Local "LADDERS" in your poolroom. Any interest?

[dirtypool40]

Guys, trying to come up with ideas to help a local poolroom grow with local players, and foster interest in the lesser played games.

Back in the day we used to play "Ladders", like a slow pecking order league / tournament that got us to come in during the week, and sorted out who was top dog in a certain game in this particular room.

For those unfamiliar, it would work something like this.

Each player pays something like $10 entry and $5 a match.

You draw for initial ranking, 1-16. You can challenge up to 2 spots above you. If you win, you swap places. You "issue a challenge" and they have say 3 days to respond, or you take their place.

You would pay the room either flat rate ($5 mentioned above) or some reduced rate to play your match.

There are enough weeks that who ever drew #16 still has a chance to finish 1st.

Give out prize $ and a spot on a plaque maybe.

The options are endless:

8-ball
9-ball
10-ball
1-pocket
14.1 (I played one of these as a kid just to get to play all the old guys cheap)

Anyone doing something like this with any success?

Would a straight "round robin" style league with a seeded tournament at the end be better?
Thanks....

 

[JoeW]

I wrote a Pocket Billiards Ladder System several years ago. It was later published by BCA with several additions by their staff. It is no longer available from BCA but I have my original version and it is available (for free) from my web site as indicated below. All of the "fluff" has been removed and only the "guts" of the system are needed to set up whatever type of ladder one wants. I think that ladders are a lot of fun. However, the sharks do not care for them as player rankings become obvious over time.

http://www.sunburstselect.com/PBReview/PocketBilliardsLadderl.htm

I later found that the ladder can be placed on a piece of galvanized sheet metal. Rubberized 1" X 10' magnitized tape can be purchased inexpensively from Home Depot and player names can be written with a magic marker on 2" piece of magnet. It is a small matter to move the name tags around as needed.