Quintiles -- A non-traditional format tournament

[bruce_brakel]

I'm planning on running a non-traditional format tournament next summer. Here and now I'm practicing explaining the format. I'm trying to develop a concise explanation that tells you what you need to know. Tell me if this explains it to you:
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We are discarding the traditional PDGA format where we would have ten to fourteen divisions dividing players up by age, gender and skill. Instead, we will take the entire registered field and sort it by ratings. For trophies and payout, the top fifth (or first quintile) of the players will compete against everyone in the top fifth. The second fifth (or second quintile) of the players will compete against everyone in the second fifth, and so on. The trophy-only pre-registration fee is $10. If you want to get in on the quintile payout, bring $20 or $40 to the tournament and you can pay in for that at the tournament.

Because this will not fit into a PDGA TD report, for purposes of competing for PDGA points, only, all pros will play Open and all Ams will play Advanced.
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I'm thinking I'll start with that much on the website our players read, and then fill in some details when they ask questions. If I tell you that much, do you understand what is going on without your head starting to spin? This assumes that your head was not spinning before you started reading.

 

[Working Stiff]

It seems straightforward. I'd understand what was going on, and I'm pretty slow so I think you're safe.

You probably already have a way to deal with folks who have no rating. That should become less and less of an issue as time goes on. If I had no rating I'd wonder what you were going to do with me, so if you are hoping to attract Rec/Novice-type players with no PDGA experience you might want to make what you are going to do with them clear.

This is farfetched, but I am thinking of one guy in particular who is "Mr. Pro." He goes on and on about always playing Open and never sandbagging, but he sucks. If he showed up for something like this and ended up in the 2nd or 3rd quintile he would throw a fit. Would you throw him in the 1st quintile to shut him up or tell him to grow up?

 

[Nothaz]

Nope, it makes plenty sense.

I like the idea, but I have not played any tournaments before.

Where will this tourney be taking place?

 

[bruce_brakel]

It seems straightforward. I'd understand what was going on, and I'm pretty slow so I think you're safe.

You probably already have a way to deal with folks who have no rating. That should become less and less of an issue as time goes on. If I had no rating I'd wonder what you were going to do with me, so if you are hoping to attract Rec/Novice-type players with no PDGA experience you might want to make what you are going to do with them clear.

We actually have a volunteer who calculates ratings on non-members and unrated new members which we use at our tournaments to place players in the appropriate division. He is a computer programming guy, so he has written a program to mine PDGA data on the non-members and do the work without having to do too much actual work. I'm hoping the tournament will fill on invitational pre-reg, and then the unrated unknown player won't be an issue.

This is farfetched, but I am thinking of one guy in particular who is "Mr. Pro." He goes on and on about always playing Open and never sandbagging, but he sucks. If he showed up for something like this and ended up in the 2nd or 3rd quintile he would throw a fit. Would you throw him in the 1st quintile to shut him up or tell him to grow up?

Your quintile is assigned. He can play Open for purposes of PDGA points and stats, but if he is third quintile, he's third quintile.

Sorry for the delay in responding. I responded a couple of days ago and misclicked or something and lost the post.

 

[jnecessary]

This is a pretty cool idea IMO...

The PDGA is cool with a sanctioned tourney being ran this way? I like how you compete against people that have had similar results in tournaments yet you still get PDGA points. In fact...I'm one of those nerds that can sit around looking at tournament results all the time. If you put the results up on your website based on the quintile format, then the results show up on PDGA site in traditional format it makes for some cool comparisons for the players. I know personally I would enjoy seeing how I competed against people in my rating range, as well as people that play in my 'normal' division.

 

[osbogosley1]

I'm hosting a tour. Jan. 9th with a different format. Three div.- Pro/adv, Amateur, Recreational. First round of singles pays out 60% of the money. The pro/adv are then paired with the top amateurs- if 10 pro/adv then the best score with the 10th amateur, 2nd best with 9th ama, and so on. The 11th amateur pairs with worst rec. player and so on. The idea is to get the better ams a chance to play with a pro and the rec. players get to play with a good amateur. The old saying about playing with better players to get better and learning to get the most out of your partner. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[arowan21]

have you considered flighting the tourney after the first or second round? also you might want to consider an x-tier or non pdga tourney, or only sanctioning the top tier. thirds or forth might be a better way to break up the field. 20 guys into fifth is only 4 per division, but 20 into thirds is 6 or 7. you could also do side cash then everyone in the top would probably pay in but not so in the bottom