footbag.org

[Scot Hansen (scothansen)]

I agree with Sasha 100%.

However it ends up, I'm sure that it will be a lot of fun and full of great action and competition. I'm very jealous that I can't make it this year.

Good luck to all and make sure you put down a beer for me at some point during the week.

Peace! Play hard everyone!

[John Leys (jleys)]

I am cool with Jani being seeded ahead of me - I have either scratched or directed the last two worlds and those non-results hurt. Just remember boys and girls that there is only one person who has been in two Worlds singles finals in the last ten years except Manu. Yeah maybe you guys think I am over the hill - pimpin' the good life in NYC why everyone else practices practices practices - but the stats show what my losses over the last two years stack up to be:

Martin Cote - hamstring pull during match, that sucks!
JF - one game to 15 as a final at Windchill due to time constraints, that is bull shit!
Manu - scratch at finals in Montreal.
Alexis - scratch at finals at US Open.
Bruce G - scratch at WFC '07.

Seed me low because I am not a finisher. Give me the 4, that is fair. Give me the 5, I will complain some. Give me the 6, I will remind you that I just beat JF at Windy City in the finals. For me at this tournament the goal is all or nothing, so it doesn't really matter where you put me. I am here to scratch a few more names off my list or scratch trying!

I am here in Prague to have some fun, win big on the net court and in the casinos, and take home some loot!

See you guys tomorrow,
The Only Person to Win BOTH Two Green Cup Singles and Doubles Finals!
Oh yeah... and the only person to ever beat Kenny Shults the first time they played singles
Seed #4
Chaos #4 - I like that. I bet you money that Andy and Manu won't!

[John Leys (jleys)]

One more thing on seeding:

I am 99% behind how they do seeding in Takraw. That sounds fun. No wasting time in pools - lets cut to the chase! Makes for a few more consolation games...but paints a much more accurate picture in the end.

Why not try it at Worlds this year? Who knows - maybe I can improve my singles seed?

[Tina Lewis (tinalewis)]

This is an amazing discussion, almost made miss Worlds this year even more - if that is possible. Great work all of you guys and Congrats to PT on his new World Title and the Finnish women for getting some medals!!! Where are the Pictures...video ???

[Justin Eichenlaub (justin41)]

[Tina Lewis (tinalewis)]

I was being a little sarcastic. But if you read the whole thread you can see it boils down to one thing that is still MUST be decided by the IFPA rules committee:

What is the purpose of seeding??

1. Try to predict who beats who so that pool play, etc. is even, resulting in great games etc. (Eric W's position)

2. Reward players who go to tournaments and make sanctioning, ranking, etc. mean something.

I see the benefit of both but I am an advocate of #2 and have personally suffered (boo hoo for me . from seeding under #1. It is too subjective and doesn't always result in good match ups in the pools, brackets, etc. That's just in our very small group of women - I can only imagine how frustrating it is to the men in those huge pools.

#2. rewards players and tournament directors, gives people incentive to participate and rewards CURRENT players for their CURRENT efforts. It's less subjective and if we have double elimination it usually works out.

Either way someone needs to DECIDE, stick with it and enforce it so people can prepare and know what to expect.

Big GIANT sigh. . Tina.

[Christopher Siebert (conan)]

[Tina Lewis (tinalewis)]

Thanks to Chris, Johnny and Eric for all their hard work. There is no fair way to combine the two systems (strict ranking and subjective tournament seedings). Anything other than staying with the rankings is just subjective and number 2. I am a specific example and very sick of it. I know that James Harley had it dialed in way back in Chicago and quit over the B.S. Here's my example and I'm sure it is multiplied in the men's brackets. Yes if Jodi and Tricia (the women's equivalent of Manu and Kenny) decide to come to Worlds after 3 or 4 years, I still want my seeding for the Worlds I attended in the years they didn't show up. Even if I they beat me in the finals 10 years ago or whatever. I should not have to suffer because they took years off. When I had Alex and came back after a few years, I got NO credit and was totally written off as a player. Last year in Orlando I FINALLY had a partner that I had a doubles World Title with and expected to get the credit for it. We didn't... and we ended up screwed in the pools for it. Pools are really stupid when there are less than 10 teams anyway!! I took it very personally as I was just SICK of defending my seed Year after Year after Year. BUT - I also take it very personally for our sport - it's just unprofessional and appears to be biased even though I know that Eric and Johnny are trying to do their best and truly believe they are being fair. You need to just get out of the frying pan and use an OBJECTIVE system - at least then the unfairness is predictable. I will still support IFPA 100% with money but this is the reason I resigned from the IFPA board and Rules committees - what is the point of having rules if they are not followed or can be varied depending on who feels someone is playing better based on who saw the Canadian women beat some guys a few weekends ago?? (Yes, this was an explanation I was given in Orlando for why Sam and I didn't get credit for our win in Finland). - . Another big Sigh! Tina.

[Emmanuel Bouchard (manu)]

I totally get your point Tina, the only thing I can see that sucks in any cases is (for example): let say you (tina) have a great 2 years run, so you get 1rst seed at worlds. Jody who did not play for let say 4 years get 16th seed. You get to play her right from the start so YOU get penalize for Jody not playing or beeing seed to low. So all that stuff about getting good seeds for players who did not play for a while is also to protect the first seeds!

