The simple simple truth

Dennis "Whitey" Young

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Darmoose, I was not advocating a race to 3 in a RR, I am just pointing out what you can expect the avg. to be, based off the last win loss record of matches from the Seniors bracket, and the avg. score/match is 3 to 1, which is equivalent to playing 8 groupings of 4 with ea. player playing 4 games, so I referenced it. That's all. If you have a beef about race to 3 RR take it up with mr3cushion, he knows a lot more than I when it comes to RR. I do see his point on how a long match gets equaled out by a short match after researching the Seniors bracket. Some of the longer matches 3/2 were played towards the end of the bracket, and more exhaustion had sit in.

Currently I would not advocate a RR with ea. player playing 3 games in 4 groups of 8 for Seniors or MOT. Unless there is an extra day added. I am sticking to 2 games ea. because 1. I do not want to exhaust the players, and 2. I feel these events are to be enjoyable and have some free time to match up and socialize, and 3. the players that exit the tournament and those members that just post comments I do think really realize just how exhausted the players are that stay in the tournament to the final stages. At this age this is very critical. I would not advocate anything that does this!

So I am ok with playing two games each against 7 players to narrow the field to 16. and narrow it again to 8 and then having a single elimination bracket race to 2 with a extended match in the final. And if this takes to long then we should of realized that mr3cushion 8 groups of 4 is the correct format for it is shorter to play and still players can play more games than with the typical 3/3 format.

This is based upon the current playing time in either the Seniors or MOT. It is not realistic to base it upon an extra day at this point! Whitey
 
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Tobermory

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I agree completely with Darmoose (finally! ). His description of a nearly ideal RR procedure is spot on. Main point: forget about races, just pick the # of games to be played between every pair within the RR group. If the average time estimate holds true, then it will all work out. RR would be the perfect format for the members only tournament because it gives everyone a chance to play several other members and lots of games before getting knocked out. The cream will still rise to the top, but more players will have more fun along the way.
 

NH Steve

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Whitey,

I appreciate your efforts to try to come up with the optimum format for our MOT. There are many possibilities and variables, none are necessarily right or wrong, but one will best fit the circumstances and the time frame as we define it.

Let me clarify a couple of things:

The more accurately you can predict the number of games in each match between any two players, the better you can control the time it takes to play out the RR. Therefore, playing a race to 3 (which could go 3, 4, or 5 games) for example is less predictable and less accurate than just saying upfront that each match will consist of 4 games, period. You don't have to have a winner in each individual match, as the group winner will be decided by total wins/losses for the whole RR.

There is NO value to playing a race in the RR matches, and doing so makes the entire RR less predictable.

So, now that the above is understood, it is a matter of deciding how many hours of play do you want to plan for, and what is the avg. allowed time to play a game. So, let say we want to play for about 15 hours, and we have 32 players and 16 tables to play on.

With 32 players we are either going to have 4 groups of 8, or 8 groups of 4. With 16 tables, everybody will get to play all at once.

If each game is to take 45 minutes, then each player can get about 20 games in the 15 hours.

With 4 groups of 8, there would be 7 matches played by each player in each group, so 7 matches x 3 games equaling 21 games would be close to optimum.(15.75 hours)

With 8 groups of 4, there would be 3 matches played by each player in each group, so 3 matches x 7 games equaling 21 games would be close to optimum.(15.75 hours)

By playing a specific number of games in each match, rather than a "race", we can eliminate all the variables, except the avg time to play a game by any given player.

This is the best approach and plan for a well timed RR, whether it is going to be a one day or a two day RR.

The only decisions to be made after the above is how many qualifiers advance to an elimination finals, and what you want that to look like, none of which have anything to do with the RR portion of the tournament.

Good luck:)
darmoose, this is a very interesting idea! However it does take away the "head to head" tie breaker, and I am not sure I fully embrace that. It would mean you would very likely have some ties and need to work those out.

One way to solve the tie issue would be to have a play-in for the final spots as needed (kind of like wild card games). So if you had for example, 6 flights of players in your initial groups, then the top six got in automatically, but you still have two more spots in an 8 player field, which you could fill by a quick playoff Saturday night among the 4+/- next highest finishers using a single elimination one game play off. I say 4+/- because you don't know and can't know how many ties you will have if you just go with ball counts and play an equal number of games. But you would definitely have to resolve those ties Saturday night, so Sunday's finals are not delayed.

Another way would be to play off the ties within each group Saturday night. For this method you would want either 4 or 8 groups because only the group winners would advance. One game playoffs (or even a one game round robins if it was an odd number of tied players) would work for those playoffs -- as long as they were finished Saturday night!

