Is There A Handicap System That Works The Best ?
- Thread starter Mickey Qualls
- Start date
That doesn't make sense. It is used every Sunday for a handicapped 8 ball tournament, and there are a lot of the lower rated people who win the tourney. There are many matches where I have to win 7-3 or 8-2. I have never heard the lower rated people complain, just the higher rated players.
Just a cool thing to add you can even compare your rating to some great players that have played in Fargo tournaments like SVB.
Fargo System
By the way, Mike has also use the Fargo Rating System in the Straight pool league. It is amazingly accurate.
By the way, Mike has also use the Fargo Rating System in the Straight pool league. It is amazingly accurate.
FYI, the Fargo rating system is described in detail here: Fargo Rating and Handicapping System resource page
and the Fargo drill is described in detail here: Fargo Rating Drill resource page.
I hope that helps,
Dave
Last edited:
Correct, and it would easier to implement if you had the spreadsheets with the formulas already in them. I am sure you easily figure it out, but for us it isn't so easy. By the way watched Mike doing some Billiard University testing the other day.
First I want to make it perfectly clear that I like the Fargo system and spoke to Mike Page extensively about it and I am in no way knocking it.
Mike has a lot of league players which gives him more flexibility in how he schedules matches, making team handicap limits, et cetera. Read here to see how he addresses this:
http://www.fargobilliards.com/pool-tournaments/fargo-ratings/
In our league we have only one night to play and we average 90 to 100 players a session. Therefore we have the entire range from beginner to shortstop that can possibly play each other in a night. We were converting from an in-house system that incorporated ball spots and game spots and therefore the lower handicap players were getting slaughtered by the higher handicapped players. At the end of our first (and only) Fargo season the range of player ratings was from 300 to 600. Why were the lower players not standing a chance? Mainly I think it was because players had to relearn their playing strategy, which is not easy to do or teach in 10 weeks.
We went back to our old system and most people are happy although there were quite a few that did like the Fargo. The primary goal of any league (I think) is to make sure that the majority of the players feel they have a chance to win and have fun.
I didn't take it as you were knocking it. I don't think it helps lower players in our league matches either, our leagues arent handicapped, it is used to set limits on who can be on teams. The lower rated person sees the effect when you have handicapped tournaments that are a race determined by the ratings. We do have a huge advantage with all the data, I have we'll over 2000 8 ball games in the system.
It is also awesome for our straight pool league, which every individual match is handicapped.
Thanks for the info
Do you have a copy of the 8 ball program? Im told it's free but I can't find a copy of the disk
Many folks will not agree with me, but, after 27 years of playing multiple league systems that have come up with numerous handicap systems, I will refer that the best handicap system is " NONE ", where has the day gone when you went to a pool hall or local hang out and challenged the good players of the time and took your beating, watched and learned, got better. I used to save $ 50.00 when I was young and went and challenged the best around. It was how long I could make my money last as the longer it lasted, the more I learned and gained experience. All that the handicap does is create chaos and make the statements like " if it was not for all the handicap you guys got " and so forth. Also, for the teams that receive a high unworthy amount of handicap sit there and high five each other??, when eking out a victory against great players who really had to shoot almost a perfect match to win. Where's the pride in team handicap. The days of yesteryear was practice, and then practice and oh year, practice. Some years back, I missed a long table bank on my last object ball in a VNEA match for a 50-0, I posted a 46-10 score for my team and we lost the match. In 2006, I did get a 50-0 and my team won by 6 balls as VNEA's scoring system is a point for a stripe or solid and 3 for the eight ball. We spotted the other team 80 points. My feeling is set different brackets of talent, no handicap, if a player is far ahead of people, move them up a flight. If they start to whine about it, put them in the whine bracket. I'm not against fair play and all that, but, it is gotten to the point that the better you are, the more you hurt your team. So totally wrong. I'd rather get my butt beat all day long by better top notch players shooting them straight up then to beat one of them with a so called "fair" handicap against them. Time to get back to no handicap and just seeing who is actually better on a given day. Hope not to offend anyone's feelings, but, my opinion is the handicap systems just eventually erode the league and state tournaments. A number of good teams have begged our organization leaders to just have an old fashioned no handicap tournament to find out who really is our states best shooters.