Just my 2 cents.

[P.T. Lovern (ptlovern)]

Hey Tina,

Thanks for the props on our win. We are real excited for sure.

A clearly defined objective system is the answer! Just like anything in life when subjectivity enters the equation it can be a problem if it isn't clearly defined.

What does bother me at this point is, that all the reasons for holding back on using the rankings purely is the Kenny or Jody arguement.

One players coming back shouldn't hold us back. In the event of a come back for either player, the director should be able to creatively seed them. In other words, just make sure they don't run into the number one, if they are as good as people "think" then they will make the final in one way or another. If you watch tennis, the Williams sisters never seem to play each other in the quarters, but yet they are not seeded 1 and 2 very often at all, but conveniently they are meeting towards the end, definitely the semis or higher.

As long as there is a clearly defined system in place players will deal better with the outcome. This years seeding discussion really affected players in my opinion, many people looked like they were trying to prove their seed, which honestly is more pressure then a player needs to deal with.

My vote is ranking! all the way. If the ranking is too close to call, then head to head, if that is even then most current results(last years).

Other factors like team experience, or returning champions, I feel are less worthy.

If Flo and Manu team up for any tourney, they should be number one. They are currently the best ranked players in the world. Even worlds, who is the prior champion should matter less. If the tourney champs go out and choke it for the next season, how should they come in number one. Doubles players should carry their ranking points with them and be averaged with the partner they choose. Thats it. Read my earlier post for clarification.

Also, any decisions about ranking for a doubles event should only involve doubles results in tournaments. Park play, injuries, or singles results should not even be considered. If some team is hot they will earn the real points. Personally I don't play singles, or practice it for that matter, and it is way different then doubles. You may beat me in singles, but can you in doubles?

Tina sorry to hear you are pissed, I feel your pain, competing in footbag dedicating your life to it can be very frustrating at times, I know I have had my fires to burn over the years. I have also alienated plenty of people by voicing my opinion too strongly. But, We are making steps towards the right direction, they are baby steps, but progress is there.
Props again to the ranking system I think it is a big step forward. For next we should pledge to have it CLEARLY defined.

[Ludovic Lacaze (ludo88)]

In my opinion, the first point for a seeding system is not to be the exact representation of the results of the next champ, it should be as good as possible.

I think that the way the points are given is not the best : in france we use a different system : it gives points depending to the difficulty of the competition and the number of players.
We consider that if the best players are coming there will also be less good.
An example is better than demo :
if there's 20 single's players if the french open : the 1st get 20 points, the 2nd 19 ... after this we add a coef : for example french open : score * 2, french champ : score * 1.5 other competition : score * 1.

I think it's quite interesting : if you win french open a year where there's 10 players, you score 20 points (10 * 2) and if you go to the rnh contest, or if soeone is able to organize in france a competition with 25 players : if you win you score 25 (25*1)

I just say that because in the actual system if you finish 4th to the zocha jam (actually there was only 3 players) you score 92 points, to score as much points you have to finish 12 in the euros or to the green cup, i think that the number of competitor should be taken in the seeding system, it could be better to add a bonus if there's 5 players in the top 10 or top 20 competing but it could be complicated to count.

I think it will help organizers to get more people...
I hope it's clear, if it's not grischa knows how it works.

Ludovic

[Scot Hansen (scothansen)]

I know that others have asked this in either this thread or a similar one, but how do we determine what the level of the tournament is? On the rankings spreadsheet, there is a "level" for each event that gives more points to bigger tournaments and less points to smaller ones. How is that determined? Who determines it?

I think that PT is on the money when it comes to the average ranking for doubles teams as well as his idea for "creative" seeding for "comeback" players. I know that I said earlier that if Kenny wants to be seeded higher then he should have to compete in more tournaments, and I still stand by that to a certain extent, but I had not previously considered Manu's argument: seeding Kenny (or Tina or Mulder or david Butcher or whomever)
last because he hasn't been competing recently would potentially hurt someone else with a higher earned seed who would now have to face him first round.

The current ranking system is REALLY good; but like anything, it can always be improved. Up to this point, I have not paid any attention to how the math works, but I'm thinking that we're really close here. In order to keep things objective, we can't make seeding decisions based on opinions. I propose we get into a good discussion about the math to figure out the best way to assign points for results more accurately and to determine different levels of competitions based on number of entrants and overall strength of entrants with less emphasis on tournament reputation.

[Olli Savolainen (opa)]

[Cory Current (cdcurrent)]

Olli, can you give a quick example of your system you're describing? Just a sample of 2 or 3 players in your format. I'm not quite grasping the concept based on what you wrote.

Thanks!

[Ville Laakso (ville)]

Ok Cory, so in the finnish system we give points for places as follows:

Winner – 200
Second – 140
Third – 98
4. – 69
5. – 55
And so on...

This is the baseline for the points awarded. But, the actual points that are awarded are calculated with a multiplier. This multiplier is different for every tournament and is calculated as Olli described. The sum of the current ranking points of all players participating in the tournament in question is divided by the sum of the current ranking points of all players included in the ranking system. For example if the sum of points of participants is 2100 and the sum of points of all players in the ranking is 2300, then the winner is awarded 2100/2300 * 200 points which totals to 183. The only exception we use is the Finnish Open always getting a 1,5 multiplier.

I hope this helps Cory!