One "advantage" of 6 groups vs 8 would be that with 6 you help overcome the issue of 2 or more strong players landing in one group and thus one being eliminated -- because a top second place in a group would still have a chance to qualify.

Sunday morning you would be ready to go with an 8 player finals field, all "in the money", and since it is single elimination bracket at that point it would be only three rounds. We could even determine the length of the finals race by what time the semifinals finished :D :D Race to three if it's an 8 o'clock tip off, Race to 4 if it is only 6-7 PM for example. Race to 2 if it is after 9 PM already.
 

darmoose

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Whitey,

I appreciate your efforts to try to come up with the optimum format for our MOT. There are many possibilities and variables, none are necessarily right or wrong, but one will best fit the circumstances and the time frame as we define it.

Let me clarify a couple of things:

The more accurately you can predict the number of games in each match between any two players, the better you can control the time it takes to play out the RR. Therefore, playing a race to 3 (which could go 3, 4, or 5 games) for example is less predictable and less accurate than just saying upfront that each match will consist of 4 games, period. You don't have to have a winner in each individual match, as the group winner will be decided by total wins/losses for the whole RR.

There is NO value to playing a race in the RR matches, and doing so makes the entire RR less predictable.

So, now that the above is understood, it is a matter of deciding how many hours of play do you want to plan for, and what is the avg. allowed time to play a game. So, let say we want to play for about 15 hours, and we have 32 players and 16 tables to play on.

With 32 players we are either going to have 4 groups of 8, or 8 groups of 4. With 16 tables, everybody will get to play all at once.

If each game is to take 45 minutes, then each player can get about 20 games in the 15 hours.

With 4 groups of 8, there would be 7 matches played by each player in each group, so 7 matches x 3 games equaling 21 games would be close to optimum.(15.75 hours)

With 8 groups of 4, there would be 3 matches played by each player in each group, so 3 matches x 7 games equaling 21 games would be close to optimum.(15.75 hours)

By playing a specific number of games in each match, rather than a "race", we can eliminate all the variables, except the avg time to play a game by any given player.

This is the best approach and plan for a well timed RR, whether it is going to be a one day or a two day RR.

The only decisions to be made after the above is how many qualifiers advance to an elimination finals, and what you want that to look like, none of which have anything to do with the RR portion of the tournament.

Good luck:)

This is the most predictable, manageable, accurate format for a RR MOT tournament. Some have suggested that we put the question to a poll to begin to get a feel for what the membership would like to do going forward towards Philly next year. I hope Steve will give this serious consideration and advance such a poll.

Darmoose, I was not advocating a race to 3 in a RR, I am just pointing out what you can expect the avg. to be, based off the last win loss record of matches from the Seniors bracket, and the avg. score/match is 3 to 1, which is equivalent to playing 8 groupings of 4 with ea. player playing 4 games, so I referenced it. That's all. If you have a beef about race to 3 RR take it up with mr3cushion, he knows a lot more than I when it comes to RR. I do see his point on how a long match gets equaled out by a short match after researching the Seniors bracket. Some of the longer matches 3/2 were played towards the end of the bracket, and more exhaustion had sit in.

Currently I would not advocate a RR with ea. player playing 3 games in 4 groups of 8 for Seniors or MOT. Unless there is an extra day added. I am sticking to 2 games ea. because 1. I do not want to exhaust the players, and 2. I feel these events are to be enjoyable and have some free time to match up and socialize, and 3. the players that exit the tournament and those members that just post comments I do think really realize just how exhausted the players are that stay in the tournament to the final stages. At this age this is very critical. I would not advocate anything that does this!

So I am ok with playing two games each against 7 players to narrow the field to 16. and narrow it again to 8 and then having a single elimination bracket race to 2 with a extended match in the final. And if this takes to long then we should of realized that mr3cushion 8 groups of 4 is the correct format for it is shorter to play and still players can play more games than with the atipical 3/3 format.

This is based upon the current playing time in either the Seniors or MOT. It is not realistic to base it upon an extra day at this point! Whitey

Whitey,

Again, forgive me. I was not attempting to criticize you but give you credit for your attempts to move this ball forward. When I first started reading this thread you and 3c were discussing an RR format with "matches/races" and I couldn't figure out what you all were talking about. You were also discussing several "flights" as you moved into the elimination rounds that would start sometime on Saturday. And then you all were stressing over too many variables attempting to work out the time this would all take. Too many variables, too complicated, and too unmanageable I thought.:sorry

I think the players would like to be garaunted something like 21 games, I think it is entirely possible and easily manageable if we put the responsibility on each group to finish their RR rounds be end of Saturday. I also think peer pressure will go a long way to prodding slower players to move along.

