Update on the Des Moines pool scene

SKUNKBOY said:
Handicapping: Two tournaments, A's and above and B's and below...no handicap. BUT, you are still stuck with placement:confused:.

Please don't 'oil up' for the group hug...might tarnish your reputations:D.

L8R...Ken
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C'mon Ken then no one would have the nuts...that's no fun.
 
mikeyfrost said:
There's one big difference though. Brian the B player spends money on drinks and actually makes the tournament economically viable. Andy the A player drinks water and iced tea for the whole tournament trying to get the money! Businesses need B players to make them go.
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Hey, why can't it Brad, Bob, Barney or Billy the B player? Why does it have to be Brian the B player who drinks too much?...lol
 
mikeyfrost said:
There's one big difference though. Brian the B player spends money on drinks and actually makes the tournament economically viable. Andy the A player drinks water and iced tea for the whole tournament trying to get the money! Businesses need B players to make them go.
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Therein lies the problem. You are addressing this as a business decision and I am addressing it as a player. You cant make everyone happy, pick a side. lol

Handicapping = great for business bad for players.

btw. I drink a lot of Tea :)
 
T-dog said:
Therein lies the problem. You are addressing this as a business decision and I am addressing it as a player. You cant make everyone happy, pick a side. lol

Handicapping = great for business bad for players.

btw. I drink a lot of Tea :)
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You give me the 8 playing 10 ball, is a game on the wire really out of line? Plus it's a cheap tourney, 1st place would be around a $100 the way I am adding it up in my head. No one would get rich off of it, but at 1PM or 2PM on Saturday that's a good time to come out and play and enjoy the day. Still have time to hit other tourneys and rob them. Plus when you get the right mix in the same room, coins get flipped and cash changes hands.
 
The only way to improve this game is to give people the opportunity to excel. Whatever level that is. People need to get out of the league mentality and see the world isn't flat.

Sadly the APA is the largest league there is. Those players need to get out and see there is more to pool then complaining/worrying about handicaps. Our DSM APA league has something like 140 teams, at say 6 players a team, to account for some dupes. So 800ish players and most of them don't even know who the top 20 players are in DSM. They think if you're a 7 you are one of the top shooters.

Start with the largest source of potential players and build from there.

I must say also that handicapping people don't give them a reason to get better.
 
Richardson said:
They think if you're a 7 you are one of the top shooters.

QUOTE]

You mean this isn't true? I think they should make it so you can go to a 9 in 8 ball just like 9 ball. If you are an 8 your opponent has to win one game and they win the match. If you are a 9 your opponent has to drive a ball to the rail legally after the break and they win the match! That would be pretty tough to have to break and run the set.

Edit...better win the lag!
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mikeyfrost said:
You give me the 8 playing 10 ball, is a game on the wire really out of line? Plus it's a cheap tourney, 1st place would be around a $100 the way I am adding it up in my head. No one would get rich off of it, but at 1PM or 2PM on Saturday that's a good time to come out and play and enjoy the day. Still have time to hit other tourneys and rob them. Plus when you get the right mix in the same room, coins get flipped and cash changes hands.
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No, its not out of hand but, with handicapping there are always going to be instances where the handicap is out of line. Your scenario above makes perfect sense but, when you try to apply that across the board and you have new players, out of state players, players who havent played in awhile, well......it gets quite complicated. As a player the best chance of me NOT being screwed by handicaps is to not have them.

Another note is that once you make handicapped tournament the norm, you can never have a successful open tourney. All the players that get spots in handicapped tournaments are not going to come out to these. They will get the mentality that if cant win with handicaps, how can they win.
 
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T-dog said:
No, its not out of hand but, with handicapping there are always going to be instances where the handicap is out of line. Your scenario above makes perfect sense but, when you try to apply that across the board and you have new players, out of state players, players who havent played in awhile, well......it gets quite complicated. As a player the best chance of me NOT being screwed by handicaps is to not have them.

Another note is that once you make handicapped tournament the norm, you can never have a successful open tourney. All the players that get spots in handicapped tournaments are not going to come out to these. They will get the mentality that if cant win with handicaps, how can they win.
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Yeah but they can't win an Open tourney that's why they need a handicap tourney. I understand needing the "filler" players to come but you know like I know that ain't gonna cut it.

I was really thinking about ten ball with wild ball spots for handicap but I feel like that might be hard to explain to people that don't gamble. A AAA player gives the 7 out in Ten Ball to a C player. That would be rough considering balls on the break in that mix. Everyone would have a chance if we moved to even races and wild ball spots. In 2010 the handicapped tournament definitely is hard to dispute at local levels. Open tourneys are not good for local tourneys but definitely good for regional tourneys where the players may not be as known.
 
are we not in the age of the internet?

Why can't we have dsmpoolplayers or someone else have a site. Post the results of tournaments (Handicapped or otherwise) - tally results.

Jody's records on the Sunday 9-ball is a great example. I didn't finish much better, but I saw my 'average' go up a tick or two.

