League champion

[Muley05]

It seems that most of the leagues run by members here fall into two main categories:

1.  Players play for points throughout the season, and then at the end of the season there is one final tourney to crown the champion.  How players qualify for the final tourney varies, but the champion of the league is the winner of that final tourney.

2.  Players play for points throughout the season, and whoever has the most points at the end of the season is crowned the champion.


In my current league, we play for once a month for 12 months, and each players top 8 scores counts towards the final standings.  $5 is held back off each buy in/rebuy at each tourney, and the top four in points at the end of the season get that money (and the top three get trophies).

I am thinking about changing the format for the next season and have a championship tourney at the end, but it also seems to me like a player who played well enough to top the points standings over a season's worth of tourneys should be the league champion versus someone who had an ok season (but good enough to qualify for the season ending tourney) and then won the final tourney.  On the other hand, it would be the equivalent of the regular season champion in a given sport not necessarily winning the championship (such as the NFL in 2007 when the Patriots went undefeated but lost the Super Bowl).

[austin5string]

IMO, league champ is the most points throughout the season.. ToC is a separate event..

[Martini]

If you ask me (which I guess you actually did, lol) I see room for both. You can award half of the money held back and distribute them to the top point earners throughout the season and use the other half to fund a season ending TOC or tourney for point leaders.

Personally I prefer a season consisting of regular events with a larger than normal (in terms of buy in and therefore points awarded) event as the last tourney of the season then pay out held back money based on season end standings. Having a bigger tourney at the end makes it harder for anyone to have a runaway lead going in to the last event and gives the season an arc while still making sure that players who have done well throughout the season will get rewarded.

But if I *had* to pick one I would pick season points leader as league champ. I think a single event to determine a champion is fine in sports where skill level largely dictates the outcome and there isn't as much variance as in a single poker tourney.

[gweeb]

i have trophy's for both points and league champ...... but if you win both the league trophy would say


wait for it.......................UNDISPUTED POKER CHAMP........ yes that just happend

[Dr. Neau]

First of all...

[soapbox]
Unless the end of season tourney is made up only of people that won tournaments, it shouldn't be called a "Tournament of Champions"
[/soapbox]

We have a "championship" at the end of the season.  The winner of the "championship" is the "champion" and gets 50% of our league pool.
The runner up in the championship gets 25% of the league pool.
The winner of our consolation tournament gets 15% of the league pool.
The regular-season points winner gets 10% of the league pool.

I see the "championship" equating to the playoffs of any good sporting league (ahem, college football).  The Pats may have run the table a couple years ago, but who got the Superbowl trophy?

[Martini]

I agree about the TOC distinction. That term gets thrown around a lot and is often used for tournaments which include non-champions. Nothing wrong with having a big tourney at the end with people who haven't won, just call it something else.

If poker were all skill (it isn't, just ask Phill Hellmuth) then I'd have no problem with a final tourney determining championship. But due to the amount of chance involved in poker, I do not think that crowing the winner of one tourney champion is the best way to represent who did best that season. When someone asks what how good a poker player someone is, do they want to hear how you did in one event or how you did over the course of many events?

[Dr. Neau]

If poker were all skill (it isn't, just ask Phill Hellmuth) then I'd have no problem with a final tourney determining championship. But due to the amount of chance involved in poker, I do not think that crowing the winner of one tourney champion is the best way to represent who did best that season. When someone asks what how good a poker player someone is, do they want to hear how you did in one event or how you did over the course of many events?

Option 1:
"Hey! I've played in 500 50-player home tournaments and won 100 of them!!  My total winnings are $5,000!!!"

Option 2:
"I've entered one tournament: The 2009 WSOP Main Event.  I won it."

[ricochet913]

Our league's TOC game is this friday.  the way we run it is we have league games until we have 5 individual game winners.  After we get those, we take the top 3 money winners who did not win a tourny and they get in to the TOC.  We then look at who played the minimum number of league games to qualify for the TOC.  Those players play a Best of the Rest game.  The winner of that game wins the last seat at our TOC. 

Only 4 of the same players from last year made it to this year's TOC.  Ought to be a great game. 

[Martini]

If poker were all skill (it isn't, just ask Phill Hellmuth) then I'd have no problem with a final tourney determining championship. But due to the amount of chance involved in poker, I do not think that crowing the winner of one tourney champion is the best way to represent who did best that season. When someone asks what how good a poker player someone is, do they want to hear how you did in one event or how you did over the course of many events?

Option 1:
"Hey! I've played in 500 50-player home tournaments and won 100 of them!!  My total winnings are $5,000!!!"

Option 2:
"I've entered one tournament: The 2009 WSOP Main Event.  I won it."

Would you rather stake someone who won 20% of the 50 player tourneys they enter or Darvin Moon?