Why??? Divisions Question.

[TheRo0sTer]

I was just wondering why at all the tournaments I have played are all the teams just thrown into a pot then picked for divisions? The logical way would be to seperate them according to their ability or sign in. You get a team who is Novice in a division with 3 AM and 2 Pro what good does it do for the Team? I know you get better by playing better teams but who wants to pay to go out and get their @$$es handed to them? Just wondering.

 

[RePete]

She's a hard road to hoe...Divisions are a silly thing at the end of the day, but a necessary evil in an attempt to level the playing field. The best system I've encountered was:

Trac's Volcanic Rotorua '02 -

20 teams (Big for New Zealand). Five pools of four. Four prelim games. Top 10 scores go into the top division, 10 bottom scores into the bottom, for 9 games or round robin. Worked like a treat. But how do you do this for 120 teams? Donno.

That's the silly thing about Paintball. I can't think of ANY other sport where HUNDREDS of teams show up for a single tourney. I hate to say it but I was agreeing with raehl earlier about his comments of increasing the costs of tournaments. It's the laws of supply and demand...

 

[Duncster]

Problem with playing for your division is that people do actually play the scoreboard so that they are in an easier division.... sad, but true....

 

[RePete]

I was going to say "Oh come on? Who wants to compete in a lower division when they can compete in a higher division?" but I guess for some, winning Am A is better than losing Pro, which I think as bollox. First Am place = the position just after the bottom Pro...Oh well.

 

[Baca Loco]

Originally posted by TheRo0sTer
I was just wondering why at all the tournaments I have played are all the teams just thrown into a pot then picked for divisions? The logical way would be to seperate them according to their ability or sign in. You get a team who is Novice in a division with 3 AM and 2 Pro what good does it do for the Team? I know you get better by playing better teams but who wants to pay to go out and get their @$$es handed to them? Just wondering.

Because that's the way the promoters choose to do it and I would hazard the guess--after seeing posted results from a number of UK events--the promoters figure they have little choice as a matter of numbers. They host an event but don't want to limit the potential pool of participants by restricting entry but at same time it seems there frequently aren't sufficient teams from any group except novice to justify multiple division semi's and finals--or maybe they simply don't have the resources to handle it. However, if Novice teams stopped showing up for "Open" formatted events somebody would change how they were doing things quick. I did like Repete's Rotura 02 format of natural seeding and then regular division play--looks like it would work nicely for a lot of the UK events.

As to Pete's other question of how you do this for 120 teams you don't have to because any Mil or NPPL style event is going to division category semi's and finals after the prelims. All you have to do--if you want to retain vertical play--is schedule it like the NPPL does now. Every Nov plays a Pro and an Am so while you may not play the same caliber of team the basic draw is uniform. As to other ways to do it go wade thru the Novice Prizes thread over in Tourney for a few different ideas.

As to arbitrarily increasing the price that's nonsense nor will any promoter who can attract 120 teams do such a thing until he is sure he'll still get 120 teams at the new price. Such a notion begins with the presupposition that cash equals quality--at least in Raehl's arguments in another thread and that is just silly. It's also detrimental to the growth of the sport.
I guarantee every promoter out there is charging every dollar he thinks he can balanced against maintaining the largest possible pool of interested teams.

 

[RePete]

Heh. You're right Baca. For 120 teams you don't need round robin. Natural selection and ranking systems sort out the divisions, though those systems are hard to administer and open to abuse. How many Am A teams in the NPPL should be playing Pro? How about something like many other sporting leagues were the winner of Am A has to go Pro the following year, and the bottom Pros get dropped.

As for cost, I suspect your right again in that the organisers are going to have mini-maxed the cost benefits and ROI. I just can't imagine showing up to a US event with hundreds of teams where the pool seedings can have such an effect on the outcome of the event. In NZ, you know who the best teams are as due to the number of teams, everyone generally gets to play everyone, so you earn the final result.

 

[Baca Loco]

Hey Pete

go over to Tourney and see what I did with your pic.

Back to the topic at hand--or something quite like it. The thread I referred to before covers all that ground but just to tempt you into reading it try this on for size--
the way things are done now no one SHOULD be anywhere but where they are because EVERYONE is playing the division they are in by CHOICE not MERIT. When there are no restrictions (other than progressively scaled entry fees which penalise superior play) on division entry there are no guarantees of level of play or quality of play.

As a subjective matter of opinion in the NPPL currently there are 2 or 3 Am teams that could play Pro and be competitive. But there are also at least that many teams at Pro level who probably have no business being there. And this year there are 8-10 Am teams who have no business being there on the basis of quality of play while there are 6-8 Nov teams who could compete at the AM level and improve the division substantially.

 

[RePete]

A solution to divisions...?

I believe the soltution to divisions lies in the future of our sport. That the Pros will and should be spun off into their own league when Paintball finally goes pro.

As for the remainder...What other sports can we draw parallels (And thus experience) with? As I say, for me this boils down to "What other sport gets 120 bloody teams turning up for a single event?".

I don't hear members of FIFA who didn't qual for the World Cup going "Give us our own event". BUT! They also don't have to fork out the dosh to pay for their event...

 

[Duncster]

I've got a feeling that, if they don't totally shag things up, the X-ball format will sort the whole thing out.

All of a sudden you will have "Leagues" of X-ball format teams in different divisions which will work in pretty much the same way as football (soccer). Simply due to the fact that the games are longer and encourage skill more than dumb luck.

The idea is there. I'm just glad that someone with the monetary power is actually making it happen......