I'm only in my second session in APA, so I don't have a big history to draw on. But I've been in plenty of other organized sports/competitions, and the match-up game is quite similar. Here's how we played it on our team last session, which worked out pretty well (won our League and our Tri-Cup State qualifier).
During the session, we matched up handicap-to-handicap pretty much the entire season, when we could. The goal was to win as many matches as we could, for standings sake. Trying to win at least 4 out of 5 each week if possible. (Only the top three in our league are automatically in the session-end playoffs, plus one wild card). When we got to the playoffs and the state qualifier, we switched up, as we only had to win 3 out of 5 to move on. So we put our SL7 up against a lower handicap, and our SL6 up against one of the opposing teams better players, tho not the best. Usually another SL6. Our SL6 is strong for our league, so that was to our advantage. Our SL4 is one of those "strong 4's" that has been mentioned here, he can play with most SL5's, and occasionally some SL6's. Then we had myself (SL3, supposed to be strong for a three) and our other SL3, who is also pretty strong amoung threes for our league. With those matchups we got 3 out of 5 every time, it worked perfectly. We only had to go to the 5th game once, in the League championship.
I expect we'll do the same the rest of this session, and into the playoffs and States. Of course, our handicaps will probably be different. I expect that I'll go up to a 4 before the end of the session, and our other 3 might as well. That will definetely make us change strategy! That makes it fun, for me. I like the chess match, figuring matchups. Now that I'm in my second session, I've seen most of these players at least once. It's pretty cool to work the choices.
*** Update *** I just checked. After this weeks win, I'm now an SL4. Guess we'll have to re-work those match-ups now!
