As I understand it, you are awarded points dependent upon the number of competitors you tie or beat, the tier of the tournament and the division you are competing in. All points earned go to the division you WOULD play, not the division you DID play. An advanced amateur male over 40 would receive points in Amateur - Advanced Master regardless if they played another Amateur division.

A case in point: I noticed that if I, as a 40 year old male, played in the Bowling Green Amateur Championships this year and lets say I didn't do that well but was able to muster a 240 over 4 rounds.

If I played in the Advanced Masters Division I would receive 24 points that would be applied to Amateur - Advanced Masters.

If I played in the Advanced Division I would receive 1000 points that would be applied to Amateur - Advanced Masters.

If I know I can not "cash" or do not care about the prizes, just the points, why would I ever play in Master division?

Wouldn't it be better to get points based on how well I did against the COURSE, not for the number of people in the division?

Just something to think about.

There are only two kinds of points: pro points and amateur points. You earn amateur points whether you play Advanced, Intermediate, Am Masters or whatever.

Points matter only for the divisional obelisks, divisional pins, invitations to Worlds and bragging rights.

If points matter to you for any of those reasons more than whatever prizes you might win or whoever you might spend the day with, you should play in the division where you can beat the most players.

I think a better system would be if you earned points off every player who played the same tees and baskets you did at the tournament. I suspect our current points system is more the product of evolution than intelligent design.

If the points qualifying system does not evolve some more between now and 2009, in 2008 it will be harder for a 940 rated under 40 player to qualify for Am Worlds than it will be for a 930 rated player.

There are only two kinds of points: pro points and amateur points. You earn amateur points whether you play Advanced, Intermediate, Am Masters or whatever.




I was going by this document (http://www.pdga.com/documents/2006/06PointsGuide.pdf) that I got from the points guide link from the members page. (http://www.pdga.com/members.php)

In it it states

In turn, Player Points are listed and ranked in the PDGA database, by age group and state/province. In
this manner, a male Pro player age 52 will have all his points credited to Pro Grandmaster, regardless of
whether he competes as Pro Open, Pro Master or Pro Grandmaster. Similarly, a female Amateur player
age 43 will have all her points credited to Amateur Master Women, even when she plays with the men at
her same level or at a higher level.



I guess maybe it was out of date. Thanks for the info :) BTW, do you have a link to the updated document?

Ahh, I get your point Bruce, the points are still divided by Amateur and Pro, not just division. Still my original premise remains, why play Master if you need the points? I mean would it be possible for me to get enough points to win an awards obelisk for the Masters division and never have played in that division at all? How about an invite to the Championship?

The answer to your questions:

Exactly.
Yes.
Yes.

Ahh, I get your point Bruce, the points are still divided by Amateur and Pro, not just division. Still my original premise remains, why play Master if you need the points? I mean would it be possible for me to get enough points to win an awards obelisk for the Masters division and never have played in that division at all? How about an invite to the Championship?

Kelsey won the Junior Girl obelisk this year for the points she earned in 2006. In 2006 she never played junior girls. She's looking good to win it again next year for the points she has earned this year. The girl in second has played twice as many tournaments but has half as many points. Neither one of them plays junior girls. Kelsey has more points because she plays in the division with the most players at her skill level, most of the time.

If you want to win the Am Master obelisk, playing in the Am Master division is a losing strategy. :D

If you want to win the Am Master obelisk, playing in the Am Master division is a losing strategy. :D


And it's pretty hard to win it if you don't play Bowling Green. All of the top 5 and 9 of the top 10 Am Masters played Bowling Green...

If you want to win the Am Master obelisk, playing in the Am Master division is a losing strategy. :D


And it's pretty hard to win it if you don't play Bowling Green. All of the top 5 and 9 of the top 10 Am Masters played Bowling Green...



Did #17 play Bowling Green?

If you want to win the Am Master obelisk, playing in the Am Master division is a losing strategy. :D


And it's pretty hard to win it if you don't play Bowling Green. All of the top 5 and 9 of the top 10 Am Masters played Bowling Green...



Yep, looks like you can't miss it because it is so big and there are a lot of points to be had.

Players will earn points in all Majors during 2008 including Worlds for the first time. BG will still likely be an important points generator but not the only really big one anymore.

