[OutOfCrown]

The players who play my (smallish -- 2 tables max) tournaments asked me to put a points system in place, so I did.

Now we have a complaint: the points system is inherently biased towards me. Since, by definition, there are no poker tournaments on weekends when my schedule has a conflict. Therefore, I get to play every game. Few other players get to play *every* game, since invariably each of them eventually has a conflict on one weekend or another.

The suggestion was made that we should normalize the points by sorting them using "points per tournament played" as the rating system. Just thinking about that, I can see that it removes some of the bias, though perversely it may create a bias *against* the people who play a lot: The more you play, the more your results will reflect a true average for you; the less you play the more a few days of luck might rocket you into the lead. Of course, there has to be a minimum number of games you've played before you can "qualify" in this per-game system, but even so playing fewer games magnifies any short-term variance (luck) vs. the people who play more games.

Any comments, wisdom, experiences good/bad on this are appreciated. This, of course, came up most recently when I rocketed from second place to first place by being able to play one weekend when the first place dude could not.

So far, my best answer to this issue is either "get your own damn tournament" or else "ok, never mind, points was a stupid idea".

[luckychick]

Why don't you just take the best 8/10 scores or whatever. That way, if some people miss a couple of games, it's no big deal.

[PokerFiend]

define your season and drop top score and lowest score.
you get 0 points if you miss a game so that would be your drop.

[hod]

Originally Posted by luckychick

Why don't you just take the best 8/10 scores or whatever. That way, if some people miss a couple of games, it's no big deal.

That sounds the fairest, though the poker leagues I am aware of don't use this - you get points for each high finish, the more games you play the more points you can earn - keeps the number of players attending each week high.

[SandmanDC]

You could always use the points per play average.
Just a thought.
With a minimum games played of course

[KYBill]

We use the best 6 out of 10. Has been working great for 5 seasons.

[dad604]

Originally Posted by luckychick

Why don't you just take the best 8/10 scores or whatever. That way, if some people miss a couple of games, it's no big deal.

I think that is the best idea. But on other though, why shouldn't it be bias towards the house. You have to do all the work...

[mac40k]

For my league last year we did best 10 of 15. That way missing games didn't hurt you. Also, the points system was skewed heavily towards winning, so players that joined late in the season, but did really well passed others that just "showed up" for all 15 games. This way, there were no minimum games required and we could accept new people throughout the season. The top 9 in the standings automatically qualified for the tournament of champions and everyone else played a playoff game for the 10th seat. Stack sizes for the TOC and playoff were determined by your regular season performance, so more points meant more starting chips at the final table. This helped keep even the folks low in the standings involved throughout the season because a) even one win could vault you up the leaderboard several places and b) the playoff game meant that you were never really out of the running. On the other hand, those that did the best in the regular season did get something for it in the form of a chip advantage at the TOC. Seemed fair to everyone.

[Go Mifune]

I would think that using the average of all played, but you have to have a minimum number of games would be the fairest. But I think using 10 of 15 (or something similar) would be the best. I think that would encourage attendance so you would get as many shots as possible. Anything that encourages attendance is good.

[Hopin2Steal]

We had this in my game for awhile. Solution? Play in 12 tournaments, which basically worked out to 3 out of 5 nights in a month under our system. That was it.

Of course, we also had a separate prize for the top point getter. So you had to pay an extra $1 for your first 12 tournaments. If you wanted to try to improve your score, you could continue to ante and make your game count.