My first suggestion was that matches should be long at least like in the world champs; for example in 9Ball we should have at least races to 21, although I'd like them way higher than that. In the long run luck is minimized, which is what you want in a good cash tourney.
WIT_UK wrote:mojoicus wrote:I know some will disagree but can u do a high class player tourny and a not so high class tourny ,because no matter what anyone says the same set of players will generally win
Could not agree more Mojo..
In a not-so-high-class-players tourney anything can happen so a cash event could work; if the skill is somewhat balanced overall, anyone has a fair chance at winning, so there will be signups. But I can't imagine a high class tourney with more than 3 players in it, since there are only about 3 guys who usually win everything in a certain gametype. And if such a tourney would have more players they would stand no chance at all so I don't think that encourages anyone else to sign up.
Handicaps are tough to figure out but if they're done correctly that should definitely work out. They require a good solid criteria. The in-game rating is pointless since some players don't bother playing a certain gametype because they hate it, even if they can be quite skilled at it; plus it can be fake, so overall it's bad. A decent criteria would be the rating shown on the tourney system, but that's also flawed since new players always have awful ratings even if they're more skilled than old players.
So if I were to figure out handicaps for a match between two players in a certain gametype I'd choose as a criteria the
winning percentage shown on the tourney system for that game, I think that's the most relevant. Have to choose some extremes to illustrate better examples, so if we take a few from 9Ball we have this:
AlinVille - 82.08%
Albinario - 77.84%
NuggetUK - 76.13%
WIT_UK - 41.60%
mojoicus - 36.92%
Depending how long is the race (it's important!) you can sort out handicaps based on the difference between percentages. Let's say it's a race to 30. In that case I think I'd grant an extra frame for any difference of 5.00% (decimals are important aswell). So, in a match between:
Albinario vs AlinVille: the difference is only 4.24%, so it would start at 0-0, ul.
NuggetUK vs AlinVille: the difference is 5.95%, so it would start at 1-0 for NuggetUK.
WIT_UK vs AlinVille: the difference is 40.48%, so it would start at 8-0 for WIT_UK.
mojoicus vs AlinVille: the difference is 45.16%, so it would start at 9-0 for mojoicus.
mojoicus vs WIT_UK: the difference is 4.68%, so it would start at 0-0.
But if it was a race to 5 for example, the difference would have to be way bigger in order to give any handicaps since a frame has a much higher importance. So what's essential in order to create balanced games is to figure out exactly the correct percentage difference needed to grant an extra frame compared to the race length; and it just goes progressively. That's about it.
I play poker for a living so percentages are my thing. If I were to organize them it would be like this:
- basic rule: in a
race to 30, grant a frame for any
difference of 5.00%
- which means in a race to 1, grant a frame for any difference of 30x5=
150% (only in theory)
- now you can easily calculate the required percentages by dividing 150% to the race length
- race to 5: 30.00% (150%/5)
- race to 10: 15.00% (150%/10)
- race to 20: 7.50% (150%/20)
- race to 30: 5.00% (150%/30)
- race to 40: 3.75% (150%/40)
- race to 50: 3.00% (150%/50)
- race to 60: 2.50% (150%/60)
- it goes progressively, easy to figure out
So to further exemplify I'll take the extremes. Knowing that the difference between AlinVille and mojoicus is 45.16%, the handicaps granted in different race lengths would be:
- race to 5: mojoicus 1 - 0 AlinVille (45.16%/30.00)
- race to 10: mojoicus 3 - 0 AlinVille (45.16%/15.00)
- race to 20: mojoicus 6 - 0 AlinVille (45.16%/7.50)
- race to 30: mojoicus 9 - 0 AlinVille (45.16%/5.00)
- race to 40: mojoicus 12 - 0 AlinVille (45.16%/3.75)
- race to 50: mojoicus 15 - 0 AlinVille (45.16%/3.00)
- race to 60: mojoicus 18 - 0 AlinVille (45.16%/2.50)
Notice that the basic rule determines everything else, it's the most important aspect. Of course it can be changed if all this doesn't seem balanced, but to me it looks pretty accurate. So how's that?