We then can seamlessly move into an elimination round(s) finals on Sunday and finish things well before midnight. Also, players who do not qualify for the finals have all day Sunday to socialize, be rail birds, or gamble.
I for one am ready to put this to a poll whenever Steve is ready.


:)
 

Jeff sparks

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How is it decided which group an individual winds up in? Is it just a blind draw like dbl elimination? If so, that could be a really good thing for some of the players who have had no shot at making the money previously... If say by sheer chance, most of the best players ended up in two of the groups, then the other two groups would send players to the finals who wouldn’t ordinarily have a chance to get there using a dbl elimination format.. Is this a correct assumption?
 

darmoose

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How is it decided which group an individual winds up in? Is it just a blind draw like dbl elimination? If so, that could be a really good thing for some of the players who have had no shot at making the money previously... If say by sheer chance, most of the best players ended up in two of the groups, then the other two groups would send players to the finals who wouldn’t ordinarily have a chance to get there using a dbl elimination format.. Is this a correct assumption?

Jeff,

I dunno, guess we have to decide that kinda thing, there is merit to a random draw for groups and also to seeding the players into groups. I guess right now I favor a random draw to give those you are referring to a chance where they haven't had a chance in the past. But I am open to arguments on this.:)
 

Jeff sparks

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Well Moose, if put to a vote, and the RR format wins out, I’m betting the random draw would win out also...��.

I’m also betting there will be continuing hassles with slow play, so perhaps that should be addressed prior to implementation of the RR...
 

Dennis "Whitey" Young

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Darmoose, at the conclusion of the RR thread about a month ago there were those that wanted to play 3 games each while I was still at 2 games each, one being a total of 14 games the other 21 games. I was erroring on the side of caution, but gave in a little. But, after the Seniors results I can not side with 3 games.
The below discussion is for MOT only with 16 tables and maintaining the same schedule as Cal. MOT. Which starts play Friday noon or later.

Best case scenario; 14 games = 10-1/2 hrs. This puts us in to Sat. noon or hopefully early afternoon. Unless you play late into the night till 2:00am closing. And this flies flat in my face as "not" a desired personal goal, exhausting players.
Best case scenario; 21 games = 15-1/2 hrs. You will play all the way through Friday. night till 2 am taking up 10 hours or so with still having 5 hrs. of play left on Saturday. Start time on Sat. is 10am. that puts you at 3pm. After this tie breakers have to worked out, and getting the next round of 16 started. I would give this an hour to determine. So at 4 pm Sat. you are starting the round of 16.

I again remind you this is the best case scenarios, they could run longer and probably will. We can not assume safe guards will be adopted at this point.

Another reason I like 14 games is that I like what Steve is suggesting; "playing off a tie breaker" if two players in a group are tied then play 1 game and decide it.

Take a poll if you want, but for me the players that expect to play in the next MOT are the ones that need to decide upon this. After our RR thread it was to go 21 games, and I can except that as our poll. After Senior results this might of changed it did for me!

This is how I see it; 14 game RR, semi final of 16 going into 4 groups of 4 with playing ea. player the number of games (I would suggest 3 games) required to finish at a reasonable hour on Sat. night. say by 10 pm, or earlier is better. Sunday's finals of 8, a single elimination. Final Champion game is an extended race.

The semi final rd. of 16 would be the top 1,2 finishers in ea. group are then grouped against the lower 3,4 finishers of a group. The groups would be newly formed in this fashion so that players do not play the same players as was from their original 4 groups of 8. Everyone gets to play different players, if that can be worked out!

The final group of 8 will be determined in much the same way, with the 4 top finishers playing the 4 - 2nd placed finishers. The bracket can be determined by having the top finisher playing the player with the lowest score, and so forth. 1 playing 8, 2 playing 7 and so forth.

As far as Seniors with possibility of 40 or 48 player, mr3cushion on our Unity thread has offered up a RR scenario. And I am sure Jeff will research this!

I also think there is a lot of merit to consider for mr3cushion's suggestion of 8 groups of 4 playing an x amount of games, whether it be MOT or Seniors 8x5 for 40 players or 8x6 for 48 players but for me I would like to see an extra day of play, but his format does save time.
Respectfully, Whitey
 
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LSJohn

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Intersting Moose uses the word argument, instead of discussion!


Since you've expressed an interest, let me help:

argument: a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.



