Help Setting Up Local 9-Ball Tournament - HELP!

JAMSGOLF

JAMSGOLF

Golf & Pool-I'm addicted!
Silver Member
I tried to search the threads before I asked this one...couldn't find anything.

I'd like to hold a local 9-Ball Tournament for what will probably end up being 20-30 players max (yes, there are still people like me who live in the middle of nowhere). I have 3 tables.

Are there any suggestions (or prior posts that someone knows of) which is kind of the "Setting Up A Pool Tournament For Dummies" guideline...such as how to setup the brackets, double or single elimination, race to ???...those sort of things.

I know this will probably seem like a "no-brainer" for some of you guys/gals, but remember those books are named "...for Dummies" for people like me!

Any help will be GREATLY appreciated!
 
Well, first and foremost, I like the name of your golf sports center. You've got good taste! :thumbup:

One of the most important things to get established before the event is the rules. There are so many variations, so having them set in stone, so to speak, is helpful.

Have a players meeting before the commencement of the tournament. This will allow players to ask questions if they have any confusion about any of the rules.

Do not show favoritism. Let the players know they need to be available when their name is called. You might think about a 10-minute grace period, and after that, they will be forfeited, no exceptions.

Having a chart that can be looked at in full view by all attendees is kind of nice for everybody, so they can see what's happening.

Don't do this by yourself. Having an assistant will help field off any problems or inquiries, allowing you to concentrate on the running of the event.

Let the host room know how long you believe this tournament will take, so they will be aware of how much time will be involved. Some host room owners may get impatient while their tables are being used for tournament play. Each room is different.

HTH! :)
 
If you need brackets, you can find both single and double elimination brackets here and print them out.
http://playpool.com/downloads/

Is it being hosted in a bar? Check the condition of the equipment. Doesn't hurt to bring a couple of moosehead bridges, and half a dozen brand pieces of new chalk.

Do you have house rules in addition to BCA rules? If so, print out copies of your house tournament rules, and bring a copy of the BCA rule book. Specify what rule book you will be using.

20-30 people means a 10-15 matches in the first round alone. With 3 tables at single elimination, this could will be an all day tournament.

Best of Luck
 
If you only have access to 3 tables, make sure the races are short. Possibly very short depending on how many people you have in the tournament and how many hours/days you expect it to run.

There are plenty of online brackets to download and information to determine byes etc. You might also look at running a round robin tournament.

An easy way to run a double elimination tournament without the use of brackets, is to use a deck of cards. For a 10 player field, use 2 of each 10, J, Q, K, A. Draw the cards and the two Q's play each other and the two K's play each other, etc. That is round one. In round two, their is two sides a losers side and a winners side. Redraw the cards, winners playing winners and losers playing losers. Wash, rinse and repeat. Not too complicated, but you have to let all the games from round one finish before moving on.

As JAM said, make sure you have the rules and format decided before hand. I would suggest getting a copy of the BCA's rule book.
 
A lot of your questions can be answered by determining how long you want the tournament to last. Two C players playing a race to 5 will usually take 1/2 hour to 1 hour. So if you have 30 players, you could be looking at 4 hours or more before you even get into the 2nd round. As you can see, doing this double-elim will take anywhere from a really long time to an eternity, depending on the length of the races.

Assuming you want to start in the early/mid afternoon and finish before the chariots start turning back into pumpkins, I would recommend single-elim, races to 4, 5 or 6, depending on the average level of play. If you figure 45 min. per match, you will be looking at 7-9 hours to complete the 5 rounds of play required to find a winner.

Texas express rules are the easiest for 9-ball. Nothing spots except the 9-ball, ball-in-hand always, three fouls, etc.

Aaron
 
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Thank you everyone!!!

See, this is why I like this forum. Some things I wouldn't have thought of...

The tournament will be held at my facility, so condition of the tables, time for play will be all up to me.

You guys brought up some great points in regards to time...so it looks like a single elimination would be the way to go.

Most of the players in this area are used to APA League (8-Ball). I wanted to use this tournament as an introduction to 9-Ball. Most of the skill level in this area borders on mediocre...mostly bar shooters on teams...
 
You might wanna do a dry run with 8-12 of your regulars some night, just so you get the feel of it.

You'll also get a gauge for how long it takes to run through that size of a bracket.

When we do a 9-ball tourney at the club I belong to, we try to do a race to 2, dbl elim. But we don't start until 7:30 or so, and usually only have the 8-12 players that I mentioned. We can get that done by 10:30 or so. As opposed to a single game, dbl elim when we do 8-ball. We're pretty much mediocre league players, too.

As others have mentioned, choose the rules you want, and make sure everyone knows them at the start. A printed copy on-hand is always a good thing.

Good luck!
 
With only 3 tables I would reduce the number of players to 16. When I have run tournaments in the past I always found the draw to be the hardest part. I have it down now. I use a deck of cards. I assign one card to each player and then shuffle the cards. Draw the top card and the player assigned to that card is the first on the bracket. Rince and repeat until the bracket if full.
 
JAMSGOLF said:
See, this is why I like this forum. Some things I wouldn't have thought of...

The tournament will be held at my facility, so condition of the tables, time for play will be all up to me.

You guys brought up some great points in regards to time...so it looks like a single elimination would be the way to go. ...
Click to expand...
Here's an alternative form of single elimination that is flexible enough to fit how ever many show up. You could call it "mini-qualifiers with buy-back."

Suppose you have a two-day tourney, Saturday and Sunday.

Charge $5 or $10 for entry. As soon as you have 8 people in the room on Saturday, draw into two groups of four. Each group plays single elimination to a short race, like 3 or 4 if they are relatively weak players. Finish each group, so once a group starts it finishes as soon as possible. The winner of each group is qualified for the 16-player "main tournament" and is told to come back, for example, at 3PM on Sunday. All the players who lose and anyone new who walks in the door can get back in for another $5 or $10.

You could run the qualifiers as long as you like but you probably want to announce "last sign-ups" when it looks like it will be hard to form a full group. If you still have a lot of interest and/or new players at 10 PM on Saturday, and things are going to run too late, you could announce a last set of 4 qualifiers on Sunday morning (if that fits in with your finals schedule).

This format is very flexible for the players. If someone gets knocked out and it's dinner time, he can go have dinner and come back and sign up again when he feels like it. If someone keeps getting knocked out and wants to enter 5 times that's OK. If someone can't get there until 4PM on Saturday, that's fine too and he probably will have time to enter twice. If someone shows up at 10 PM on Saturday night, you can probably squeeze him in.

The "main tournament" is a regular single elimination. The length can be adjusted according to how long the matches have been taking, but warn the players about the possible changes. I like to seed the players who qualify first into the bracket according to the standard seeding order but that's not necessary.

If you have half-hour matches (race to 3 or 4?) you can handle 6 entries per hour on average. With 11 hours of play on Saturday, that gives 64 entries and 16 people qualified for Sunday. You can probably get 64 entries from 30 actual bodies, especially if the matches are fast and cheap.

If you wanted to, you could run some qualifiers on Friday night for the locals/regulars. You could also finish in one day if you had fewer players or the matches were shorter.

Good luck.

(P.S. My sister-in-law is from Cobleskill and I used to live in Hamilton.)
 
Rather than re-invent the wheel for the handicap chart, and having to assess the handicap for each person, look at using the APA 9-ball handicap chart and overlaying their existing APA 8-ball handicap.

http://www.poolplayers.com/equalizer.html

As much as people bash the APA, they have a system that nearly 250,000 people come back and play every week, and over 20 years of experience doing it.
 
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