League Payouts – Which Approach is Better?
So I played in a couple of leagues this Spring/Summer that had two totally different approaches to how the payouts should be done and I’m curious what other cornhole players thought was the better approach?
The first league I played in had 16 teams, which meant you played 16 weeks worth of games. The first 15 weeks you showed up and played 3 games no matter what, every game counted and throughout the season you played each team once. After week 15 they took the top 8 teams and those 8 teams made it into the playoffs, seeded by record. So #1 played #8, #2 played #3 and #4 played #5. The format was best of 3, single elimination. At the end of the night they paid out all of the prizes to the top 3 teams in the tournament (so there was a 3rd/4th place match as well). Winner received about 65% of the prize money, 2nd received about 25% and 3rd got somewhere around 10%. Regular season winners did not get anything, it all came down to the playoffs.
The second league I played in was an 8 week season, 14 teams and you played everyone twice in a match, best 2 of 3. At the end of 8 weeks the top 3 teams were awarded about 80% of the prize money. 1st getting around 60%, 2nd 30% and 3rd 10%. The remaining 20% was then given out to the season ending tournament winners and runner-up teams which was held in week 9 (also seeded by record).
So two completely different thoughts on how prizes should be awarded. The first treating it more like professional sports in that the regular season doesn’t mean all that much, it’s all about the playoffs. Difference being in baseball/basketball they help the better teams by making it best of 7, not best of 3. The second rewarding those who proved they’re the best over the long haul with some reward also being given out for the “playoffs”.
As usual, I have an opinion, but curious to hear what others think before I share mine.
Thoughts?
The CornholeBlogger
Related posts:
I personally like the second option the best. I think the consistency of pitching good every week should mean more in a season than just getting hot in the last week. I like the final tournament getting a cut though also..
Funny you should mention this – I also played in two leagues this spring/summer like the ones you described. While I enjoyed the fact that all the money was paid out in the 16 team spring league, it all came down to the playoffs. There was no reward for 15 weeks of dominant regular season play. I think that half the money should have been paid out to the top 2 in the regular season (75/25) and then the other half to the top 3 in the playoff tourney (60/30/10). With a single elimination playoff tourney – albeit best 2/3 games, anything can happen. In the 14 team summer league, it was nice to have a 50/30/20 payout in the regular season. It gave our team something to shoot for. Plus, there’s something about winning a trophy that’s kinda cool. The playoff tourney was more of a throw in type deal. Even though the summer league didn’t have huge payouts, the level of competition every week was tough so you earned every win. In the end, my vote lies with paying out more money in the regular season.
The reason they do that is because it gives everyone a fair chance, in my opinion. Who wants to play in a league that they KNOW they have no chance of winning. If you are the best team you should have no problem winning through out the season and into the playoffs. If you go through the whole season in 1st place and you lose in the playoffs (oh well) it happens. Next session the 1st place team could finish in 10th and finish 1st in playoffs thats just the way it works. I have played in many leagues, not just bags either. I like the idea of playing all season long, then playing for the money in the playoffs. Everyone has a chance!!! Not everyone is as good as some people. I feel that if you don’t do it like this new people will never play. They will quit half way throught the session, because they r gonna say screw it we don’t have a chance why even finish. So through out the session give them something to play for individually (MVP). So they are not just playing as a team, either. Bottom line is I feel that if you don’t give EVERY team a fair shot the sport will not grow!!
I know in darts they pay per win throughout the season.. They break down the total payout and leave out a certain amount for the champions of the playoffs to go to Vegas and play in the World Championships… Not sure how well that would work in this situation becuz I haven’t played in a cornhole league “yet”..
Steve, new NEO league starting Monday, they’re trying out the blind draw format. Then back to the doubles format first week of October. Come join in on the fun! Guaranteed to make you a better player or NEO promises to give you you’re money back!!! (ummm, just kidding on the money back part…)
Where is it going to be and what time does it start?
Blind draw league starts Monday at Flyers in Parma Heights. Have to be there before 6:30 each week, like 5-6 week season. Then the traditional doubles league starts first week of October at Knights of Columbus Hall on Broadview Rd (Parma/Cleveland). Leagues on Monday for sure and maybe Friday. NEOCornhole.com for more info…
Admin
What’s your thoughts on getting that high attendance of new players that continue to keep playing for a league?