If we tallied all the tournaments in DM, wouldn't we get a pretty good average of where folks place? And then, we could reasonably determine handicaps based on performance data instead of 'subjective observance'.

It would take some data - but if we automate a website, we could track all the information we could get.

Just a thought...
 
deadstroke7 said:
are we not in the age of the internet?

Why can't we have dsmpoolplayers or someone else have a site. Post the results of tournaments (Handicapped or otherwise) - tally results.

Jody's records on the Sunday 9-ball is a great example. I didn't finish much better, but I saw my 'average' go up a tick or two.

If we tallied all the tournaments in DM, wouldn't we get a pretty good average of where folks place? And then, we could reasonably determine handicaps based on performance data instead of 'subjective observance'.

It would take some data - but if we automate a website, we could track all the information we could get.

Just a thought...
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Fargo Ratings. Only helps dsm guys tho.
 
Keep in mind this is all effort by volunteering. A Fargo rating would be real nice for each player however who's buying the computer to manage the data, whos crunching the numbers, and how much does that job pay?
 
mikeyfrost said:
Keep in mind this is all effort by volunteering. A Fargo rating would be real nice for each player however who's buying the computer to manage the data, whos crunching the numbers, and how much does that job pay?
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Enter data = tourney director ( take all of 2 minutes?)
Computation = faster than a terabyte. No need for sliderule or full time employment.

Dunno. But there has to be some solution to the dilemma.
 
deadstroke7 said:
Enter data = tourney director ( take all of 2 minutes?)
Computation = faster than a terabyte. No need for sliderule or full time employment.

Dunno. But there has to be some solution to the dilemma.
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I process a ton of data for work and its never taken two minutes. How do you get every tourney director to do it? That's something that would have to be undertaken by someone and babied. They'd have to go around and collect results from all tourneys to be effective. The part that gets complicated is it's not all based on how you finish. A part of maintaining handicaps is how you do against what handicap. If I am a B player and roll every A player and can't give up a game to a C player and win and I bat about 50% against other B players, what's my handicap?

You need to record the scores of all the races played. That gives you a much better picture. You move a guy up cause he snaps a tourney off right? How does that balance out against the 20 other tourneys where you go two and out. Everyone knows sometimes you get a good draw and then it seems like upsets happen that benefit you, that's not a reason to penalize a person.
 
mikeyfrost said:
http://www.fargobilliards.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/fargoratings.pdf

Thats the fargo ratings, you read that and realize thats based on every match. Handicap constantly fluctuating within a small tolerance, you need a laptop and to be entering the scores in properly at all times. Also need to be honest when getting the scores of matches.

Not a free job IMO.
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Not sure if you guys are aware of this, but we have quite a few "high-end' IT professionals in our pool community that could build a tournament database in their sleep. John Borden-Networking, Scott Yates-Programming, Brian Dodson-Database, just to name a few. Heck, we could pull off some corporate embesselment while we are at is also. I think we could get the data from people that volunteer to run these tournaments if we hava some sort of system in place. What about making it a business? Form some sort of a Des Moines Pool Board of Directors committee(Voted in of course). It would be like running a league. Have poeple pay a nominal fee, just like in the APA,BCA, or Valley to be a part of this. You do not have to participate if you don't want to. If you want to play in a sponsored tournament you will just be rated accordingly and pay a little more. I can almost guarantee that we can find people to volunteer to do alot of this, just because they love the game. Look at Julie Guzman, do you think she gets paid to do dsmpoolplayers.com.....NO.

There are alot of people with a lot of good ideas in Des Moines....lets put them to work. Rome wasn't built in a day!!!... but it did burn down a couple of times...lol.:dance:

Just an early morning half asleep thought........zzzzzzzzz
 
mikeyfrost said:
There's one big difference though. Brian the B player spends money on drinks and actually makes the tournament economically viable. Andy the A player drinks water and iced tea for the whole tournament trying to get the money! Businesses need B players to make them go.
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As one of those B players, I'd like to say why I did not play...

First, the weather was nice and I have a house and pool and May is the month of prep work where any nice day is spent outside.

Second, I don't want to spend even rainy, cool days stuck inside a pool hall, not to mention TWO days if I play well. So, if I play, my motivation for winning diminishes greatly and half way though the thing, I'm wondering why I put myself inside all weekend and that affects my play to where I'm subconsciously trying to LOSE ! I hate that. What's the use?

I like tourneys that start at the scheduled time :eek: and end before midnight. Nothing good happens after midnight, if you know what I mean. If one started at 7 pm and the winner could walk out with the cash at 11 pm, I'd show up more often and my wife wouldn't care.

I've always thought that the first round only should be a race to 4 or whatever and the rest of the rounds a race to ONE, no losers' bracket. This gives the lessor player at least a few games to play and a chance in the later matches to take off a good player. The good players had better pay attention. The final match could be adjusted based on ending the thing at 11 pm. Everyone could have a few drinks and still survive the tourney intact.

That's my opinion, fwiw,

Jeff Livingston

PS EDIT...Fug the handicap, too.
 
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