Silence is the best defense of an empty mind -- LSJohn, 11/6/2018, Bermuda (I wish)
 

mr3cushion

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Since you've expressed an interest, let me help:

argument: a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.



Silence is the best defense of an empty mind -- LSJohn, 11/6/2018, Bermuda (I wish)

Then the best thing for YOU to do is learn sign language!
 

mr3cushion

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Since you've expressed an interest, let me help:

argument: a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.



Silence is the best defense of an empty mind -- LSJohn, 11/6/2018, Bermuda (I wish)

In that case, the best advise I can give you, is learn sign language!
 

darmoose

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Well Moose, if put to a vote, and the RR format wins out, I’m betting the random draw would win out also...��.

I’m also betting there will be continuing hassles with slow play, so perhaps that should be addressed prior to implementation of the RR...


Jeff,

Could be. Since there is NO time limit on how long play can go on Friday and Saturday nights, and since nobody is going to work on Sunday, I don't see this as a great problem as far as the RR rounds go.

Each group will be responsible to get their rounds completed even if it takes all night.

Now, when we get into the elimination finals on Sunday, who knows? But, if we keep the number of necessary rounds to a minimum like in a single elimination 8 man requires 3 rounds, or a double elimination with only 4 players requires either 4 or 5 rounds (depending on if the final is a dbl elimination or a single).

Just my thoughts.......:)
 

NH Steve

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How is it decided which group an individual winds up in? Is it just a blind draw like dbl elimination? If so, that could be a really good thing for some of the players who have had no shot at making the money previously... If say by sheer chance, most of the best players ended up in two of the groups, then the other two groups would send players to the finals who wouldn’t ordinarily have a chance to get there using a dbl elimination format.. Is this a correct assumption?

I know I would strongly be in favor of random draw. The strong players already have an advantage by virtue of the simple fact they are better players and our tournament isn't handicapped. Adding the wild card format also helps the stronger players advance, so I am not worried about them 😀
 

Island Drive

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Here''s and idea that might be looked at. Race to 3 winners side, race to 2 losers side. Losers side, increase ball count needed to win each game to 9 instead of 8.
 

darmoose

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Darmoose, at the conclusion of the RR thread about a month ago there were those that wanted to play 3 games each while I was still at 2 games each, one being a total of 14 games the other 21 games. I was erroring on the side of caution, but gave in a little. But, after the Seniors results I can not side with 3 games.
The below discussion is for MOT only with 16 tables and maintaining the same schedule as Cal. MOT. Which starts play Friday noon or later.

Best case scenario; 14 games = 10-1/2 hrs. This puts us in to Sat. noon or hopefully early afternoon. Unless you play late into the night till 2:00am closing. And this flies flat in my face as "not" a desired personal goal, exhausting players.
Best case scenario; 21 games = 15-1/2 hrs. You will play all the way through Friday. night till 2 am taking up 10 hours or so with still having 5 hrs. of play left on Saturday. Start time on Sat. is 10am. that puts you at 3pm. After this tie breakers have to worked out, and getting the next round of 16 started. I would give this an hour to determine. So at 4 pm Sat. you are starting the round of 16.

I again remind you this is the best case scenarios, they could run longer and probably will. We can not assume safe guards will be adopted at this point.

Another reason I like 14 games is that I like what Steve is suggesting; "playing off a tie breaker" if two players in a group are tied then play 1 game and decide it.

Take a poll if you want, but for me the players that expect to play in the next MOT are the ones that need to decide upon this. After our RR thread it was to go 21 games, and I can except that as our poll. After Senior results this might of changed it did for me!

This is how I see it; 14 game RR, semi final of 16 going into 4 groups of 4 with playing ea. player the number of games (I would suggest 3 games) required to finish at a reasonable hour on Sat. night. say by 10 pm, or earlier is better. Sunday's finals of 8, a single elimination. Final Champion game is an extended race.

The semi final rd. of 16 would be the top 1,2 finishers in ea. group are then grouped against the lower 3,4 finishers of a group. The groups would be newly formed in this fashion so that players do not play the same players as was from their original 4 groups of 8. Everyone gets to play different players, if that can be worked out!

The final group of 8 will be determined in much the same way, with the 4 top finishers playing the 4 - 2nd placed finishers. The bracket can be determined by having the top finisher playing the player with the lowest score, and so forth. 1 playing 8, 2 playing 7 and so forth.

As far as Seniors with possibility of 40 or 48 player, mr3cushion on our Unity thread has offered up a RR scenario. And I am sure Jeff will research this!

