Was asked to run local tournaments, but I'm in a bit of a pickle

I used to run a weekly 8-ball barbox tourney in San Diego on Sunday nights. We usually had 10-12 players, but it wouldn't be uncommon for us to have 16 or 18. 16 players on two tables took about 3 hours for single game races and double elimination.

Some thoughts:

As others pointed out, the single game 8-ball format can be prime for upsets. Anyone can win one game of 8B. Upset galore. As such, I wouldn't bother handicapping it. Just limit the number of consecutive weeks a player can win in a row. One isn't enough, two is the right number.

Random draw using pills drawn from a bottle.

Start on time. No late entries.

Keep the night moving. Smoke breaks kill momentum. Tell the players they get no grace period before their match if you call their name. Be there, or beware.

Try adding a side pot as a bonus for the players. 8-ball break pot or 10-ball rotation pot. Everyone kicks in an extra Buck with their entry. 8B on break wins 75% of the current pot. The rest rolls over. OR Conduct a random draw during the night for a player to try the 10-ball runout. Have the runout contest right before the championship. Draw winner gets to break the 10-ball rack. Must make a ball on break to continue. After that, it's 10-ball rotation against the ghost until he misses. Shooter gets 10% of the pot for every ball made in rotation.

Another spin on the weekly tourney: Have a 6 week session, 5 weeks of play and a 6th week for an invitational tourney. Reserve a small takeout of the weekly pots and roll over for the 6th week. This works best when the bar kicks in added money each week. Rank the top 10 (or 5) finishers each week and assign point for each finish position. After week 5, add up points for each players in the 5 weeks. Invite the top 8 or 12 or 16 points finishers to the week 6 tourney. You can seed their order based on points, or not. Add the takeout reserve to the entries. This format will keep the regulars coming back for more, and let the lucky winner cash on a bigger payday.

Weed out the ringers and attitudes. No one want their weekly tourney to become an ATM withdrawal for a shortstop. Likewise, no one wants to play with a bunch of hotheads and jerks. It's YOUR job to filter out the riff raff.

Good luck.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
make it fun and they will come

Kadillac said:
A local bar owner approached me and asked me to run weekly (non-league) cash tournaments in her bar. She wants to get players in neighboring towns to come play in the tournaments, and maybe have big charity tournaments to bring in more players.

That's all well and good, and I'd be delighted to do it, but there are a couple of problems. Any advice on how to overcome these obstacles would be appreciated.

1: The tables are sub par, not well maintained and not level. I offered to replace all of the tables with brand new equipment, but the bar owner does not want to offend the current equipment owner and league operator. I don't feel like players will be inclined to want to travel to play on equipment that is not good quality.

2: There are only 4 tables in the bar, and they are not positioned well. There just isn't adequate space to shoot. We have had tournaments with about 17 people, and 4 tables are just not enough for more players than that, much less a big tournament.

3: I have no idea what to do about a handicap system for a non-league tournament, no way to even the playing field between between the beginners and the league players with high averages.

4: She wants to have the tournaments on Tuesday nights. Horrible night! People have to work the next day, and players will not travel during the week to play (we live in the middle of nowhere).

Help! LOL
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Things like the break contest definitely keep people coming, especially when the dollars in the pot get pretty big.

I'm ten years or so out of date but I have stayed in Vernal a handful of times while prowling the country East and North up in the corner of the state. while you don't have a huge population to work with you also don't have much competition for the time and dollars of the players.

I am going to second, third, or forty-third, try to dodge handicapping. Nobody is happy with a handicap system, seems that way anyway. If someone comes in top two or top four after you get over twenty players for a set number of weeks, probably two or three, then they have to skip a week. Putting a bounty on the top player(s) can be a good thing. A drawing from among the players for a pretty nice prize every week can be effective too. Try to keep things fresh and fun. I do have to say, more often than not running weekly tournaments is setting yourself up for a lot of misery, you may get lucky though.

I think you are lucky now, I absolutely loved that corner of Utah. A might airish in the wintertime though for a south Louisiana country boy!