What has and continues to happen in the pomeroy group I grew up in cornhole with, is stacked teams. I have recently moved, and now do not make it to Buns which is where cornhole started for me. Originally it was 10 on a slow night, and 20 on a good night, with a total blind draw format. I convinced them over time to do an a/b and sometime a/b/c format and we saw over 40 playing once or twice just maybe 5 months later. Now the numbers are dismal again and they straight draw it like old times. But hey, I’m not there much anymore so maybe I shouldn’t care, but my question and point is this, what happened there for attendance seems to be a standard for anywhere cornhole is played.
I have always pushed the a/b or even a/b/c format at our weekly events for blind draw one tourney only play, and have never tried the league thing yet, but am thinking about it when we return to our indoor facility in the fall in Huntington which is where I now live.
Any input on a blind partner league format?
I think that would be the only way to move forward with a league near here, other wise 2 or 3 teams are gonna squash the others and we wont get much of a turn out I fear.
Let me know mane.
Corn Dawg:
We are just trying out the blind draw partner league format for the first time starting this Monday. We have players signed up from all levels of play that are eager to get it going and see how it works. We are doing it simply to fill in a 5 week gap before we move into our fall/winter location. I really didn’t have time to put a full league session together with only 5 weeks of outdoor play time, but we wanted to keep everyone playing and keep involving the amateur players as well. We hope that this format will do just that. The details of how we plan to do it are on our website if you want to check it out there. When we get a couple weeks of it under our belts, I will collect some feedback from all the players and see what their thoughts on it are as well as how it’s working for me as the director.
As far as keeping teams interested in playing…so far, what has been working for us is offering 3 divisions of play. Competitive, Intermediate, and Amateur. We move teams up and down based on their results for each session. Teams in Intermediate and Amateur with a 75% or greater win percentage are moved up a division for the next session, and teams in Competitive and Intermediate with a 25% or less win percentage are given the option to move down a division for the next session.
This has helped, to an extent, keep teams interested and keep signing up. We are just now starting to run into the problem where the same teams in the Competitive division are winning the league and teams that are in the middle to bottom of the competitive division are starting to see their entry fees as a “donation”. Not exactly sure how to go about correcting this, but there are a couple of options that I can see.
Option #1:
a split season doing things just as we have with 3 divisions, but 1/2 way through the season, re-grouping everyone based on wins and losses into 3 new divisions. That should give some of the mid to low ranking competitive division teams a little more chance at coming out in the money at the end, and give the intermediate teams with mid to low ranking to do the same.
There are problems with this idea too:
Problem #1 the teams that are there now in the amateur division will be left in the dust with no chance to win anything. Granted, the few teams that it would affect, are really not there to win big bucks anyway, and they are used to the prizes in their division being much smaller than the upper divisions as well
Problem #2 what is the most fair way to split the divisions up 1/2 way through the season? All teams really should have the same number of games under their belt at the dividing point, and if there are fewer teams in one division than another, this may not be possible. You can’t re-group a team with 12 games in 4 weeks vs. a team with only 9 games played in 4 weeks.
Problem #3 Some of the players analyze the numbers to the extent that they may just “throw off” games in the first 1/2 just to be considered 1st place in the Intermediate division in the 2nd 1/2. I personally don’t agree with doing that, but some people just want to see their name on the top of a standings sheet whether they did it the right way or not.
Option #2:
The other option would be to create an entirely new division above competitive like “Pro” or “Ultra Competitive” or something like that. This is the easiest fix, but at the same time, there would be problems with this too.
Problem #1 The few teams that would participate at this level would be a very small division of teams, thus, the prize money wouldn’t be that great, and those at this level are playing for the cash!
Problem #2 What criteria do you use to make a team “Ultra Competitive”?
Option #3
Require all teams winning their division to find new partners for the next session. While I think this might could work, I don’t think it’s the fair way to handle the situation either.
