) I was wondering whether a high run contest can be constructed. Rather than try to reinvent the wheel I figure plenty of people here already know the answers. So how do you do it? If you can't handicap it somehow, nobody but the better shooters will participate. Can you simply weight the high run according to their handicap? The 90 handicap guy gets credit for each ball he runs, while the 43 handicap guy gets 90/43 times the number of balls in his high run. Does that work, or no?

Thanks.
 
Hi Dan,

I don't think that will quite work. I play in the Big Daddy's league near Baltimore, MD. We have about 18 players right now that play in two separate divisions. You play everyone in your division twice.

In the first division we have Shaun Wilkie who runs over 100 a couple of times per session. His handicap is 200. The lowest in our group is rated about 100. But they would have absolutely no chance of running 50. Their high run for the session would likely be around 28 or even less.

It's not a horrendous scheme but I bet one of your top 2 players will win a high run contest.

Andy
 
Dan White said:
I'm playing in a little 14.1 league lately with about 10 players. The current handicap has players going to different point totals. One guy plays to 90, some to 75, down to the weakest who plays to something like 43 balls. The top two are in the money, and now that there are 10 instead of the usual 7 or 8, there will be a nominal payout for 3rd place.

Given that there are now so many players (10 :embarrassed2:) I was wondering whether a high run contest can be constructed. Rather than try to reinvent the wheel I figure plenty of people here already know the answers. So how do you do it? If you can't handicap it somehow, nobody but the better shooters will participate. Can you simply weight the high run according to their handicap? The 90 handicap guy gets credit for each ball he runs, while the 43 handicap guy gets 90/43 times the number of balls in his high run. Does that work, or no?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
The league I played in around here had a handicapped high run award. The LO devised a table that related rating to a run goal for each player, with higher-rated players having higher run goals. The high run was based on % of goal achieved. You could start the table at some percentage of the game played to and adjust the slope after the fact, or you could look at past run history and try to do some kind of fit to the data you have. Our league had 100% handicaps so that each match was intended to be 50-50.
 
Maybe it could be voluntary participation so that only the guys who think they have a shot will enter.


alinco said:
Hi Dan,

I don't think that will quite work. I play in the Big Daddy's league near Baltimore, MD. We have about 18 players right now that play in two separate divisions. You play everyone in your division twice.

In the first division we have Shaun Wilkie who runs over 100 a couple of times per session. His handicap is 200. The lowest in our group is rated about 100. But they would have absolutely no chance of running 50. Their high run for the session would likely be around 28 or even less.

It's not a horrendous scheme but I bet one of your top 2 players will win a high run contest.

Andy
Click to expand...
 
Dan White said:
Could you expand on that, Bob? I don't quite understand, particularly about "some percentage of the game played."
Click to expand...
I just meant a handicap system like the one you mentioned where each player has a winning score. You called that score a handicap but around here the equivalent would be called a rating, so the better player has a higher rating and has to pocket more balls to win.

In the league here there is a high run "goal" for each rating. Higher ratings have higher goals. A run is expressed as a percentage of the goal. The system you suggested below effectively sets the goal equal to the handicap for each player.

That might work, but I think it is likely to skew the payouts to one end. You could start with that as the goal for each player but you may need to adjust. Suppose the payouts are seriously skewed to favor the high end. Then you could adjust the goal table by adding 20 balls to the high run goal for the highest handicap and subtracting 5 from the goal of the lowest handicap (and making it a smooth taper between). The advantage of having a table is that you can adjust things which you can't do if you have a straight percentage.

If you have any high run data from previous seasons, you could do a dry run and maybe adjust the table before it goes live.

(The handicap system used around here does not have a fixed number of balls for each player to make. The ratio is about the same for any match between two players, but if A and B want to play a short match, it might be 50-70 while if they have time for a regular match, it might be 70-100. The ratings are on an arbitrary scale that ranges from 400 to 800 and the ratings are adjusted after each match by a little. The scale is non-linear so a 700 is about half as good as an 800 and a 600 is about half as good as a 700.)
 
Bob Jewett said:
In the league here there is a high run "goal" for each rating. Higher ratings have higher goals. A run is expressed as a percentage of the goal. The system you suggested below effectively sets the goal equal to the handicap for each player.
Click to expand...

That makes sense. So if one guy has to reach 90 to win and has a run of 60 then his high run percentage would be 67% of his high run goal (which is also his total needed to win the match). Another player going to 40 might run 30 balls when the planets align, and so might win the high run pot with a 75%. If low "handicap" guys keep winning the pot then those goals get increased. Of course if one particular guy keeps winning then the problem will take care of itself as his point total will increase by 5 balls or so each time he finishes in the money. He'll top out somewhere and stop winning.

I'll suggest that one to the LO and see if he has any interest.

Thanks, Bob!
 
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