Hu
 
If you fill up without handicaps, that's fine, but if you need a little leveling to get a good crowd, there are fair, open handicapping methods available. If you keep the system hidden and the adjustments subjective you will have problems.
 
Kadillac...Stay away from handicaps. If you want to do teams or scotch doubles (men/women) just do a blind draw for who plays with whom. Much easier and less headaches.

Scott Lee
http://poolknowledge.com

Kadillac said:
Good idea!! I will do that, instead. I'm sure I could come up with some free entry certificates! Thanks!

The reason I want to handicap (or at least score) the players is because I want to keep track of the players on my website by rank. That way, if we decide to do team tournaments or anything, I can handicap the teams accordingly, and players can keep track of their progress.
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Scott Lee said:
Kadillac...Stay away from handicaps. If you want to do teams or scotch doubles (men/women) just do a blind draw for who plays with whom. Much easier and less headaches.

Scott Lee
http://poolknowledge.com
Click to expand...

I was also going to suggest a blind draw scotch doubles format. Note that scotch doubles doesn't need to be guy/girl (that's Jack & Jill) and forcing half of your field to be female is probably not a good idea for a weekly tournament. Scotch doubles just means 2v2 where you alternate between every shot instead of every turn. So when your partner makes a shot it's your turn and then if you make one, it goes back to your partner. No shooting until you miss. This evens the playing field by a lot, especially with a blind draw.

I run a weekly tournament out of a bar which used to be #10ball. The same guy would show up every week, not drink, and win the whole tournament 80% of the time. I am not a fan of kicking people out of my tournaments for being too good, so instead I changed the format to blind draw scotch doubles #8ball. My thinking was that even if he could continue to dominate with a random partner, at least he'd be bringing someone new up with him each week.

This tournament is still going strong under the scotch doubles format. I had one guy (good player) tell me that he thought I was crazy when I first proposed it but after seeing it in action, he saw the "genius" of it all. It's the most social tournament I've been at and the lower skill players always have a good chance to pair with a top shooter and do really well.

Instead of being fully blind, I ended up doing the draw semi-random. My system ranks everyone based on past performance and separates everyone who shows up that week into two groups, top-half and bottom-half. It then pairs the partners randomly between the two groups, so if you have a few people who always do well, they won't end up as partners. This doesn't stop strong teams all together, but it does help even out who is winning and keeps everything fair.

Cheers,
Larry
 
GeoEnvi said:
OR Conduct a random draw during the night for a player to try the 10-ball runout. Have the runout contest right before the championship. Draw winner gets to break the 10-ball rack. Must make a ball on break to continue. After that, it's 10-ball rotation against the ghost until he misses. Shooter gets 10% of the pot for every ball made in rotation.
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I run a break pot very similar to this during the scotch doubles tournament that I posted about earlier. I've refined the way it works a few times to help keep it fun and keep people coming back. By far the best addition I made was to make it a progressive payout based on attendance. Aside from it being 9ball, the way it works is very similar to GeoEnvi's description above, but instead of getting 10% for every ball, the percentage is based on the previous two tournaments...

If you showed up and played in both tournaments the two weeks prior to tonight's, then you get the full 10% per ball. If you played in only one out of the two then you get 5% per ball. And if this is your first time or if you've taken a 2+ week break, then you only get 2.5% per ball made. This keeps people wanting to show up so that they can go for the higher payout. Your loyal players who show up every week will always go for 10% while players who come at least every other week will stay at 5% and new players can still make some good cash when the pot grows.

One other difference is that I don't wait quite until the championship to draw the tickets. It depends how many players there are and how much money is in the pot. The goal is usually to do it after at least one or two losers side rounds take place, so that the losers don't leave immediately after getting kicked out of the tournament. If you wait until the finals every week, then I could see some players leaving early anyways, especially when the pot is on the low side. The more money in the pot, the more leeway you probably have to start it later, but I still try to keep it somewhat consistent.

