Future Changes/Options for Golf Majors Pool

Jul 23, 2012

Major Championship Golf Pools

The popularity of our new Golf Majors pools for 2012 genuinely took us by surprise this year. Thanks to all of our customers for making this new format a huge success. We hope you've been enjoying the format as much as we have.

With that said, we see some huge opportunities for improvement. With help from our customers, we've identified a couple of options we think could significantly improve this pool format. Keep in mind that these would be OPTIONS for your pool. If you like the format just  as it is, you don't need to use any of these:

Pick Restrictions—One option we are strongly considering is to restrict pool members to only picking a player once per year. This would prevent members from picking, for example, Tiger Woods in every single major. This would add a bit of strategy in making your picks, knowing that if you take a player in the Masters, he would be unavailable to you for the other Majors.

Bonuses for Finishing Position—With the current format, there isn't a huge benefit to picking the winning PGA player (or any of the top finishers, for that matter). A pool member can win a Major by without even having anyone in the top 10. We're proposing an option where bonus points could be assigned by the Pool Administrator for top finishing positions. For example, everyone who picks the tournament winning PGA player could get -20 strokes from their cumulative total, 2nd place -10 points, etc. Of course, the Administrator would be able to assign these bonuses themselves.

Cut Players—You've all seen the massive effect of even having one player miss the cut. The bonuses mentioned above may mitigate that a bit, which would be a good start. We're looking for your feedback on possible changes to the scoring to lessen the effect of cut players.

Please leave your comments and suggestions below. We take our users feedback very seriously and your suggestion could have a significant impact on what we decide to implement.

Thanks everyone!

 

Comments

Bob Schmidt

Bob Schmidt wrote on 07/26/12 9:45 AM

Great that you're thinking of ways to improve the site. It's true that there is too much emphasis on picking 6 players that will all make the cut. Bonuses for picking winners is a good start. Another way to possibly look at the pool would be to allow members to pick players up to a point value, or their world ranking. So for example, maybe you have a certain amount of points to spend on 6 players without spending too much.
Overall the site is great, and love that it is updated and live during the event..
Rick LaFleur

Rick LaFleur wrote on 07/26/12 9:46 AM

Overall, i love the current format but some of the proposed changes outlined above sound like things i would definitely consider for next year.

One additional suggestion: with the majors taking place (mostly) during prime vacation times, a couple of my guys missed the pick deadline. I would like to have an option, as the administrator, where i could assign them a score (i.e. worst score in that tournament plus 1), just so they can still participate for the rest of the year. Is that a possibility?
David

David wrote on 07/26/12 11:17 AM

Overall, I think the site is great. I actually do not like the idea of only being able to pick a player once per year or having bonuses for picking the winning player. I would rather have entrants pick 7 players and only count the best 6, or something like that, which would lessen the impact of having one player miss the cut. The best option, if it were possible, would be for the administrator to have the choice of how to format the pool, as others let you do for fantasy leagues, meaning we could select bonuses, if we use the best 6 of 7 picks, how many times you could select a player per year, etc.
jd

jd wrote on 07/26/12 11:35 AM

I don't like the idea of preventing players from being picked multiple times. There's not a dominant player out there right now and even if there was, nothing is stopping everyone from choosing that player. It should at least be an optional setting.

Really like the bonus for winners or top 10 finishers or whatever. That would be my biggest complaint about the current format.

I would also suggest that the tiering system should be altered slightly. Instead of confining picks to 1 per tier, you should be allowed to pick no players from tier 2 and pick 2 players from tier 3. In other words, your tier 1 pick can be used for any player in the field, your tier 2 pick can be used for any player in the field outside of tier 1, etc.
Kevin Leonard

Kevin Leonard wrote on 07/26/12 12:41 PM

I base my picking solely on people I think can make the cut because missing the cut is so punative. While the bonus helps I think you could mitigate the impact of the cut player by assigning him the average of the worst 20 scores for each of Saturday and Sunday. This way there is no upside but the downside does not automatically knock you out of contention.

Alternatively, cut players could be assigned the worst score that is registered by all the players in your groups pool - if you wanted to add a small penalty for missing the cut it could be the worst score (plus 1) that is registered by all the players in your groups pool.

It may requier a bit more programming but perhaps you could provide the administrator the option to select a few different options for bonuses and cut players.
Bob Stewart

Bob Stewart wrote on 07/26/12 1:12 PM

I agree that something should be done about fixing how damaging missing the cut is. On Saturday at this year's Masters some clown shot an 85 and withdrew citing injury. Why he couldn't have withdrawn at the 9th hole escapes me, but it sure hurt me and spread out the folks in my 10 person pool way too much! I do like the idea of having an administrator assigned bonus for picking the winner.

I like the suggestion by jd that would allow multiple picks from a given tier if a higher tier doesn't get picked.
Scott

Scott wrote on 07/26/12 4:26 PM

One format I have seen in the past is to pick 8 golfers and use the total score of the lowest 4 golfers. This softens the cut golfer blow by requiring members to only have 4 of 8 make the cut, which is ALOT easier than needed 4 of 6. The same penalty applies if you were to not pick 4 that makes the cut, but that is more justified if you got to pick from 8. Also it seems like having 8 tiers of golfers versus 6 better distributed the class/quality of golfers...in my opinion. Thanks!
Ron Vito

Ron Vito wrote on 07/27/12 12:10 AM

I agree with the fixing of missing the cut. I like the thought of best 5 players out of 7 picks or best 4 players out of 6 picks.
jason gall

jason gall wrote on 09/05/12 10:32 PM

How about building a game that scores the enitre season? Model it after the NFL Pick-em and allow lots of admin settings for customization.

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