Tourney: 2011-08-28 (Bank Holiday Weekend) Bench Micro Draft tournament

i was drunk after about 2 beers yesterday and i even brought sandwich material, no idea how.. hope your butt is ok yorgo?

we were all high on polo on the train home

? You fell asleep

hope your butt is ok yorgo?

feeling rather stiff to say the least... but it could have been worse. YOU DESCPICABLE STEM-LIFTING SCOUNDREL!
Thanks to all the Green Lanterns, we had a fun time. Sorry to all the players I ran into, or hacked, and shame I didn't score with my left foot, patenting the Zombie Goal.

London Polo Community once again proves it is the nicest, funniest, and all-around best there is. You guys just need to improve on the quality of the hot-dogs...

Thanks London for putting on yet another awesome event, I love playing these fun tournaments and I really enjoyed camardarie of being in a bench, that was a real highlight for me.

Has a city bench ever happened before? This would be a fun thing to do.

Thanks to all the Badger Boys and Captain Badger for his excellent Badger maintenance and Emmett for Badgering me on court. Good Badgering all round!

? You fell asleep

Dreaming of making money!

Electric *C*ash *R*ules *E*verything *A*round *M*e.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbqUXJuRrH0
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Has a city bench ever happened before? This would be a fun thing to do.

My next tournament won't be quite a city bench, but it will be 5 player teams, that you choose yourself, so it's likely to end up as something similar (just with lots of London teams).

We were talking about the idea of a regional tournament in Cambridge last night too I.e Cambridge, Manchester, Severn Area, South Coast, E. London, S. London etc. Just a thought.

Do it Cambridge

do it, do it, do it

Thanks, John H for organizing an awesome tourney, Black Bloc for kicking ass, and LPC and everyone else for making it happen.

I had fun, but that was mainly because of the LPC and friends. This tourney basically confirmed my opinion that the bench minor format is shit. It leaves too many people on the bench and it tends to generate terribly unmatched games, which are no fun for anyone except Rupert.

And the bench minor format is inferior to the regular format. I don't think I'll be playing any of the former again.

Did anyone lose a white helmet or Ghostrider t-shirt? I have both.

Thanks, John H for organizing an awesome tourney, Black Bloc for kicking ass, and LPC and everyone else for making it happen.

I had fun, but that was mainly because of the LPC and friends. This tourney basically confirmed my opinion that the bench minor format is shit. It leaves too many people on the bench and it tends to generate terribly unmatched games, which are no fun for anyone except Rupert.

And the bench minor format is inferior to the regular format. I don't think I'll be playing any of the former again.

Surely the unmatched nature of some of the teams was the fault of the team captains?

Both bench minor tournaments (GM2 and sunday) that I have played in I have thoroughly enjoyed even though I have been one of the weaker players in each squad. I spent too much time on the bench in GM2 but with smaller squads this time I felt that everyone in BMH got enough court time (regardless of whether we won or lost). Sure the better players played more but playing on the same side as some top quality players was an awesome experience for me.

I wouldn't want to play a bench minor league though

Whilst I respect your opinion, and I welcome the criticism, I have to disagree with the two reasons you've given.

1) It leaves too many people on the bench.

Obviously not everyone can play all the time, but there are less teams and longer games than in a normal tournament, so doesn't that even out? My aim was for 5 player teams, not 6/7, so that could be improved.

2) it tends to generate terribly unmatched games.

The vast majority games were very close, usually within a few goals. There were only a few games which were more than 3 goals difference. Obviously Spoons had a stronger team than anyone else, but that was really down to his draft picks, everyone had a fairly even chance. It might be possible to make it fairer through some sort of rating system, or an auction rather than a draft.

I think if there was a problem with either of those points, it was probably with my format, rather than Bench Minor itself.

This isn't meant to start an argument, I would just welcome a discussion on how this type of format can be improved (as I intend to do it again at some point).

it tends to generate terribly unmatched games

There was a draft!

Obviously Spoons had a stronger team than anyone else

Nah, not really, just the Nice Touch hook-up and an additional "good" player and of course, Spoons himself.

Non-playing captains would improve the format (the draft process worked well in my opinion).

Nah, not really, just the Nice Touch hook-up and an additional "good" player and of course, Spoons himself..

Well, yeah, that's what I meant. The fact that he choose two members of the same establised team is going to help a lot.

Non-playing captains would improve the format (the draft process worked well in my opinion).

How so?

Some people have mentioned it, I'm just interested why they would want to (I'm happy to do that next time).

Red Army had too many players (7 compared to 6 for all the other teams), which put us at a slight disadvantage, but I was very happy with the way my team played.

I enjoyed the final, and respect to Money, and their captain, for going through the whole tourney unbeaten.

I honestly think that to make the tactics of BM challenging & fun, you have to divide the total number of player minutes (in this case 3 X 30 mins = 90 mins) by the number of players in the team (90 / 6 = 15), and make this a maximum for each player ie each player cannot play more than 15. That way, the captain's have to really think about when they are going to put players on, and in what combinations. Of course, this is only my opinion, and has no greater or lesser worth than anyone else's.

The best sporting analogy that I can come up with is the 10 over maximum for bowlers in 50 over cricket.

I mentioned it to a few people on the day, but a 'max time on court' rule would make this format so much better. So on Sunday, a max 15mins per player would have worked.

This would be very hard to enforce, but would add an incredible element of strategy that the format lacks at the moment.

Great minds think alike!

Or just have longer games.

max 15 mins per player is an interesting idea. There would have to be a dedicated ref for player times on court though.

Its hard to keep track of game times though so for a captain to keep track of individual player times would be very hard. Would prob necessitate a non playing captain...

need a 22" WHEEL TO OCCUPY MY ARSEHOLE

I'm sorry Chukker. It's just, when I play sport, I try and win. I'm sure you were trying to win as well?

My team have all expressed how much they enjoyed it, so I'm over the moon about that, that means more to me than the win. We had a strong team, which was a result of my picking at the draft. Again, I guess I must apologise for picking the best players that I could, I thought that was the point.

'Don't hate the game that tha Hustlaz play'