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Keith Buck

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I assume the reason for the large first prize compared to the second prize is publicity(it sounds better to say first prize was $350,000 than a smaller amount) but the disparity in this tour seems especially large. $350K for first, 99K for second and 80K for third).

Do you think this will increase the chance of a split between the finalists? If I had never won more than 25K in a tournament before I would be pretty quick to make a deal like the winner pays the loser 100K just so I guaranteed myself 199K.

I don't have a problem with this kind of a split since I don't think it would affect the way the players played (actually they might play better because there would be a little less pressure) since they would both want the title.
 
jjinfla said:
I doubt it. Unless they can get out of the country with their money before Uncle Sam gets his 50%.

Jake
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If they don't have SSN's, it's Kevin's responsibility to withhold the taxes. I'm certain he is not going to intentionally irritate the IRS. It's normally 30% withholding on payments to foreigners, and 1099's for the rest, but 350k$ might be treated specially.
 
Bob,
You are correct, and the IPT is being very careful in that department. I ran one of the qualifiers, and anyone who won entry to the Vegas event or even entry into another qualifier was required to fill out the tax forms, even the players from other countries. I doubt very seriously that Kevin is interested in opening any doors for the IRS to move in.
Steve
 
Bill Veeck pointed out that giving everybody in the stands a beer was a boring promotion. Give one guy 25000 beers and you are onto something. Splits should not be tolerated in the IPT and I don't think they will be. Catching them is another matter I guess.
 
Just my .02 cents

I do not think 'savers' should be tolerated in the IPT tour. I have no interest in watching a 'head-to-wallet' match with one guy dumping for a saver. I want to see head-to-head playing on all matches.

It's pretty lame when a pro gets asked how he missed that 4" cut, and he makes up some lame excuse when his grandma could have made it with her eyes closed. I also get a little tired of commentary making a shot out to be so hard when it is an easy or routine shot for a pro.
 
It would be better to take 50K off first and make it something like 300K to the winner and 150K to second place. Better distribution, more in line with other pro sports and still a substantial first prize.

I suggested it to Deno long ago, but who listens to me anyway? After all, I told him their GL index was flawed, as a way to determine who moves on in case of ties. I suggested a simple solution was to just add up Total Number Of Games Won (GW), as a way to break ties.

But hey, it ain't my tour. I'm just a guy watching from the sidelines.
 
jay helfert said:
I suggested it to Deno long ago, but who listens to me anyway? After all, I told him their GL index was flawed, as a way to determine who moves on in case of ties. I suggested a simple solution was to just add up Total Number Of Games Won (GW), as a way to break ties.

But hey, it ain't my tour. I'm just a guy watching from the sidelines.
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I believe that somewhere it was mentioned that the GLI was used because it is a time tested method used in 3 cushion, or something, in Europe. It was new to me but it does make sense.

Using GW doesn't really make sense because the winners will all get 8 wins. If you have three players who each won 3 matches they would each have 24 wins. So how do you select just one to move on. The GLI is another way of looking at an average, as in ERA in baseball. So the player who allows the least amount of wins against him is determined to be the better player of the three.

And it does add a bit of excitement to the matches because the players, and fans, can see where they stand in the GLI and what they have to maintain to move to the next round. Ask Charlie Williams. I'll bet he will pay attention to the GLI in the next tournament. A couple thousandts of a percentage point, which most likely was just one loss, cost him from moving up to the next round. Had he moved up, he could well have been the champion.

Jake
 
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If memory serves me correctly, they also take into account Break and Runs and similar data. Players had to indicate on their score sheets EXACTLY how they won and lost each game. They were told that not filling it out completely accurately could cost themselves GLI points. I don't even remember the exact formula but a number of variables were used.
 
Jay,

How do you consider the GLI system they're currently using to be flawed? And what did you recommend as far as a fix?

I suppose one factor that ought to be considered is the number of times each player gets up to the table (i.e. total innings over the match). If two players had the same # of total games lost, but one had more innings at the table than the other, I would think the player with the fewer total innings would go on (i.e. the one with the higher inning count had more chances to make things happen than the other player).
 
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jjinfla said:
I believe that somewhere it was mentioned that the GLI was used because it is a time tested method used in 3 cushion, or something, in Europe. It was new to me but it does make sense.

Using GW doesn't really make sense because the winners will all get 8 wins. If you have three players who each won 3 matches they would each have 24 wins. So how do you select just one to move on. The GLI is another way of looking at an average, as in ERA in baseball. So the player who allows the least amount of wins against him is determined to be the better player of the three.

