2008 PDGA Format

[Bruce Brakel]

At the last meeting the PDGA approved the 2008 proposed format except as to item 2.  I saw a draft of the proposed format at Worlds and I thought I would start educating our club members on the new stuff.

There will be four main amateur divisions:

Am 1 -- 935+
Am 2 -- 900 to 934
Am 3 -- 850 to 899
Am 4 -- Under 850

They will have names.  The names are still being discussed.  Expert, Advanced, Intermediate and Enthusiast were approved.  The anti-Expert forces are uniting behind Elite, apparently. 

The Pros-Playing-Am rule will work like before except that the cap for Expert will be 975.  Pros under 975 can play Expert.  Pros under 935 can play advanced. Etc.

Women, master and junior divisions are mostly unchanged.  The new Pro Masters Playing Am Masters line is 935. 

This is cool:  Ams playing pro can take merch instead of cash and stay am. 

TDs might care about this.  There are no minimum purse or % added requirements for a B-tier or an A-tier.  It is much simpler than that.  $500 added gets you a B-tier.  $1,500 added gets you an A-tier.  So any TD with the $500 in hand can run a B-tier without having to worry about also being able to make the $1500 total, or whatever it was. 

That's all the changes I can remember right now.  I might remember the other one later.  There was one more worth mentioning. 

[stpitner]

Wow those are pretty big changes, although I think they are cool for the most part.  It might be a little screwy as far as figuring out how to split the divisions like the IOS does.  I guess you'd have to run some numbers to see how many experts you would have vs. advanced and see if it's better to do Pro/Expert and Adv/Int/Enthusiast (couldn't they do better than Enthusiast?) or Pro/Expert/Advance and all other divisions the other day.

I'm a little concerned about the minimum purse and added requirements.  A lot of TD's could really take advantage of that to their own evil devious means.  Bottom line: TD's need to earn the trust of the players, and if the players like what you do, then they'll keep coming back.  It should make it a little bit easier on TD's overall though, yay.

[Jon Brakel]

I have a feeling the way we split days is going to be weird. We won't be able to split the divisions in a typical upper/lower days. We might need someone to run some numbers from the IOS points spread sheets combined with ratings to help us figure out how we need to split days to accommodate as many players as possible.

[pickax]

I took a quick look at IOS#1-3 using August ratings (cuz i'm lazy to look up my data w ratings at that time), but anyway

Tourney	Upper	AM2	Lower	AM2
IOS#1	93	30	79	12
IOS#2	87	37	78	9
IOS#3	72	24	114	14

The short is that less players would switch days if the new AM2 was grouped up/rather than down.

[Jon Brakel]

I took a quick look at IOS#1-3 using August ratings (cuz i'm lazy to look up my data w ratings at that time), but anyway

Tourney	Upper	AM2	Lower	AM2
IOS#1	93	30	79	12
IOS#2	87	37	78	9
IOS#3	72	24	114	14

The short is that less players would switch days if the new AM2 was grouped up/rather than down.

I don't think that I understand your chart. We need to know what the turn out by 2008 am and pro divisions was for each 2007 event. Then we can apply that to figure out what the most efficient divisional grouping is.

[stpitner]

I think what mike has is displayed is that for IOS #1, there were 42 (30 + 12) players that would qualify for the new AM2 (Advanced) Status, Then it would be 46 players from IOS #2, and 38 from IOS #3.

So if you were to change it so that you left Pro and Expert on Saturday and moved all of the new Advanced to Saturday, you would have had 105 players for Saturday IOS #1 (adding the 12 Am 2 from Sunday to the total 93 on Saturday), and 67 players on sunday.  IOS #2 would have had 96 on Saturday, 69 on Sunday.  IOS #3 - 86 on Saturday, 100 on Sunday.

Some more data could be pulled to see what other groupings you could do (Like a Pro/Expert/Int day and an Advanced/Enthusiast/Others day), although I could see a lot of advanced players not liking that.

[Bruce Brakel]

I'm curious what balance we might get with Open, Expert, Advanced on one day, and all other divisions the other day, including all kinds of women, masters and grand masters. 

I'll run numbers on that in November if no one else does.  Or maybe in december if there is a December ratings update. 

An easy to read chart would take each IOS, assume the age and gender protected divisions don't make any different choices and run divisions across the top and tournament names down the side using 2008 divisions.

