I am going to try and start some weekly local tournaments in my small home town to encourage more interest in pool. The pool hall here is small and only has 4 tables ( it used to have 8 ). So the tournament is going to be a small scale event.
What I was thinking of doing was to have a 8-ball tournament on the 1st and 3rd Saturday and 9-ball on 2nd and 4th Saturday. (not everyone around here plays 9)
I would like to handicap it somewhat so that lesser players have a chance. Do you think this is a bad idea or not? Remember the point of doing this is to encourage new players to get involved. But I want to keep the more advanced players interested to if possible.
What suggestions do you have? What should I avoid doing in your opinion? What rules would you use? What handicapping do you suggest if any?
BTW, this is a 100% payback tournament. I get nothing for doing this other than getting more people playing pool. The bar is getting more customers but no cut of the money.
Thank you for your help.
I've run a lot of weekly tournaments over the years, so here's my two cents:
1. Yes, you have to handicap it. Otherwise, you'll lose players quickly. Fewer than five skill levels is tough.
2. Pay small amounts of money fairly deep. If people can cash every once in a while, even if it's only getting back their entry fee, it makes them really happy, especially among the less skilled players.
3. Your less skilled players will not want single elimination. So you have to at least do an APA-style modified single elimination--losers from the first round play a miniature tournament, with two of them coming (in a 16-player bracket) back into the winners' side.
4. Double-elimination will be more popular if you can keep it moving. But if you do a standard full DE, you'll end up with people on the winners' side sitting around a long time waiting for their later matches. If you're handicapping, it's hard to do a race to three in the winners and a race to two in the losers (as the baseline from which you add/subtract games).
After a fair bit of experimenting, here's what I did and it seemed to work well:
- 8-ball winners side and 9-ball losers side, with race lengths varying from 2-2 to 2-5. If you want to speed up the 9-ball side further, you can mix game spots with ball spots -- e.g., 4-2 race and weaker player gets the call 8 instead of a 5-2 race. A ball spot is doubly-effective at speeding up the bracket because it reduces the number of games and creates the occasional really short game.
The winner of the winner's side is done for the night. Places 2-4 would play out as per a standard double-elimination chart. But I would make it so that the 2nd place payout is closer to the 1st place payout than normal, because 2nd place take a lot more time and work, whereas the 1st place winner gets to go home early with some cash. Something like $70, $55, $25, $10 if you have a $160 total pot. Even better if you can get the house to toss in a beer for 5th/6th (and a few for you).
You should be able to run this structure on 4 tables with16 players and finish the tournament within 4 hours.
5. The most common downfall of weekly tournaments is that the start time tends to creep later and later as you wait for people to show up. I found that a small fine worked well. If the standard entry is $10 and the start time is 7:00, then the entry at 7:01 is $12 and the entry at 7:15 is $14 (if there are any unplayed byes to fill). Put the extra money into the pot.
6. It can take a while to get a tournament to draw a regular crowd. You have to run a tournament even if only three players show up, or else they won't come back the next week when three different players show up. So, learn how to run a round robin tournament for when you have 3-5 players.
Good luck!
Cory