And it does add a bit of excitement to the matches because the players, and fans, can see where they stand in the GLI and what they have to maintain to move to the next round. Ask Charlie Williams. I'll bet he will pay attention to the GLI in the next tournament. A couple thousandts of a percentage point, which most likely was just one loss, cost him from moving up to the next round. Had he moved up, he could well have been the champion.

Jake
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Jake, I'm referring to total games won, including those in losing matches. Does that begin to make sense now? It's a lot fairer than what they are currently using. And far, far simpler to compute.
 
ScottW said:
Jay,

How do you consider the GLI system they're currently using to be flawed? And what did you recommend as far as a fix?
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The GLI system is just stupid. It's flawed because you don't take the number of games won into consideration at all. I started a thread explaining this a while back in December when the KOTH was being played.

If you lose a match, you could have been totally shut out or you could have went till hill-hill (winning 7 racks)...the GLI system doesn't make any distinction. All it sees is that you lost 8 racks. (One can argue that the number of racks won in your match losses does affect you indirectly, since you're reducing your opponent's GLI...but that's like a 3rd order effect.)

Looking only at the total of games won is also unfair, because it discounts your number of losses. It only makes sense if you look at BOTH your racks won AND your racks lost. A simple winning percentage (games won over the total games played) seems like the most obvious and simple solution. Why the IPT choses only to look at the losses is beyond me.
 
Keith Buck said:
I assume the reason for the large first prize compared to the second prize is publicity(it sounds better to say first prize was $350,000 than a smaller amount) but the disparity in this tour seems especially large. $350K for first, 99K for second and 80K for third).



I love the fact that 1st place is $350,000.00. This is great for our sport.

IMO, 2nd and 3rd places ought to be in the six figures also. They can pay the rest of the field a little less to compensate for 2nd and 3rd. This would definately make bettter publicity.

John
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jsp said:
The GLI system is just stupid. It's flawed because you don't take the number of games won into consideration at all.
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Not True.

That is the first stat that is looked at (match wins) to determine the finish of the players in the group.

It is when players are tied with the number of match wins that the GLI comes into play.

Charlie Williams was in a group of 6 where 3 would advance. At the end of the day Shawn Putnam had 4 wins and Gabe Owen had 3 wins while Charlie, Ralf, George San Souci and Keith McCready all had 2 wins.

Only 1 of those 4 could advance along with Shawn and Gabe and it was determined by their GLI. Charlie Williams advanced because his GLI was 6.80 and Ralf's was 7.00.

Charlie lost a total of 34 games while Ralf lost 35.

The fewer games a player loses the better player he is. A player who wins his matches 8-0 or 8-1 is considered to dominate while a player who wins 8-7 or 8-6 squeaks by.

And with all this money at stake, and because the GLI is carried forward from day to day, each and every game is very important to the players and they better try and win each one or they soon will be out of the tournament. No feeling sorry for the opponent - no trying to help your friend. That is all left at the door.

Jake
 
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While I would tend to lean towards a stat like average games won/lost by((total games won-total games lost)/matches played) I do see one advantage to the GLI. If a player loses the lag and then gets an eight-pack put up against him/her they don't get punished for not winning a game. Did they really play worse than the player that got 18 turns at the table and lost 8-7?
 
jjinfla said:
The fewer games a player loses the better player he is. A player who wins his matches 8-0 or 8-1 is considered to dominate while a player who wins 8-7 or 8-6 squeaks by.
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Again, what about a player that loses his matches 0-8 or 1-8 compared to a player that loses his matches 7-8 or 6-8. You think there should be no distinction between the two players simply because they lost their matches? Tell that to someone who just lost his/her match to Efren 7-8.

Keith Buck said:
While I would tend to lean towards a stat like average games won/lost by((total games won-total games lost)/matches played) I do see one advantage to the GLI. If a player loses the lag and then gets an eight-pack put up against him/her they don't get punished for not winning a game. Did they really play worse than the player that got 18 turns at the table and lost 8-7?
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But look at it this way. What about the person who just ran the 8 pack. Don't you think he/she should get rewarded for stringing 8 racks in a row without letting his opponent to the table? Should this be valued exactly the same to a player that got 18 turns at the table and barely won 8-7?

Again, a straight winning percentage (racks won over total racks) would remedy both of the above situations.

EDIT: Ooops, disregard what I said about the second example. The GLI does reward the player who ran an 8-pack since he didn't lose a game. This is a situation where looking ONLY at total wins (GWI) is not a good thing. I guess the GLI is good for that one very specific example.
 
