Proposals for WHBPC allocations

In light of MCR's view on the UK champs tourney deciding the 6 slots for the WHBPC, I got the list of UK players that expressed interest in playing in the worlds.

Only London, MCR and Cambridge expressed interest.
London filled out 20 forms
Cambridge filled out 10 forms
Manchester filled out 6 forms

So by that it would look like London should have 3 spots, Cambridge 2 spots, MCR 1 spot.

Thoughts?

is it one form per team? does cambridge have ten teams?

Unfortunately it's not that simple. They were individual players forms. Only 3 full teams filled out forms. And to complicate matters a bit more, there were several 'maybe I'll attend' forms.

Broken down by teams who had a player fill out a form it's not much different:

Teams
• London – 10 (+ 3 players with no team listed)
• Cambridge – 6
• MCR – 3 (+2 players with no team listed)

MCR and Cambridge both had 2 'maybe' forms

i think that sounds pretty fair mike

i don't agree with city allocation at all. there should be smoother progression through the various geographical allocations to ensure the best representation at every level (local, regional, national, continental and world). i don't think anyone disagrees the britain should be sending their BEST 6 teams to the world championships, but unless there is a national tournament with no one excluded, there is no way of ensuring this.

therefore my proposal for allocating the 6 spots will be either

1) uk championships manchester - top 6 finishers have the option.
2) a separately organized qualification tournament
or
3) a points system or some type of calculation which would take into account finishes at different tournaments. would have to be either a selected group of tournaments, or open to all tournaments, and points would need to be both positive or negative to prevent teams from just playing as many tournaments as possible to boost their points

i don't agree with city allocation at all. there should be smoother progression through the various geographical allocations to ensure the best representation at every level (local, regional, national, continental and world). i don't think anyone disagrees the britain should be sending their BEST 6 teams to the world championships, but unless there is a national tournament with no one excluded, there is no way of ensuring this.

therefore my proposal for allocating the 6 spots will be either

1) uk championships manchester - top 6 finishers have the option.
2) a separately organized qualification tournament
or
3) a points system or some type of calculation which would take into account finishes at different tournaments. would have to be either a selected group of tournaments, or open to all tournaments, and points would need to be both positive or negative to prevent teams from just playing as many tournaments as possible to boost their points

As i said on the Manchester thread, poitns system soudns good, once the finer poitns have been ironed out, but it should start from the end of thhis worlds, to qualify for next worlds. also what of those people that can't afford to travel all the time to play tournaments? could you just play one tournie, win that, and then ahve perfect points?

how about a ladder system that every 'official' (either london league or tournament) match between UK teams would affect? there are algorithms that allow you to take a group of teams and as matches are played points are calculated based on difficulty etc. like if asbo was ranked #1 and netto was ranked #20, netto could stand to gain 20 or lose 5, but asbo would only gain 5 points but lose 20.

there could be a game minimum like 5/team, and additional matches could be scheduled outside of league and tournaments if teams wanted to or needed to.

maybe too complex i know, but it's idea time not decision time

Josh, this only covers teams that are formed and play for a full season. Quite a lot of the London players will jump into teams for tourneys as and when they come up. Surely any points system would need to be player based to make it fair for all players.

Josh, sorry but only options 1 and 2 are a real posibilities, 3 is rubish

I am totally against city allocation when we have been told we have 6 spots for the UK.

Also, didn't Kev's form ask for one member per team to fill out the form?

We really should be sending the UKs top teams not a selection based on city!

rik, 3 was mostly an idea made up to prove anything but 1 or 2 would be ridiculous. i was trying to influence people subliminally but now you've gone and blown my cover...

i also want to put it out there that a tournament organized SOLELY for the purpose of qualifying for something really competitive, with only really competitive teams, is bound to get really messy, really fast. volunteer for reffing at your own peril.

Well, the euro's qualis is next week, so that'll get messy?

Quite possibly.

I am 100% against city based allocation. We were asked for top 6 UK teams, end of.

Ideally I would like the UK to select a few super teams and a few team teams (eg BAD) and these teams get the fuck beaten out of them to prepare for the worlds.

I think team UK would have enough time to prepare.

Ideally I would like the UK to select a few super teams.

But how?

;-)

Dream Team list:
1.

mmmm, he's dreamy

I dunno.

I guess youd need some kinda manager/selector.... or some kinda player rating system.

EITHER WAY A COMPLETE NIGHTMARE!!!!

Ha! nice Chris :)

I don't think it should be individual players - this is the Worlds so I think we should send our best teams to represent UK.

I predict that london will spend so much time arguing about this that we wont have selected any teams by the time the worlds come around.

ha!

I may be completely wrong, but I don't think it's indicative of the different UK cities to have the allocations as in the OP, it may be "fair" (from one viewpoint), but I don't think many people would suggest it would result in the best teams going to the World's (sorry Cambridge).

Two "best" scenarios to work towards in the future:

1. Everyone fills out the "are you interested" forms and allocation becomes smaller and smaller with mini tourneys in different cities to win your allocated slots.
   
2. UK tournament 1-month prior to the Euros/Worlds decides who gets to go. The best teams then compete, any teams can be formed for the quali-tourney.
   
   

Route 1 prefers regional representation and gives everyone a chance, but will mean slots allocated by number of polo players and not ability.
Route 2 would send the best teams the UK has to offer (my preference).

Current situation:
We're all disorganised, winging, argumentative fools... fingers crossed the UK champs works.
All other proposed solutions (to date) have major flaws (in terms of sending the best UK teams) in my opinion.

A month before is too short.
People need to be able to book time off work and organise travel etc.

I agree with everything else you said though.