League Cup format for 2013/14

[tengu]

A new format has been agreed by the committee for this season's league cup, which starts on 2nd December.

The competition will be run on normal (All England) playing rules - same as league competition - but a handicap will apply.
There will be 10 matches, as last year. The first 7 will be simple 'all plays all', either home or away. The final 3 matches will be on a regional (North/South) basis to try to minimise traveling - venues will be the reverse of the corresponding phase 1 match. Each team will have 5 home and 5 away games.

A handicap system will apply in all 10 games. The intention of this is:
a) to compensate for the arbitrariness of the North-South divide;
b) to support and encourage teams who might otherwise be 'out of the running';
c) to add a little more interest to the competition.

We will be using a simple handicap based purely on each team's average game score in the first half of the league competition. There will be no consideration of individual player rating, table rating or home/away differences.

After the first half of the league competition is completed, the average* game scores over the 7 matches, for each team, is calculated - to the nearest 100. Each team will be allotted a 'handicap' equal to this value.
Now, in each league cup match the captain of the 'weaker' team can choose any 3 games to apply the handicap to. In each of those 3 games the 'weaker' player will be given a starting score equal to the difference in handicaps. The 3 games will be nominated after the draw, and before the start of the first game.

Once the league half season is complete, the handicaps will be calculated and notified to the teams.
We realise that this is a radical change from previous years. There are, no doubt, a number of faults in the system and we don't claim that it is 'fair' - no handicap is fair, by definition. However, we believe it will add some interest to the competition, and give ALL teams a chance to succeed, so I hope everyone will support it.
We will, of course, review the format at the end of the season and either modify or discard it as necessary.

*The average is weighted to offset any home table advantage/disadvantage. A separate average is calculated for each of the league tables and these are then averaged again.

[tengu]

Team handicaps have now been calculated:

Black Horse	3900
Black Horse Rott.	5700
Cock n Balls	1600
Glynde Club	3800
Hassocks	3600
Laughing Fish	7100
Plough	1700
Star	2700

The calculation spreadsheet (xlsx) is attached, in case anyone wants to check the maths.

Attachment Deleted

[gandalf the untidy]

My money is on The plough to sneak it with SIX other teams all in the running

[BB Warrior]

Nov 19, 2013 11:36:49 GMT gandalf the untidy said:

My money is on The plough to sneak it with SIX other teams all in the running

Is this another great Gandalf prediction? Will it be more successful than the last one....?

But I wouldn't write your team off just yet Gandalf, you would only have lost 3-2 last night had the handicaps been in place and the draw had come out the same, assuming that you had chosen your 3 break games to have the handicaps in of course!

It will certainly prove to be a tough challenge to overcome the handicaps that have been given on some of the tables, although it will also be a good test for the captains of the "weaker" teams to choose the right games to play their "jokers" in.... .... which is not a problem that I will have to worry about!

My money would be on the Black Horse (Lewes) team to win.... unbeaten after the first half of the season and they still get a big start against two teams that they have already beaten on level terms, not sure how the handicapper worked that one out. When we played there in the League, our average player score was only 2,318 in each game but we now have to give them a start of 3,200 in 3 of the games, think that will be a tough night for us!

Oh well, let's hope that the new format for this years competition is a great success and enjoyed by all of the teams.

[gandalf the untidy]

Hi Warrior

I'm sure the intrinsic quality of most of the fish line up will come through in the end ..... though i have you as the 7th team in the table behind the Plough

I've gone for the plough due to the lack of players at the start of the season giving a slightly low team average ( unless the committee have based it on a "player" average rather than team average)

Still looking forward to it with the differences in the teams reduced it should be all to play for and the team that makes the least mistakes will prevail.

Vive la Difference!!!!

regs cs

[tengu]

Just to reassure you all; the Plough have not benefited from their conceded games. Only games actually played have been included in the averages. If anyone wants to see the details of the calculation (and has a copy of Excel) they can download the spreadsheet above.
I think the Plough have a good chance, but I wouldn't bet against the Fish overcoming their handicap.
Good luck everyone.

[BB Warrior]

Hi Ric,

Many thanks for advising the rules and the handicaps.

Please can you confirm a couple of things....

1) What happens in the event of a Black Peg for one of the players that starts with a handicap? Does there score go to zero, or do they revert back to their starting handicap?
2) When recording the results on the Lewes website, do you need to know which players were given the handicap start and how will the player averages be worked out for this competition?

[tengu]

Hi Dave,

Excellent questions. All of which have been considered, and some of which have answers.

A black peg will erase ALL score, including any handicap score.

Yes, we will need to record which players receive the bonus, and I will be making some changes to the results system to accommodate this. As for the player stats, unless you have any clever suggestions. I suspect I will leave them as they are. They will be fairly meaningless, in any case.

I will send out full details in an email in due course.

[BB Warrior]

Nov 20, 2013 11:04:24 GMT tengu said:

Hi Dave,

Excellent questions. All of which have been considered, and some of which have answers.

A black peg will erase ALL score, including any handicap score.

Yes, we will need to record which players receive the bonus, and I will be making some changes to the results system to accommodate this. As for the player stats, unless you have any clever suggestions. I suspect I will leave them as they are. They will be fairly meaningless, in any case.

I will send out full details in an email in due course.

Thanks for clarifying those points Ric, no clever suggestions for the player stats I'm afraid unless you have 2 columns for the averages.... one including the handicap and one for the actual score that the player makes? Probably easiest to just have the one though and include the handicap, as otherwise it could just confuse everybody.