Open, Master, Pro W, Am 1, Am Mas, Adv W, Adv Mas W, Grand Masters, etc. 

What we are going to discover is that there is no one formula that works for every course.  Tougher courses attract more to Adv, easy courses get more lower players. 
----------------

This is really going to mess with TDs.  There are TDs who still don't know that the divisions are not called Advanced, Ams, and Novice.  A TD asked me this year, "Hey, Bruce, what's the ratings cap on Advanced?" and he thought he was clever for at least knowing there was a cap on advanced.   

[skipache]

so i wouldnt have to decline cash in open i could just get plastic?

[Bruce Brakel]

I am not sure whethe it is a TD discretion thing or a player right thing, but at any IOS you could get Brass instead of cash and stay Am.  I'll see if i can find my copy of the document. 

[pickax]

Scott read my table above correctly.
I should have the data from the last year's worth of IOS tournaments with ratings current to the time of the tournament. I'll work on breaking it down next time i have a long compile. Rockford will probably have a different split than others in the way it draws players that are willing to travel.

When I read Bruce's post above that "easy courses get more lower players", my eyes deceived me and I read with a southern accent "easy courses get more Iowa'r players".

[Bruce Brakel]

I'm glad you and Scott understand your table but I think Jon and I are mystified.     If you do any break down work, break it down by current ratings, not ratings at the time of the event.  That way we can see how this year's Kenosha crowd sorts out for next year's tournament.  That sort of thing. 

[Chainmeister]

It seems likely that the new AM 2's will be on the bubble.   All male Pro and AM 1 will certainly play Saturday.  You can add divisions to Saturday to get a more even mix from either AM 2 or perhaps  Am GM or  Am M.  I suspect AM2's would prefer to play Saturday but from the TD perspective it may be a matter of seeing where they can go to give you a more even distribution.  Would you split pro women from the rest of the women and put them, er ah, Barrett, on Saturday?  I suspect that if you did this the usual suspects amongst Am women would play both days and then be able to take home  brass on both days. Also, if Bruce's rating goes below 935 does this change everything?

[pickax]

The non-variable in this equation is that Bruce plays on Saturday. Everything else revolves around that.

[Jon Brakel]

The non-variable in this equation is that Bruce plays on Saturday. Everything else revolves around that.

But if Bruce really wants to play Saturday and the only division he fits into on Saturday is Pro Master, then I guess he's playing Pro Master next year!

[stpitner]

Hmm, Pro cashing converting to brass plastic equivalent... intriguing equation   Would it be dollar for dollar or a different ratio...

[Bruce Brakel]

When I read Bruce's post above that "easy courses get more lower players", my eyes deceived me and I read with a southern accent "easy courses get more Iowa'r players".

That's funny because i've been spending some time recently with an Aussie who adds rs to words ending in vowels and drops them from words ending in rs.  He also pronounces long As like long Is, but not all the time. 

Tonight he was telling a joke about an Irish Catholic priest, a Pentacostal preacha and a Rabbi.  His Pentacostal preacha had no discernable accent whatsoeva because he was doing "American."  I felt like saying, "You'd do us all a fivah, mite, if you'd just pretend ya a Pentacostal alla time." 

[Bruce Brakel]

http://www.pdga.com/documents/2007/2008CompetitionChangesSummary.pdf

[Chainmeister]

The non-variable in this equation is that Bruce plays on Saturday. Everything else revolves around that.

But if Bruce really wants to play Saturday and the only division he fits into on Saturday is Pro Master, then I guess he's playing Pro Master next year!

Or if he is under 935 perhaps because he is throwing too much lefty the Am Masters will play on Saturday regardless of where the GM's are playing, at least for one more year. Then the Masters and GM's would switch when Bruce enters the slightly grayer beard division. Or, who knows, maybe Emily Dickenson will start playing pro women?

[Bruce Brakel]

The non-variable in this equation is that Bruce plays on Saturday. Everything else revolves around that.

Recently the whole world has been revolving around me.  But today it went back to revolving around the sun. 

[Chainmeister]

The non-variable in this equation is that Bruce plays on Saturday. Everything else revolves around that.

Recently the whole world has been revolving around me.  But today it went back to revolving around the sun. 

Now if the sun plays intermediate...