League Cup Format - Discussion Thread

[BB Warrior]

With only one outstanding game to be played, which will actually decide the winners of the League Cup this year, I would be very interested to hear the thoughts of other teams on the Format that we have played this season in this competition?

When this was first announced, I would have said that I was pretty sceptical about the format but, having played it, I have really enjoyed the matches we have had with a majority of them have been very close and often won or lost on the result of just one game during the evening. I am sure that I could say on behalf of my team that we have certainly enjoyed the challenge of trying to overcome the handicaps!

Obviously I have not had the luxury of using any "jokers" during the competition myself and it has been interesting to see how other Captains have used these in the matches.... sometimes with good effect, sometimes they have made no difference to the individual games either way and as highlighted by Ric in a post on a different thread perhaps the jokers have had less impact that had been expected?

I am sure that the intention was to equal out all of the teams to make the League Cup more exciting and, with only 6 points separating the top 6 teams before the final series of matches this was certainly proved to be correct.... but often it seemed that the same players were being given the jokers in nearly all of the games and some players were probably actively penalised by having a higher handicap against them than perhaps they would have had based on their own individual record?

Clearly any handicap system is not going to be perfect.... but are there ways that this could be improved or are there other ideas or suggestions that we could look at for next season?

I certainly have my own ideas on what could be tried, but would rather hear the opinions of others first so any feedback would be good, preferably from as many different teams as possible as that will give a better indication to the Lewes Committee Members that I know do look here on the Forum.

So everybody..... what was good about the Format this year? What was bad? How could it be done differently or improved for next year?

[gandalf the untidy]

I too thought that the league cup format was a good experiment and was great fun, but I think the handicap should be targeted at the best players only ie the three highest handicapped players in the team. The team average will still be lower than the three nominated individuals average.

The whole idea is to make each game more of a challenge for both players, I would like to see a proper handicap game where each player starts with their opponents average score, but we must guard against players deliberately keeping their average low during the league matches, easier said than done me thinks and could open up a lot of bad feeling. To increase fairness this would also extend to a double break senario

[bigtj]

I think overall it has worked, my reservation about handicaps is that it does not always serve towards giving the lower handicap player more table time as the higher penalised players have to spend more time on the table to firstly overcome the handicap and then score enough to ensure the win.

Must say that all tables appear to have been set up to their best and no rigging to stop high handicap players being able to catch the handicap.

As one of the players within a side that can be affected by the team handicap I have found it fun to see the use of handicaps on only three games, and felt sometimes even if I did not overcome the handicap it was good for my team overall as it left strong players to take normal games.

There can be senarios where false handicaps come right into play if you have a player that does not play many league games is then handicap to a strong teams handicap, and can lead to a situation where a player could be giving a start to a much stronger player, although one would not expect this to happen as it would be a waste of the joker. Also I feel after one season team captains will be able to evaluate this years use of jokers and put them to better use in future.

All leagues do need to look at ways to keep their league competitive or some teams may fold due to teams withdrawing, always an awkward problem for committees.