Here’s my CONSTRUCTIVE critique of the tournament and my ideas for improving.
1) Absolutely have to bring a 128 man bracket to a tourney that is advertising 128 max field. That’s essential to the integrity of an event IMO. A good player who often watches the brackets closely knows which matches are more critical than others to win. In this tourney the final 4 of the winners bracket finished in the top 4 of the tourney which is a positive thing, however we will never know what would have happened if the brackets were drawn correctly.
2) Handicap changes need to be evaluated by a true committee. There needs to be 5 or 6 guys with integrity that should agree on moving someone up. Jody asked me to watch several people play and everyone he asked me to watch didn’t get moved up. If SVB misses a ball a rack he can get beat by a B player. To me a B player usually ends an inning on a miss, an A player normally ends an inning on 70% safety and about 30% missed ball. A AA player mostly ends an inning where they don’t get out on a safety. A pro level player to me is someone competing in Pro events, kind of like Jamie Baraks getting 5th at the DCC, yeah he’s a pro. Josh Johnson and Don McCaughey are AA players, they may have an edge on a couple other AA players but it’s not much and they both would be big underdogs against Jess Bowman and any other legitimate pro level player. Also moving players up can not happen during a match under any circumstance. It looks really bad when a guy that started a match as a B loses a match 7-5 to the owner of the pool hall because his handicap got changed mid match. Regardless of whether it is correct or not it looks horrible on the integrity of the tourney from a visitor stand point.
3) We have to get a streaming set up local to us to be able to show the tourney in its entirety. It is not an easy job to sit and commentate and be active with the internet audience. Also when having a stream it’s a good idea to use the advertisement opportunity available. The streamers were not given anything to pump up about Big Dogs and that was a missed opportunity in my opinion. Have to always be marketing the pool room if you want people to come out and play.
4) Added money for an 8-Ball tourney was about right, I don’t think you would get many more players for an 8-Ball tourney if you add $2500. I think the entry fee was a little light though, $35 to play in an “event” makes it feel like an extended local tourney. If we want these events to feel regional size then the entry fees need to be in line with that, think about how people have no problems paying $50/event to play out of town where they incur expenses they don’t at home. I think $60 entry is inline with this type of event. Also have to consider, if people pay $35 to enter than they don’t want to spend much more than that in the Calcutta especially for themselves. We got about $2915 in the Calcutta this time and that probably could have been higher if people had more at stake to enter the event.
5) Payouts, although I don’t like really top heavy payouts, it really made a lot of sense for the top 3 to chop at the end. You could lose significantly more than you won late in the tourney. Payouts were too close and that made it a no brainer to crown no champion at the end of this thing. I almost like guaranteeing 1st place at a minimum of a $1000 and work from there. Give guys more incentive to play their hardest.
6) We need timed out matches also for this event. There were too many situations where people became restless and were complaining because they were waiting for tables to open up. Give the guys a time they will play next time and see if that works out a little better. It may or may not but its worth a shot.
7) Mini tournaments always keep people around at the end of a night. If you get a mini started about midnight with the 8 best players in the room, you will see the sweators sitting around drinking a beverage relaxing while watching their favorite players battle it out. No one wanted to play because Jamie Baraks was playing. I did get Mike Lacy, David Jordan, Taylor Anderson, Somphet, Randy, and Pedro to sign up for a $100 entry fee. Could not get an 8th player and after an hour of trying I refunded the money and gave up. In Olathe the entry fee is $300 and people are usually dying to play and everyone stays and sweats it because it’s a best of the best type challenge in a challenging ten ball game. It’s a good way to keep people spending money in the place and giving the top players a chance to stretch out and strut their stuff.
8) Tournaments have a stigma about them and there are 3 words that will help solve problems…TRANSPARENCY TRANSPARENCY TRANSPARENCY. In other words lets face it you have the bean counters there, SHOW the money and how the payouts were determined. People will always complain about their draw, do the draw somewhere where people can see it and have confidence there is no business involved. Any handicap changes and current handicaps should be shown somewhere. People want to know who’s handicap is what and what is the basis for people getting moved up. Basically anything that has to do with the tourney should be treated as public information that is shown for all to see, this boosts the integrity of the event and people do appreciate that.
That's about all I can think of at the moment, plus I am working after being in Illinois the last two days.[/QUO Great post. I think your spot on with everything except raising the entry fee. I think $35 is about right. Times are tough right now for alot of people.
