Wednesday 10th October saw the inaugural TTW Handicap tournament held at Empire. There were 12 keen players who came along expecting some fun and who got an enjoyable night. Teams of 2 players all played 2 matches. One team who dared to call themselves the “Champs” John Gan / Adam Xiong shared “1st prize” with another team who since they hadn’t named themselves were given the name of the “Olds” Ian Talbot / Graham Sole by some administrators! There must be something in a name as the “Ninjas” Mat Hobbs / Martin Xiong and the “2 M’s” Maggie Dyer / Mariana Proctor didn’t win a match, although players did win some games and / or sets (note all start with letter M) . Also playing were Gareth Telfer / Zhidong Yu and Bryan McConnochie / Rod Weston and both these teams won one match.
All in all a good night as I’m sure our one spectator, Garbrielle will agree. There is another of these tournaments scheduled for the 12th December so we hope to see more of you there. Thank you to Mat who organised the handicaps which I think all players considered fair, made more difficult by the fact we play to 11 now”.
-Maggie Dyer
The basic formula (described in an attachment here) was OK looking at the individual matches it still looked like the higher ranked ranked player beat the the lower ranked player most of the time. This means the formula should be adjusted to increase the ‘spread’ even further. Ideally you want the top-seeded player to only win half of the time under a perfect balanced system. In one example Ian Talbot (handicap 8) played Mariana Proctor (handicap 0) meaning each set starts with Mariana 8-0 up and Ian won but only just with -7, -8, 8, 9, 9. There were a few other close ones but there is room to push the handicap further.
-Mat Hobbs
Table Tennis Wellington 