In the league I play we count 1 point per ball if you lose, and you get 10 pts. if you win, which is about as simple as it gets. Many leagues have much more complex handicapping systems. Why do this kind of thing at all? Would you really lose that much accuracy by simply recording wins & losses? My guess is that simply scoring a win as a 1 and a loss as a 0 would be extremely highly correlated with ball counts anyway. I seriously doubt you'd lose much accuracy.
I also think it distorts the game because you may go for points rather than the win. If you just need 4 balls to win, why bother breaking up the clustered 5th & 6th balls? Handicapping methods shouldn't reward balls made, when all the pool strategy advice tells us not to start making balls if we can't run all the way out.
Complex handicapping methods cause scoring problems, change the strategy of the game, and turn pool into bowling. Get rid of it.
BRussell:
The handicapping style you mention in your first paragraph is reminiscent of the one we used in the Boston Billiards' 8-ball leagues (which I used to run, in the now-defunct Danbury, CT branch of Boston Billiards). The intent of that system was couple-fold:
1. It gives a better idea of how each player performed in the match. For instance, if you see the match score "5 - 0", what are your thoughts? That one opponent ran over the other opponent? And if you thought that way, and based your handicapping mechanism on that, your computer (or spreadsheet, or software) would start manipulating skill levels right away -- like, "wow, so-and-so got run over, I'll have to immediately make an adjustment here for future matches." Likewise for the player that did the "running over." And that wouldn't be fair, would it? Especially if the score, yes, was 5 - 0, but each game was very close -- maybe even both players down to the 8-ball, playing a safety battle. In this case, if you show a ball count for each game in that match, it gives the handicapping a lot more information to base decisions off of.
2. It helps to curb sandbagging. Speaking from experience, one of the biggest problems we had at Boston Billiards, was APA players joining the league, using tactics and thinking they could "duff" the system with intentional losses, etc. The system we used at the time tracked not only how that person did with ball counts, etc., but also did predictive analysis against other players. The more the league went on, the more intelligent that predictive analysis became. And if a player performed w-a-y outside those predictions, it was flagged, and the league operator (me at the time) was called to clandestinely watch that player. Let's just say that more than one player was caught using sandbagging tactics, and either warned, or ejected from the league.
If you just recorded [W]ins and [L]osses, you're tossing valuable information in the trash, and just handicapped YOURSELF in being able to catch the above scenarios.
If you want to be purist about it, get rid of handicapping altogether. Because once you open that Pandora's Box, you have to open the lid all the way, otherwise, you're limiting yourself (as the TD/LO) in being able to accurately track performance.
-Sean
So, they go for it. that's kinda fun too.