I posted this before; the competition committee should consider the following as a change for the points system:

To minimize the effect of huge anomalies like BG, it might be better to do something like:
Points Earned = Percentile points * sqrt(field size) * Tier factor.
Thus one win in a 512 person division is worth about the same as two wins in a 128 person division or 3 wins in a 64 person division.

I think several Competition members feel the point system needs to be reconsidered. But working on the other changes for 2008 was a priority. Awarding points for Majors is an initial improvement.

I posted this before; the competition committee should consider the following as a change for the points system:

To minimize the effect of huge anomalies like BG, it might be better to do something like:
Points Earned = Percentile points * sqrt(field size) * Tier factor.
Thus one win in a 512 person division is worth about the same as two wins in a 128 person division or 3 wins in a 64 person division.

i'm with you on this one.

I kind of think that Bowling Green has earned their right to be a huge anomoly, and if you're playing for points you just have to get your game to Bowling Green.

What concerns me more is that with the new ratings breaks it is going to be very hard for Advanced players to get invited to Am Worlds or win the amateur obelisk. It will be easier for Intermediates if players play the division indicated by their rating.

If you want to win the Am Master obelisk, playing in the Am Master division is a losing strategy. :D


And it's pretty hard to win it if you don't play Bowling Green. All of the top 5 and 9 of the top 10 Am Masters played Bowling Green...



Did #17 play Bowling Green?



No Rhett, you didn't. :p

But you did follow the advice of playing in Advanced rather than Advanced Masters most of the time. If you HAD played Bowling Green you would have had a shot at being #1.

Bagger! ;)

:D

In Vegas I switched to Masters to get more points since the MA1 field was so small!

Now World Doubles may come back into the mix again.

It was the "must have" event when it was just National Doubles.

to everyone:

The points system as used for Worlds invitations has serious flaws. To point out perhaps the most obvious, no first-year MPS player has ever had enough points to receive an invitation. All other MPS players don't need any points at all, and almost all of these receive automatic invitations.

This produces the exact opposite result from what a useful invitation criterion should produce.

The one thing that is not flawed about the points system is making invitations to a big tournament hang on points and making a few very nice trophies hang on points too. As a marketing tool, points are under used.

The only reason, I suppose, that first year MPS players cannot get enough points is because last year they were tenth year MPGs getting their butts whupped by the younger MPGs and MPMs at all those tournaments that did not have an MPG field.

The easiest way to solve that problem is to eliminate the distinction between pro and am points. Then any last year MPG that wanted his points could find a full field of similarly skilled opponents to compete against pretty much any weekend of the year where he could earn the points needed for his MPS invitation.

Points really are a powerful thing. I was once at a balloon tournament but all the balloons were grounded because the winds were too high. Eventually the TD declared that anyone could launch if they wanted to, but no one would be disqualified for not launching. So I said to a guy who had a ballooning jacket and a ballooning cap, "You think anyone will launch in this weather?" And he said, "Well, the guys who don't have their points for Nationals will."

to everyone:

The points system as used for Worlds invitations has serious flaws. To point out perhaps the most obvious, no first-year MPS player has ever had enough points to receive an invitation. All other MPS players don't need any points at all, and almost all of these receive automatic invitations.

This produces the exact opposite result from what a useful invitation criterion should produce.



Since the Worlds aren't "Invitiation only", it's just a distinction between receiving an invitation to register, or simply registering. Worlds are effectively open to everyone, anyway. Does it matter that much?

We're pretty sure that when Mid-Nats went from 120 the first year with mailed invites versus 42 the next year with open reg, that the invites based on points was an important aspect of the drop in turnout. Breiner has also seen this in tracking events with invites versus open reg.

We got a lot of complaints for the first Mid-Nats about how the invites were made using points. Since we had the capacity we thought we should just open it up for the second year. What we found out though is the reason people were complaining the first year was that they actually cared that they didn't get selected based on points. We missed that human psychology effect.

For Worlds this year, we made sure to send printed invites by mail rather than the recently preferred PDGA method of using email (to save money) unless no email address is available. We got Wisconsin grant money to pay for the mailed invites and we think it helped boost the attendance.

Personally mailed invitations help attendance whether points are the criteria or not. Last year I personally invited about 25 Am IV players to check out our new Am IV sub-basement in the Rec division -- I explained it somewhat more tactfully than that -- and we had eight to a dozen players in Am IV all year long.

Not everyone reads the message board. Even people who do, like me for instance, are more likely to attend a tournament if someone asks them to.