As you can see, there are no easy fixes to the issue of keeping players coming back for more. In all honesty, I think only the truly competitive nature of people is what has kept people coming back for more in our leagues. We do a TON of networking, advertising, and promoting of the leagues, and luckily, we have a huge core group of really great people and they are also bringing in some of the new players to the leagues. Keeping the players happy is always our number 1 goal, keeping boards full, people up playing, and being as organized as possible are all keys to keeping the people coming back. I guess some of the success we have had is nothing more than luck, but I’m not really one to believe in “luck”…I’d like to think if you offer a good “product” for a good price and treat people good, they will keep coming back. Listening to the players and allowing them to share ideas has also been a key to the success of the NEO leagues. Sometimes, just feeling like people “belong” to something is enough to keep them involved too. We really are a “family”, or as in your case Dawg, a “cult”
The NEO format has definitely been a solid choice, unfortunately, there are probably 40%% of the teams that are stuck in a tough spot in that they don’t finish in the money and they’re not bad enough to finish at the bottom and move down. There are also a few teams that aren’t happy because they win say the Intermediate division, but when they move up to competitive they get killed so then they move back down and do it all over again. In this case, well, I think they just need to suck it up. They get paid every other session and then the session in the upper division they have to take their lumps and try to get better.
That being said, I would like to see someone try out a handicapping league. I mean we are talking leagues here, not tournaments. Leagues should attempt to keep everyone competitive and interested, the issue is, how do you handicap it? My personal thought is this, let’s say you just finished a session and had the following standings.
Team A 19-1
Team B 18-2
Team C 17-3
Team D 12-8
Team E 10-10
Team F 9-11
Team G 5-15
Team H 4-16
Team I 1-19
Team J 0-20
There is a very solid distinction in these standings between teams A-C, D-F, G/H and I/J. My thought would be to assign each group of teams a factor.
Group 1 (Teams A-C) = 0
Group 2 (Teamc D-F) = 4
Group 3 (Teams G/H) = 7
Group 4 (Teams I/J) = 10
What you then might do is take the difference between the two teams playing and that’s what the “lesser” team starts with. For example, if a team in Group 1 plays a team in Group 3, the team in Group 3 starts each game with 7 points. If a team in Group 2 plays a team in Group 4, then the Group 4 team starts with 10-4 or 6 points. And of course if a team in Group 1 plays a team in Group 1, they both start at 0.
I don’t know if this would work or not, but I think it might be worth a shot for someone to try out. The goal of the handicapping would to have every team finish as close to .500 in winning percentage as possible. Obviously that won’t happen, but the records should be much more competitive than the example I show above.
In fact, a combination of using “divisions” and handicapping could be the best of all (assuming you have enough teams to do this) as teams that finish 1-19 or 0-20 in a division really don’t want to be playing teams way better than them, even if they do get to start with 10 points.
I dunno, would love for someone to try it and report back……. Divisions certainly aren’t a bad idea, splitting the season up into halves is probably too tough to pull off and the blind draw approach where you get multiple partners in a tournament is cool, not sure the league will work though as far as keeping the “lesser” players interested, but we’re about to find out.
My two cents as usual…..
That idea would work, but what do you do with new teams, or teams that have had partner changes? You have to go into each league session with a fresh perspective for the most part. Trying to use the idea above would not work unless all your teams were returning each session with the same partners.
Good point, so you may have to come up with some mini-test only for new players. Of course the same could be said for divisions, what if new players come in and say they suck and play Amateur or Intermediate and dominate?
Or just make new players suffer for one session with a “0 handicap” and adjust accordingly for all future sessions.
I dunno, just some thoughts. There is no perfect solution, just in search of the “best” solution…
I say everyone throws with their opposite hands using sand bags on trampoline boards from now on! LOL! So much for this being about league payouts!
I think the handicapping idea would be interesting and could work. You could also take each division and based on some sort of test – rank all the players. For example, we had 14 teams in the competitive division – that’s 28 players. Rank them 1-28 and pair them up accordingly – 1/28, 2/27, 3/26… That would ensure totally fair teams if that’s what your going for. However, the top teams want to play against the best. The middle of the road teams are just kind of stuck and the bottom ones have to take their lumps I guess. Of course, you could do it another way too. Pair up everyone in order 1/2, 3/4, 5/6… and then use the handicapping system. Lastly, test everyone individually, add up each teams’ scores that sign up and determine a handicap for each match. There’s alot of ways to go with this. The league payouts are not what makes NEO’s leagues successful – although it’s nice to win some money. It’s spending a Monday night playing a great game with friends in a league that’s run efficiently. So I’m all for trying new things each session if that’s what it takes.
