Ultimate Pool USA Handicapping

Coming soon, maybe?

Ultimate Pool is the new kid on the block in the United States. All pool leagues need a handicapping system, and that’s always going to be the lightning rod for criticism in any league. It certainly is for the APA and to a lesser extent, BCA.

Today I’m going to take a look at how Ultimate Pool is doing it. It’s called an UpScore.

Fortunately, it’s very easy to do: (source: UPScore Calculator)

1. If you have any APA skill levels, take the max of the two and map it to one of these numbers:

   1. 1: 250

   2. 2: 250

   3. 3: 325

   4. 4: 375

   5. 5: 425

   6. 6: 475

   7. 7: 525

   8. 8: 575

   9. 9: 625

   10. 10: 675

2. If you have a Fargo Rating, replace the last number with a zero. (559 → 550 for example)

3. Take the maximum of the number from step 1 and step 2.

4. If you don’t have either, use 475.

That’s it. I think the way this is used to handicap is the following:

For every 40 points of handicap, the higher skill level player starts with a 1 point deficit. (kind of, see chart below. Source: league manual)

from the league manual

So, for example:

You have an UpScore of 475 and your opponent is 525. (+50 points) Your opponent starts at -1 and you start at zero. You play for 30 minutes with a 30 second shot clock and one extension. Each win is a point. Whoever has the most wins at the end of 30 minutes is the winner. (Lag for break, alternating breaks thereafter.)

You score the match in the following way, per the league manual.

Thoughts

I think the handicapping system is pragmatic. There are only three places to get players:

• APA

• BCA

• New players

This system handles all of those. You could make the argument that the mapping from APA is wrong, but it looks decent to me. Overall, I think the handicapping is pretty good. I’d prefer it eventually just be Fargo, but it’s got to start somewhere.

Potential Problems

I don’t want to go too hard here because I haven’t played in the league. But here are the problems I see on the horizon:

1. The 30 Second Shot Clock: This is an attempt to solve one of the biggest issues in amateur pool: league nights go too late. Some type of shot clock would help. The problems are going to be practical:

   1. Who keeps the “official time”? If both teams do it, it won’t match. Remember, there are two clocks: match and shot. Manipulating the clock is going to happen unless there is a referee, and there isn’t.

   2. Who decides when to call an “All Stop”? (See page 24 in the manual.) You “All Stop” when a player can’t shoot due to another player blocking the table. How long before someone wants to stop because of people walking by? How short does a blockage need to be to call “All Stop”? What if we don’t agree on this?

   3. Where is the shot clock displayed? Someone’s phone? Is it going to beep at players like in a pro match? Does someone say “ten seconds!”? There are 16 tables in my pool hall. 8 of them might be league tables. Players in my APA league struggle to keep the score straight and this is much more cognitive load. This seems like a lot to manage and a great thing to argue over.

   4. What about people who are physically unable to keep the pace of a 30 second shot clock? If you have some type of physical limitation that makes it impossible to comply, is Ultimate Pool simply not for you? Maybe this is addressed somewhere outside the manual, but I don’t think you can have a league that doesn’t support people with a disability. I’d go so far as to say the league either solves this problem or lawyers will help them solve it.

   5. Of course it will be gamed. Once a player gets a small lead, every shot will always take the full 30 seconds. If you take this to the logical extreme, once you get a lead against a better player, you take the full 30 seconds and then shoot a safety to slow the game down. From experience, my opponents take the longest time trying to figure out how to escape a safety.

   6. Warped strategy: For a low skill player against a high skill player, the name of the game is damage control: all safety play, lose as few games as slowly as possible. While weird people like me might enjoy that, most people want to make balls.

   7. For what it’s worth, APA or BCA leagues could do shot clocks using local by-laws but I’ve never heard of it. I’ve seen it tried via team captain pre-season meetings, but it never goes further than week 1. Why is that?

2. All ball fouls: While this is a good idea for higher skill players, calling all ball fouls on lower ranks is going to cause great frustration and likely lead to arguments. How often do you see someone lean over to shoot and move a ball with clothing or their body and not even know it? I’ve seen this in the last week, multiple times. Yes, those are fouls, I’m not sure the average player is going to enjoy it. (Side note, does the clock stop while we argue about it?) If you want all ball falls, you and your opponent can agree to it now and play that way in the APA and BCA. There’s nothing stopping you. I’ve never even heard someone suggest this however.

3. No intentional fouls: This works fine when there is an impartial referee, but simply doesn’t work on league night. Any decent player can intentionally foul and make it look like an accident. Any rule where I have to interpret your intention is going to fail. This is one of many reasons the APA’s defense marking simply doesn’t work and never will. The difference is, I can mark a defensive shot in the APA app and not confer with the other team. I don’t care whether the other team agrees with me that you didn’t intend to make a ball. In Ultimate Pool however, I have to stop the match and accuse another player of an intentional foul and get them to agree and give me ball in hand? (Again: stop the clock?) Not just that, the intentional foul is strategy and risky all on it’s own. It also often occurs during the end-game so the stakes are high. This isn’t broken so why fix it?

Obviously I want to see amateur pool grow in the US and one of the keys is new and novel ways to play. I’m excited to see and hopefully play in an Ultimate Pool league if it starts around me. (So far, no.) Ultimate Pool prize money looks like it dwarfs that of the competing leagues and I love the regional tournaments rather than Vegas. I hope maybe I’m wrong about what I see as likely issues. Time will tell.

Anyone have thoughts?