Also, I pull a ticket until someone wins money. This means it could be only one ticket if the first guy does well, or it could take many pulls, but this way someone is guarenteed to make money each week. (Our record so far is 11 pulled tickets!) Remember, someone has to make one on the break AND follow it up with another legal shot.

I'm attaching a flow chart that I post near the table to help explain the rules. The format of this break pot really does help with attendance. Let me know if you have any questions about it.

Cheers,
Larry
 

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Good Responses

I see that a large number of people have offered excellent input for your project. You will do well. Customize what they give you for your location and it will succeed.

Carl
 
One of my favorites tournaments I used to play in was on a Wednesday night in a kind of dive with 3-4 tables that were not perfect at all.
It was a blind draw scotch doubles tournament and the only handicap was that the director would make sure that the top players didnt get paired together.
It was a race to one 8 ball and I even saw the director give the weaker team the break some times.

There were $1 beers and it was a good time. We had 32 teams a lot of weeks and at least 16+ each week. Cash prizes and the owner would give out some gift certificate things for sandwiches etc. He even had us order a bunch of oddball pool items from Muellers once and he gave those out also.

I think many times the best tournaments don't cater to serious and better players but rather to a group of people looking for a good time.
Sometimes tourneys need to be fun.

Break Pots are a good way to get people interested in coming. Kick it off with something and then add a buck a player each week from the players. Draw 2 people and have them try and make it on the break. Winner gets a % of pot and the rest stays in for the next week and on and on.

I ran a tourney years ago and one of the bars rules was that one person right after the brackets were drawn was pulled from a hat and got their entry free for the next week free. Everyone like a chance to win.

LOL sorry I missed page 2! Just noticed almost everything I posted is above.. Your in good hands
 
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The way the location did our blind draw was bottle caps...

Two of a bunch of kinds were put in a bag and you drew. If I got Bud Light then I found whomever drew the other bud light and we were Team Bud Light for the night.

Not real hard to find a bunch of types of caps and its better than having
team frank/dean playing team Sammy/the other one
 
Kadillac said:
We would be playing 8 ball. I like the 3 point scoring system a lot. It seems like people can't bag as easily.

*Dumb question alert* What is 'making it to the hill'? I have never heard that term before lol
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Making it to the hill is being the first player or team to get within one game of required games to win the set. In a race to five whoever gets to four first is on the hill. Four to four would be hill-hill.
 
That was my intent, yes. I would replace all of the tables, as well as jukebox, smoke machine, etc., as needed, and be the new vendor.

iusedtoberich said:
Hello,

You mentioned in your posts above twice about new tables. The way I interperted the post, it was as if you would be buying them? That doesn't make any sense. Are you an equipment vendor?

Thanks for the clarification.
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I can imagine, for sure. This year was my first year to play league, and the operator told me that I was the first to EVER thank him for his effort and for running the league. I was appalled at the amount of politics in the pool league, and a small 6 team one, at that. Needless to say, I learned a lot my first year, and team captain to boot.



iusedtoberich said:
Fair warning.... a local weekly handicapped tournament is probably the most thankless job in pool. I've never been one, but have played in enough of these tournaments over the past 20 years to know its a horrible job.

You will have people crying to you every week, complaining about their rating, their opponents rating, the new players rating, the rules, the format, you name it.

Maybe its different in a bar setting where the level of play is probably a lot less, and the players are mostly out for a good time (I've never played in bars). In a pool room setting with competitive players, its non-stop crying.
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frankncali said:
The way the location did our blind draw was bottle caps...

Two of a bunch of kinds were put in a bag and you drew. If I got Bud Light then I found whomever drew the other bud light and we were Team Bud Light for the night.

Not real hard to find a bunch of types of caps and its better than having
team frank/dean playing team Sammy/the other one
Click to expand...

This is a great idea and sounds fun. They should also make the team drink only that beer for the night, so it will be even more fun as people complain and laugh about what type of crap they need to drink :D
 
Starting a tournament at night sounds like a bad idea to me, and the fact that its a week night is even worse. I am guessing you are planning very short races?
 
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