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This might be too complicated but I wonder if the best tiebreaker (after matches won, of course) might be games won per inning played. You would have to subtract innings which ended with a safety. This way a player who didn't win a game but only missed one or two shots wouldn't be hurt too much and a player who won the match without a miss or with only one or two misses would be rewarded.

examples(Score(innings): ........................................... Record ................ GW/Inning

8-7(6),8-1(2),5-8(6),0-8(1),8-5(4) ........................... 3-2(29-29) ............ 29/19=1.526

7-8(4),8-7(9),7-8(5),8-7(10),8-7(6) ......................... 3-2(38-37) ............ 38/34=1.118


In this example I think the first player played better but Total Games Won would have the second player advance.

No matter what tiebreaker you use an example can be found which doesn't seem to promote the person playing best to the next round but I think Games Won per Inning seems best to me.
 
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jjinfla said:
Not True.

That is the first stat that is looked at (match wins) to determine the finish of the players in the group.

It is when players are tied with the number of match wins that the GLI comes into play.

Charlie Williams was in a group of 6 where 3 would advance. At the end of the day Shawn Putnam had 4 wins and Gabe Owen had 3 wins while Charlie, Ralf, George San Souci and Keith McCready all had 2 wins.

Only 1 of those 4 could advance along with Shawn and Gabe and it was determined by their GLI. Charlie Williams advanced because his GLI was 6.80 and Ralf's was 7.00.

Charlie lost a total of 34 games while Ralf lost 35.

The fewer games a player loses the better player he is. A player who wins his matches 8-0 or 8-1 is considered to dominate while a player who wins 8-7 or 8-6 squeaks by.

And with all this money at stake, and because the GLI is carried forward from day to day, each and every game is very important to the players and they better try and win each one or they soon will be out of the tournament. No feeling sorry for the opponent - no trying to help your friend. That is all left at the door.

Jake
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Sorry Jake, I have to disagree. Your reasoning is flawed here.

Every match a player loses, they will lose exactly eight games. No more, no less. Every match a player wins, they will win eight games. No more, no less.

It is in the losing efforts that we find out who has played better overall. If a player loses 8-7, they have done far better (and won more games) than a player who loses a match 8-0. That is the player who should continue, and it is not necessarily the case with the present system (GLI).
 
Keith Buck said:
This might be too complicated but I wonder if the best tiebreaker (after matches won, of course) might be games won per inning played. You would have to subtract innings which ended with a safety. This way a player who didn't win a game but only missed one or two shots wouldn't be hurt too much and a player who won the match without a miss or with only one or two misses would be rewarded.

examples(Score(innings): ........................................... Record ................ GW/Inning

8-7(6),8-1(2),5-8(6),0-8(1),8-5(4) ........................... 3-2(29-29) ............ 29/19=1.526

7-8(4),8-7(9),7-8(5),8-7(10),8-7(6) ......................... 3-2(38-37) ............ 38/34=1.118


In this example I think the first player played better but Total Games Won would have the second player advance.

No matter what tiebreaker you use an example can be found which doesn't seem to promote the person playing best to the next round but I think Games Won per Inning seems best to me.
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You think a player who lost a match 8-0 played better than a player who went hill-hill with every opponent and won three of five. I like the second player in this scenario.
 
jay helfert said:
Sorry Jake, I have to disagree. Your reasoning is flawed here.

Every match a player loses, they will lose exactly eight games. No more, no less. Every match a player wins, they will win eight games. No more, no less.

It is in the losing efforts that we find out who has played better overall. If a player loses 8-7, they have done far better (and won more games) than a player who loses a match 8-0. That is the player who should continue, and it is not necessarily the case with the present system (GLI).
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Jay...looking at the total games won (only) would solve the problem of distinguishing efforts in matches lost, but it just opens up the problem of distinguishing efforts in matches won. Like I said in my previous post, looking only at games won doesn't reward you any more if you ran an 8-pack out of the gate, compared to if you won a match hill-hill.

To put it another way, if Efren wins all his 5 first round matches 8-0, and Loree Jon Jones wins all her matches 8-7, then they would have identical number of racks won (40) going into round 2 (or same GWI [8] if you divide by the total number of matches, same principle). However, it's safe to say that Efren performed much better than LJJ, so he should get rewarded with a better tie-breaker statistic.

So GLI and total racks won (or GWI) have almost exactly the same types of problems. GLI makes no distinction on how you perform in your matches lost and GWI makes no distinction on how you perform in your matches won.

GLI and GWI seem equivalent, but if I had to choose between the two I would have to pick GLI. Why? Because GLI penalizes dumping racks much more than GWI. Actually, GWI doesn't penalize dumping racks at all, since it doesn't matter how many racks you lose.

Again, you have to look at both wins and losses, so winning percentage (games won over total games) is the most fair. I understand that winning percentage doesn't penalize dumping as much as the GLI system, but it still penalizes the dumper to an extent, not to mention GLI (and GWI) is intrinscially unfair.
 
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