XBall expands for Chi-town

[Baca Loco]

From previous limit of 48 teams up to a max of 64. If you wanted to get in but didn't get the cash together in time you have a brief window of opportunity now to jump on board the XBall bandwagon. See statement below:
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As some of you are aware the cut off of 48 teams for the divisional X-Ball format at the 2004 Chicago Open filled to capacity and was closed. this left some teams out of playing the format they wanted to play.

Being that PSP is proud to offer tournament players a choice in which format they participate in, we were bothered that some teams were not going to get that. Being that this occurs days before the construction crew begins building, weeks after plans were made for how to manage the event, and days after the referees had been assigned to specific details - accommodating these teams seemed hopeless.

But......

LD has determined that he does indeed have enough room to change one of the 10 man fields into an X-ball field. Rosie has a team full of X-ball players who were reffing 10-Man because the X-ball staff was complete, and I have found a way to get a scoreboard, an X-ball field, and air to the field.

So.....

X-ball registration is open again. The teams who had registered, but missed the cut off, were moved to 10 Man. They have been moved back to X-Ball. If they want to play X-ball they should go pay immediately.

We will only be able to accept 64 teams (TOTAL). There are 50 already paid. the next 14 to pay will get in, and then it has to close for good....... I think.

Seriously. If you want to play X-ball --- GO PAY NOW!!!

www.pspevents.com
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[Booya39]

someone on smacktalk made a good point.... there was sure a significant volume of whining and crying going on for only 4 more teams to register.

 

[shamu]

Paintball players bitching and moaning about trivial things? Gee that's unusual... Still, it's good to see PSP responding to what the players want.

I noticed that there's 19 DIII teams, 29 DII teams and only 6 DI teams. Looks like teams would rather sandbag DII than get wrecked by Dynasty, Infamous and Dogs in DI. Maybe it's time to either create a fourth division or force some teams to move up to DI? With the 3 event limit in DIII, a lot of teams are either going to move up to DII, making that division even larger, or move to another format.

One weakness with the double elimination format as compared to the prelim/finals format is that weaker teams only get 2 games per event, instead of 8. That may make it tougher for some teams to justify the expense of travel, hotels, etc.

 

[Booya39]

it's cheaper to get a hotel for 3 days rather than 5 days Same goes for a rental car.

Well some of the top div 2 teams know they can't hang with teams like dynasty and infamous so they would rather be a good div 2 team rather than a poor div 1 team. I can't really blame them, it's like going from novice to pro.

It would sure be nice to open the NXL up to be a pro league and then have 3 lower divisions.

Wouldn't it also cut down on the total number of games to have 2 divisions of up to 16 teams rather than 1 big division of 29(up to 32) teams?

/edit Well I did the math and it comes out to a savings of 2 total games if you run 2-16team brackets instead of 1-32team bracket.

 

[shamu]

Originally posted by Booya39
Well some of the top div 2 teams know they can't hang with teams like dynasty and infamous so they would rather be a good div 2 team rather than a poor div 1 team. I can't really blame them, it's like going from novice to pro.

Exactly. Yet, teams forced to move up from DIII to DII are going to be in the same position. Only they don't have the option of staying in DIII. Do you really think teams like Empress are ready for DII?

I'd like to see them either drop the NXL exclusivity and make it "pro", or create a new division. Or maybe just force advancements on DII, like they do in DIII - win 2 events and you have to bump up to DI.

 

[Booya39]

I do think there should be a rule for Div 3 that if you finish in the lower half in each of the events you play you can continue to play div 3 until you finish in the top 4, or something along those lines. It's just hard to write rules to cover every situation instead of giving someone control of deciding when teams need to move up because then that introduces prejudice.

I guess you could weed out a few of these teams because if you make them move up and they get destroyed they won't have won enough prize money to pay for the next event and they don't show up anymore.

 

[Baca Loco]

Easy fix. Add a division. Div 4. Move all except previous winners from 3 to 4. Take bottom half of 2 and move to fill "new" 3. Presto, 3 more competitive divisions totally 48.

In the meantime Div 1 remains a problem. Eventually there will have to be a relegation and promotion system. So, either figure incentives to draw more teams to Div 1 (like finally killing off Pro/Am 10-man) or live with it until you can figure a way to build it up.

 

[Booya39]

If you kill pro/am 10man I don't think you'll find many of those teams going to Xball. But instead they'll find a new home with the Super 7. 5 of the 8 teams playing pro/am in chicago already play Super 7 in either pro or am.

It will however clear up prize money (also a loss in entry fees) for a new division of xball.