In a League of My Own

Well, in a sense.

The gutshot forum league continues on Monday. With a new month starting, there is a fresh chance for players to earn a place in the year-end final to play off for the WSOP 2009 package.

I have agreed to take over the admin for the league. First task was to change the scoring since there there been demand for a revised scoring system that wasn't so top-heavy.

I put something together based on the apparent requirements, which seemed to be that the system should:

- be less top-heavy than the original approach
- but still reward players who go deep in the tourneys
- and also favour the regular players
- and award more points in bigger fields
- be basically sound and reasonable
- and consistent with the expected field sizes

I had a look around on the web at other league systems as well, and came up with a system which pays points to all participants in each game, but favours the top 20 (last two tables).

There is a fixed set of points from 20 to 200 on a rounded 1/(1+x) system for the base case where there are exactly 20 runners. When there are more than 20, the points for the top20 are scaled up by (runners/20) whilst all the others get a flat 20 points.

Where there are less than 20 runners, the points are scaled down so that the last-placed runner scores exactly 20.

I reconstructed the points retrospectively for February and (not surprisingly) I still won !

Although the league runs month-to-month I intend to keep a running-total going throughout the year for the amusement of one and all.