starting a weekly snooker comp

[kellz]

hey guys my local snooker club wants to start holding a weekly snooker competition but as we have not held weekly ones before were not sure about the best way to go about it singles doubles were open for all ideas so does anyone have any suggestions or even let me know how your local weekly comp is held..... i think doubles is a good idea to get the guys that dont play much on the bigger tables to give it ago if they are paired with a good player but then its also good to rely on your own skills

[nrage]

I've managed and played in a weekly singles handicap comp. I think a handicap comp will encourage new players to give it a go, especially if they do intend to "come back next week" as that allows you to adjust them to a fair handicap. Some better players do not like handicap comps, but to be honest, some of the time I think they just don't like losing to 'worse' players. IMO, a better player should look at a handicap comp as a challenge.

So, it works like this...

You decide on a handicap for each player. The handicap is a number, and the important thing is the difference in handicap values, not the numbers themselves. So, for example you could rank all your players by ability and pick the middle player, giving them a handicap of 0, then for each player who is better than them assign a negative value where the difference indicates how many points they would need to give the worse player for the average frame to go down to the black. Likewise for the worse players assign a positive value where the difference is the number of points they would need vs the middle player to take an average frame to the black.

If you have no idea of skill levels for your players you can start them all off on 0, and then adjust them based on the frame scores. When we got new players for our competition we started them on a slightly unfair handicap based on what they told us their average recent break or maximum recent break was vs existing player who had a fair handicap already. Then we adjusted them based on frame scores that evening, for the next week or the next round if they made it through.

It's harder to figure the correct handicap for lower scoring players as they tend to be inconsistent as well. So, some initial adjustment may be necessary for some players.

Next, once you have some fair handicaps that do not need adjusting manually, you need to account for players getting better, and build in a way to self-regulate. You do this by adding and subtracting to handicaps using the results of each weekly tournament. The key thing here is that the total number of points you subtract should equal the total number of points you add, or your handicaps will all gradually increase or decrease over time - not a huge problem, because you can just adjust them all in the same direction when they get ridiculous.

So, assuming a knockout style tournament, you might add 1 point to a handicap for a loss in the first round. If you had 16 players then this means 8 points added so you need to subtract 8 points somewhere also. Subtracting 1 point from each quarter finalist, 1 from the 2nd place and 3 from the winner ought to work well.

The result is that next week the winner will have to play better to win again. If they loose first round it becomes easier for them the following week, and so on, in this way the handicaps regulate themselves.

Don't be tempted to manually adjust too much, for example if you have a player who is practicing a lot and improving rapidly they will likely win more often than other players, but that's only fair - after all they're putting in the money and time to practice and the handicap regulation will eventually catch up with any progress they're making.

[kellz]

thanks for the great detail nrage i think a handicap is the way to go about it will keep the players that dont play much from getting smashed every week and then the better players have to actually play well,

[Bigmeek]

kellz You might find this thread of interest.
http://www.thesnookerforum.com/board...urnament/page2

[nrage]

Some points I forgot to mention are mentioned in that link, like how to draw names from a hat. Also, Terry had a good idea for deciding handicaps to start.

To select brackets, with an odd number of players, the thing you have to realise is that you need to massage the number of players down to 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. You do this by playing an initial round, such that after elimination you have the correct number of players. So, if you have 9 players you need to drop 1 so you play an initial round of just 1 game, where the winner goes into the next round with the remaining 7 players (who had a 'bye') giving a 2nd round of 8 players. And so on. Many tournament sheets have a useful table to show you how many 'byes' you need in the first round to get the correct number for the next.

A round-robin would be better than a knockout, IMO, if you have the time for it. The reason I like it better is that more frames are played, so you get a 'better' reflection of the abilities in the results - one bad frame doesn't decide it. Also, the player who ends up losing will have played a guaranteed number of frames and wont feel their entrance fee was wasted - so is more likely to want to come back and try again.

With the round robin you don't have to play all players against all other players, you can divide the players into smaller groups, play round robin in the groups and then play a knockout with the top 2 from each group, for example. The key here is that you need 2, 4, 8, .. players from the groups to play the knockout. So, if you have 2 groups you can take top 2 to get 4 players. If you have an odd number of groups you will have trouble, so it's better to have one or more odd sized group with 1 more or 1 less player. The groups with more players get to play more frames, but have a slightly harder time advancing. It's not a lot harder and because you play more frames the better players - even with handicaps - are more likely to make it, because they're more consistent.

[The Statman]

Yes, I'd agree with that.

We have a weekly competition which varies greatly from 16 players right down to 5 or 6. If there are only 5 or 6 then we'd play a round robin, but otherwise it is a knockout.

When drawing names for knock-out format, if you have 10 or 11 or 12 players, as mentioned above you will need a 'small' preliminary round to bring it to 8 in the following round. Here, it is easiest to draw names just for the initial round and everybody else gets a bye.

But if there are 13 or 14 or 15, it is easiest to draw a full set of 16 numbers and the numbers without a player just refer to the bye, which the person drawn against them receives.

Our comp has players moved up 7 if they reach the final, and move down 7 after they have lost their first match three (maybe 4) times. As mentioned above, this should continually even itself out. If I improve, I will reach the odd final and my handicap go up; if I hit a bad patch it will shift downwards in a few weeks.