Thursday, 12 May 2016

Round 1 Match Results - Summer 2016

The season kicked off  well, with a great spirit and some new rules. Here are the Round 1 results with dashboard download links for both matches.

Monday Dashboard (Download)

Wednesday Dashboard (Download)

New Rules discussion and some refinements 

Deferring matches 

The Monday Mexican vs. Moonshine deferment saw the new show up bonus points incentive kick in to have both captains working on a catch-up match. It is uncomfortable when a team has to defer, but it can happen to any team.  Well done to both teams for embracing the spirit to try to get the match re-scheduled within the on-time period.

Time Management 

The Wednesday 9 Ball new sets format made matches go faster. In most cases matches finished in  reasonable times, so it seems that change is positive.

Mixed Competition More Interesting  (scoring design with claw back option) 

The new Scoring system on Monday was well received with positive feedback generally. Maintaining the competitive nature of play was the aim. Everyone enjoyed the new claw back bias that was added to make that possible.  

One refinement we have made after we looked at the data from round 1 results is : 
For  the last set, the 5 points will be allocated 1 point for each game won, replacing majority gets all 5 points. 

This was proposed by Pickled Liver to address a long standing imbalance in won games. Several alternatives were considered (modelled below) during discussions with captains. Some have reservations about the change but all are willing to it give try and sort out any issues as they come up.

Some thinking voiced is, the revision will possibly make it tougher to get an overturn, with low odds of winning 5 games in a row, for teams coming from behind. It is also acknowledged however that balance is needed so teams who can win high %age of games are not be unduly gazumped, 

The adoption of the Pickled Liver proposal will now make winning games the key objective of the strategic final set. We will review this again at end of the season to revisit any inverse issues and retest the integrity of the claw back objective. 

Results impact on Round 1 


In round 1 this impacted only the Pickled Liver vs Sport 20-2 match.

Pickled Liver had scored well on both games and sets early, winning 11 of a possible 17 games with 3 sets to 0,  worth 7 points. They then lost the claw back sets winning only only 1 won game in set 3 and 2 games in set 5, which saw Sport-20-2 finish on an 8 points win, and a loss to Pickled Liver still on 7 points. 

With games in set 5 deemed as set points. this changed the outcome. Sport 20-2 had their  8-7 win overturned with Pickled Liver converted to a 9-6 win. Sport 20-2 recognized Pickled Liver had  played better and supported their submission.

We also tested what if the losing team had won just one more game in set 4 or 5, would it have changed the match outcomes? 3 out of 4 matches would have had their results changed including Pickled Liver with a  9-6 win (see modelled options below).



Here is more detail on the change considerations.

Monday Mixed Scoring Revision 
This year we added weighting points to set 5 to make it possible for teams 0-3 sets down to claw back to win set 4& 5 and win the match Matches are not scored on games but on sets won.

This in unchanged from last  year. So on scoring winning 14 (60+%) or even 17 out of 23 games and still losing is possible with a 7 to 8 points result. This was similar last year with say 1,5,1,5,2 = 14 of 23 or 60+% still losing 4-6. In the Scenarios, 15 Points  (7-8 loss) converts back to last season Scenario 10 as a 6 to 4 win. In scenario 11 the added point in set 5 gives an outright winner, but a 6 out of possible 11 points score at set 3 still cannot be beaten.

The scenarios show it was never about games, but always about sets.  

Even the old scoring, had a possibility to win more games and still lose on sets where 1 or 2 of the 5 games was often played as no non contributing.


The claw back design gives the fallen behind team an second chance and addresses the redundancy of one team  winning 3 of 5 sets and still having to play the last 2 sets.. The 7+8=15 points rebalanced scoring however amplified the games disparity, and raised the question, "Should games be weighted into scoring?" which triggered the Picked Liver's Proposal. 

Proposal Summary
1.       Background:       Games played and won and set scoring is unbalanced as amplified by the claw back second chance scoring where sets do not account for high % of games won.

2.       Objective:           Games weighted scoring need so matches are both strategic and equitable.

3.       Solution:               For the last set, the 5 points be allocated 1 point for each game won, replacing majority gets all 5 points . All other sets remain scored by majority. 

4.       Admin:                 Technical scoring systems remain the same. Captains must now be aware that games won on the last set become set points.  

Here is some analysis to support this proposal.  
·         First layer is the actual Monday Mixed result for round 1 based on new system . This shows up weighting anomaly on the PL match as high game winners being disadvantaged.
·         Next  layer has option results which also include last year format.  A option proposed for a change is to use games won as the metric to calculate the 5 points in the last set,
·         Last layer is a What if result  using and assumption that just one more game won by loser team in either set 4 or 5 would have changed the majority of match outcomes anyway. 



Mexican vs. Moonshine - no result as the match is delayed 


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