here’s some food for thought…put everyone in 1 division…charge like $75 per team for an 8 week session, and everyone play everyone like we did in year 1…only difference, pay out something to all teams…similar to a bowling league…gift cards, discounted rates on next session, bags, score towers, boards, whatever just so long as everyone gets something for competing. the payouts in the rec division were pathetic due to the number of teams that signed up…if we spread the wealth amongst the league to everyone…things like a 50/50 raffle to bump up the prize pot would work instead of only 3 – 9 teams getting prizes out of 36 teams….grated, paying out 9 teams is 25%…i’d like to see it at least closer to 50% cash 50% prizes or discounts or something like that. bumping an entry fee to $75 per session to spread the wealth may be the way to go??? thoughts?
I think that is a great idea for tournaments. My opinion in leagues is that really bad teams don’t want to play really good teams and vice versa as losing (or winning) 21-1 is no fun for anyone. Handicapping would help that, but even handicapping I would think at least two divisions is a good idea. Good players want to play good players, rec players want to play rec players (I think).
Definitely not against paying out more spots or if there are sponsors, donations, etc… to give out as much as possible, but getting sponsors and such for a league is probably no easy task.
Lots of good thoughts here… I’ve always thought that some sort of “handicapping” might be the way to go.
I don’t think you really have to worry about people sandbagging for the most part. My guess is just about everyone is more in it for reasons The DUB pointed out rather than for money. And I also agree with admin, most people just want to play a competitive game with players roughly the same caliber as they are.
So for me it just comes down to how you rank the players or handicap teams. Here’s another idea to rank players and set up teams accordingly:
I know its not perfect, and most here disagree with how the ACO has done things (including myself), but the Skills Challenge they came up with does give you a pretty good starting point on the caliber of player you are. Maybe just do an abbreviated version of it.
You could test all players, lets say you have 30 teams total for a league, then you could take all the scores and have 3 cutoffs for divisions. Then just try and match players evenly points wise. 1st division = 1 plays with 20, 2 plays with 19, etc and on down for the three divisions.
As admin said, there is no “perfect” solution… Just trying to throw ideas/feedback out there.
So upon further inspection I’m pretty sure my idea was pretty much exactly what The DUB said earlier… Great idea man! LOL…
Chuck/Dub, I think that would work, however, that leaves the door open to “sandbag” while taking the test. While I don’t think that should be a major issue, the other bigger issue is you are then partnered for 8-9 weeks with someone you don’t know and you also don’t know if they are reliable. Every session we have people quit or not show and that part of it isn’t fair to the “random” partner you get assigned for the entire league.
In theory it should work, but in reality, well, just like many of the other ideas, I’m not sure it could be done…
Good point for sure. I guess I just like the idea of ranking players and making fair teams more than handicapping. I wouldn’t really want points from other players (even though I would certainly need them). I want to win, but not that way if you know what I mean. I would rather lose every game of the season rather than win with points or win in a lesser division (speaking from experience). Not sure if that’s how others feel but that’s my 2 cents.
Lots of good input. I appreciate it.
The ever looming sandbagging is nearly impossible to fix.
Not sure if any of you attended these events or not, but something the ACO did that actually worked really well when multiple events were tied together (Turfway and Grand Vic event at the Casino) was to use the 7/21 competition as part of your total points for winning, but also to rank you for your ability in the singles and doubles partner assignment.
If your not familiar with it, you throw 7 bags, and can score anywhere from 0 – 21, 0 if you never hit the board and 21 if you make all 7 bags of course. This was a portion of your total points toward winning the event, as well as how your partner was assigned based on their score, and I think it may have even seeded you in the singles but do not remember.
Using something similar to that which all of the variations mentioned above are, and maybe making the 7/21 or something similar’s score weighted, so that it is just as or more important to score high on it, then it would be to score badly to be able to sandbag into a good partner.
The other part on the handicapping to remember especially in in type of singles situation, is look at your best player in your area/league. And look at your worst.
You can give your worst player 20 points in 20 consecutive games probably against not only the top player but the top 10 players, and their gonna lose 21-20, 20 games in a row.