I also think there is a lot of merit to consider for mr3cushion's suggestion of 8 groups of 4 playing an x amount of games, whether it be MOT or Seniors 8x5 for 40 players or 8x6 for 48 players but for me I would like to see an extra day of play, but his format does save time.
Respectfully, Whitey

Whitey,

You do realize that I am suggesting we eliminate any SEMI-FINAL for 16 players in the RR rounds, right?

I am advocating we play 21 games per man over Friday and Saturday, period.

We then move to an elimination final on Sunday with either 4 or 8 finalists, period.

:)
 

Dennis "Whitey" Young

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Whitey,

You do realize that I am suggesting we eliminate any SEMI-FINAL for 16 players in the RR rounds, right?

I am advocating we play 21 games per man over Friday and Saturday, period.

We then move to an elimination final on Sunday with either 4 or 8 finalists, period.

:)
No I did not realize this, for I have not reviewed all of the RR comments going back in this thread, or I missed it. I will research your posts! But, that makes more sense, and that would work, and is one way of doing it! The playing time will allow for some socializing and match up times. thanks!

As we see there are multiple ways of doing a RR. I think the real benefit is getting players to want to go, for they will get to play more games, and if scheduled appropriately then be able to socialize, match up, and the players advancing to the finals will not be totally exhausted. Whitey
 

Island Drive

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No I did not realize this, for I have not reviewed all of the RR comments going back in this thread, or I missed it. I will research your posts! But, that makes more sense, and that would work, and is one way of doing it! The playing time will allow for some socializing and match up times. thanks!

As we see there are multiple ways of doing a RR. I think the real benefit is getting players to want to go, for they will get to play more games, and if scheduled appropriately then be able to socialize, match up, and the players advancing to the finals will not be totally exhausted. Whitey

What's good about this, once Sunday comes, there will be Open tables for matchups. That's a good thing. Just realizing this, it's kinda a deal maker. How often have we seen tables all going on Sunday and ya wanna Match up?

We should also have a challenge table going. All good nine ball events years ago, ring games of some type were common as play whittled down, Sat. nights especially and Sun. There were a few rooms I frequented, that had barber Chairs where the player next up sat.
 
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darmoose

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darmoose, this is a very interesting idea! However it does take away the "head to head" tie breaker, and I am not sure I fully embrace that. It would mean you would very likely have some ties and need to work those out.

One way to solve the tie issue would be to have a play-in for the final spots as needed (kind of like wild card games). So if you had for example, 6 flights of players in your initial groups, then the top six got in automatically, but you still have two more spots in an 8 player field, which you could fill by a quick playoff Saturday night among the 4+/- next highest finishers using a single elimination one game play off. I say 4+/- because you don't know and can't know how many ties you will have if you just go with ball counts and play an equal number of games. But you would definitely have to resolve those ties Saturday night, so Sunday's finals are not delayed.

Another way would be to play off the ties within each group Saturday night. For this method you would want either 4 or 8 groups because only the group winners would advance. One game playoffs (or even a one game round robins if it was an odd number of tied players) would work for those playoffs -- as long as they were finished Saturday night!

One "advantage" of 6 groups vs 8 would be that with 6 you help overcome the issue of 2 or more strong players landing in one group and thus one being eliminated -- because a top second place in a group would still have a chance to qualify.

Sunday morning you would be ready to go with an 8 player finals field, all "in the money", and since it is single elimination bracket at that point it would be only three rounds. We could even determine the length of the finals race by what time the semifinals finished :D :D Race to three if it's an 8 o'clock tip off, Race to 4 if it is only 6-7 PM for example. Race to 2 if it is after 9 PM already.

Steve,

With a 32 man field you can't have 6 groups, as 6 is not a deviser into 32. You can only have 4, 8, 16, or 2 groups.

Also, you do get a head to head tiebreaker with either 4 or 8 groups because with 4 groups you will be playing 3 matches, each match consisting of 7 games, and with 8 groups you will be playing 7 matches, each match consisting of 3 games.

There may be a few little details to be worked out such as what Jeff brought up, but, I think this format has a lot going for it to get us to a nice elimination finals on Sunday, and provides alot of play for everybody and plenty of enjoyment, as well as competition.


P.S. I prefer 4 groups of 8 players because i think it would be better if everyone got to play against 7 other players (playing 3 games each match), rather than just get to play 3 other players (playing 7 games each match). Also, this gives you the option to limit the finals to the 4 group winners and play a Dbl elimination finals (or if you wanted 8 finalists, you could take 2 out of each group).

:)
 
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