National Series 2011

uk polo > rest of world

Word.

The Euros and the Worlds, plus plenty of other tournies in Europe will take place during this 6 month time frame. Can you make it that the top 3 scores from these 6 UK tournaments are used to calculate final standings, so that more teams are included in the final standings?

As it stands, by playing 3 tournaments, you will still get a final standing.

Judging by last year's attendances, most teams will attend the UK Champs and the London Open. They need to attend just one more tournament to get a National Series placing. We felt that this was a good incentive for newer teams to travel.

For more experienced teams that are serious about trying to win the 2011 National Series, they will realistically need to play at least 4 tournaments to have a chance at taking a spot on the podium. This represents an extra 2 UK tournaments in their calendar (compared to last year) which we didn't feel was a particularly outrageous commitment.

I'm only suggesting this because, thinking about those dates already; it looks like the UK champs will be the week before the Euros, which may make it difficult for a euro-qualifying (i.e. 'serious') team to attend. And if they happen to be working or have another commitment on the weekend of the London Open, they then need to attend ALL the other UK tournies to have a shot at the podium for the national series.

If you dropped the number of best scores to 3, you would better reflect a teams performance, rather than their availability for these particular dates.

Maybe I'm just getting angsty because I can already see that some of the polo tourney dates don't work for me this year. (edit: last year I couldn't play in Oxford, Cambridge, or the London Open, but still played the Euros and the Worlds)

I agree with you Iain. And the UK Champs dates are impossible to attend, personally.

I think it's a fair suggestion, and personally have no problem. Let's see what les autres have to say (goes off to send an email).

I think the original suggestion of 4 tourneys to win is fair enough. Likewise, there is a good chance that I won't be able to make the majority of the tourneys, but...

IMO there has to be some reward for attending more tournaments, but of course a balance which doesn't negatively affects teams which can't attend all, which is why 3 to qualify, best 4 count sounds good to me.

Edit: Then again, the reward for turning up for more is that you can improve your best results. Hmm, works both ways I guess.

I guess what it comes down to, is a team that gets 1,1,2,2 better than a team that gets 1,1,2 ...

nice one guys, looks freaking awesome!

I think making 3 count will better reflect the best teams rather than the teams that are most able to get time off/travel.

But if there are two teams drawing, 4th result could be used as the decider?

This sounds ace! I'm with knornight, if there is a draw then the extra scores should help? we don't wanna penalise those that can't get to lots of tourneys, but we want to give people an incentive to attend the tournaments after they ahve got 3/4 good scores

Updated schedule:

May: Brighton
June: Manchester (UK Champs 2011)
July: Edinburgh
August: London Open 2011
September: TBC
October: TBC (Cambridge approached)

Been giving some thought to the 3/4 scores issue...

I ran a few models using weighted random data and found that on average ~20% of teams would finish in a different place. Neither is perfect but using 4 is more likely to give us accurate placings. It may also provide an incentive for people to play more tournaments or it may make them think there's no point. Not sure and I think it's close between the two. The consensus on here seems to be that 4 is fine (remember you can use a sub), so for this year I think it would be prudent to lean towards accurate final standings and stick with 4 scores.

Hell yeah Edinburgh!

4 ftw

Cheers Cohen. We're really excited about hosting y'all. Making big strides already and should have info soon.

Is there a calendar of all the polo events happening this year? Would help for placing ours.
I take it each tournament sorts its own sponsorship prizes out, right?

Dave

Nice work people. Awesome. 4 scores for the win.

Is there a calendar of all the polo events happening this year? Would help for placing ours.
I take it each tournament sorts its own sponsorship prizes out, right?

For July, it's worth remembering that the Euros are the last weekend in June so give it 2/3 weeks. Nothing else I'm aware of happening in July and nothing up on LOBP.

We're working on an overall series sponsor but we figured it was best to let each tournament sort out their own prizes/local sponsors.

Nothing confirmed yet, but Sheffield have just been contacted asking if we'd be interested in putting on some polo at the Cliffhanger outdoor show/festival thing (http://www.cliff-hanger.co.uk). It'd be the 2nd/3rd of July. Could sit nicely between the Euros and the Edinburgh event.

Awesome, Chris. Sheffield is one of the places I've been hoping could be added to the calendar. And this actually may help out with something else. I'm going to get in touch with the guys and send you PM in a bit.

However - any idea what the capabilities at the show will be? two days? one day? how many courts? how much access time to the courts?

Yess, do it Chris

Oh FFS.
2nd/3rd of JULY.

No details yet, they've only just dropped us an email. I'll let you all know when I've had a chat with them.

b00 to that date, I'll ahve just bloody moved from the Manchester to Brighton, just to have to go all the way back up again!

Thank fuck for that, The North can breathe easy once more!
That's a shame, still you'll be in need of a good fix of cheap ale.

make it 3rd! Wireless festival on the 2nd!

I am pretty sure Bristol could take up the September spot, we have a very good court now. Not the ropey old Deaner we used last september.

St Johns Lane court

In the map it displays as bare tarmac but has since been painted with some sort of court paint, makes it faster, less wear on tyre, mallet and bark.

Great!

I've started work on the UK National Series scoring software. It'll be working before Brighton.

Birmingham are working on a tournament for september/october, possibly indoor and hopefully enough space for two courts.
We have a great outdoor court