Amateur A & Amateur B

[raehl]

Yes and no...

Yes, if teams want to sandbag it, they'll stay down. The point was that if you cut prizes in the lower divisions and up prizes in the upper divisions, less teams will want to sandbag in the first place.


The measure of when a team should move up is *NOT* when a promoter or someone else THINKS they should move up. You can bitch and moan about how your top teams in division 3 should move up to division 2 because there are twice as many teams in division 3, but nobody cares where you think teams should play. The measure of when a team should move up is when they're going to make more money by doing so, period. That's the reality of the situation. You want teams to move up? Reward them for moving up. Demanding they move up while rewarding them for staying down is simply not going to work.



- Chris

 

[TNG]

Yes and no...

Originally posted by raehl
Yes, if teams want to sandbag it, they'll stay down. The point was that if you cut prizes in the lower divisions and up prizes in the upper divisions, less teams will want to sandbag in the first place.





Raehl, if said teams in the lowest division, rookie, am b whatever they might be classified as, are paying entry fees to tournaments and winning nothing to cover expenses, how long do you think it will be before those teams are moving up to try and win prizes in the next ranking up?
Who wants to throw money to a promoter and say thanks so much for letting us buy some "experience". Last time I checked experience doesn't cover several hundred dollars worth of tournament expenses. Now tournament experience is a valuable thing, it's not the point. The point is that those lucky teams in the rookie division being given no prizes will soon seek to cover those expenses by moving up to the next level and then end up being outclassed, ultimately losing their money under either circumstance. However, if you keep the prizes in all divisions there will still be incentives for all teams, thus more teams will be willing to still attend major events and hope to cover expenses. Sandbagging will never go away, there's no full-proof way to prevent it. But not giving prizes at all will phase out the bottom division or severely limit the number of teams willing to accept the fact their playing for nothing except a little experience and some pride.

 

[raehl]

You make no sense.

You're wrong, and you're wrong.

First you're wrong because you're arguing that teams moving up is a bad thing. The whole point is to motivate teams to move up. We *WANT* teams to leave the Rookie division when they're good enough to play Novice, and we *WANT* teams to leave the Novice division when they're good enough to play Am.


Then you're wrong because you think that a team is somehow better off losing in a Novice division with prizes than losing (or winning) a Rookie division without prizes. Only 10-20% of teams in any league pay for their tournaments by winning prizes, because the rest of the teams don't win prizes, thus arguing that prizes are necessary for participation is bull****. 80-90% of teams LOSE money going to tournaments.

The prize for playing Rookie is the lower entry fee. You'll move up to Novice when you think your team's chances of winning a prize in the Novice division justify the higher entry fee for Novice. You'll move up to Am when you think your team's chances of winning the bigger prizes in Am justify the increased entry fee for Am. You'll move up to Pro... you get the idea.

By tweaking entry fees and prizes, and putting a LOT more prizes in the higher divisions and a lot less prizes in the lower divisions than is done currently, you'll get the roughly 25% split across four divisions that you're looking for. Will the teams in the lowest division get any prizes? Of course not - but they wern't getting any prizes when they were losing in the Novice division either, and they'll be paying less entry, and they'll be playing against other teams of their own skill level because the sandbaggers won't even want to be there.


Trying to give prizes to lower divisions and still expecting people to want to move up has never worked and is never going to work. If you want equal numbers of teams in each division, you have to stop trying to give anything even close to equal prizes to the each division. Equal prizes will always yield the pyramid division sizes we have now.


- Chris

 

[Rabies]

Originally posted by Gee
Wouldn't it be better to name the divisions in line with the states? ie.
Pro
Am
Novice
Rookie

I thought we went through this thread a couple of weeks ago, and almost everyone said that the usual division names were meaningless. OK, so the name "Pro" is still a misnomer (but for how long?), but at least with the new Millennium divions you know that Novice really means that - teams with little or no Millennium experience. The two middle brackets are really just two halves of the smae bracket, so Am A and Am B seems to make a lot of sense (letters, numbers, whatever, I don't think anyone's going to get confused about which is which.)

And yes, the only way to discourage sandbagging is to increase the incentive to move up. That means balancing what a team may get for winning novice with what it could get for an average performance in Am B. Probably that means no prizes for novices. So be it; any novice teams that enter a Millennium tournament expecting to win are deluding themselves anyway. Most do it just for the experience, and the opportunity to play against better teams.

 

[NIALL]

Chris are you studying for a degree in Stating The Bleeding Obvious??

You seem to have created an argument when there isn't one!

If You win in the Novice Section you get very little. Maybe some product, but as you move up to pro you will win much much more.

Winning stuff is not why people Sandbag... They want to win something full stop. They perceive standing on the podium in any guise is better than not at all. This is what we are trying to change.

There certainly is not an equitable spread of prizes across the sections. Why should there be? They may be few pros, but they are the best and deserve the most.

No sport will develop if it does not encourage excellence, it is in no ones interest to play below your ability.

Niall

 

[acsik]

What if....

...there is forced moving up??


First 3 Novice goes to AM B

First 3 AM B goes to AM A

First 3 AM A goes PRO


On a yearly basis?


It might sound excessive but we want progress and the other solutions are not really make you move up...




Peace

 

[NIALL]

I think we need a stable format before we do this. So in answer to what you said Yes I agree promotion and perhaps demotion also but not yet.

Niall

 

[acsik]

Niall sooner or later it has to happen, it depends on the size of balls when you guys decide to go for it. Every year what passes without forced promotion encourages sandbaggers more.



Cya
A

 

[Buddha 3]

Originally posted by manike
Because of outside perception and understanding.

If things are changing anyway lets try and change them in the best way possible for all reasons. Not just for us players but those who may start to watch the sport and the media and sponsors etc.

manike

I know all that. And I get your points, but I'm still not too fazed by it all.
Let's assume someone wants to watch paintball and doesn't know much about it. Ofcourse he'll want to watch the top, so pro is a good name, even though most of them don't get payed to play.
division names like A and B can be found in plenty of other sports (as our Canadian friend pointed out), and everybody with a vestigial brain understands that A is better than B. That's why I say: why worry?
Sure, there might be better names, but there are bigger things to do to get paintball to go mainstream. That's why to me the whole division's name discussion is hardly interesting.

But that's me.

 

[Pinky_81]

Yep - Is names really that big a problem...

Personally I like Pro, Amateur A, Amateur B, Novice (That rookie-thing doesnt sound right to me...)

It got the four categories, Most people understand what it is - Why don't just go with it??

BTW - I like the 2-3 best teams forced to be moved one step up and the 2-3 worst (no offence) teams to be permitted to move one step down (but not down to novice)

Pinky