Nhc Tour Scoring

[TEJASKIDD]

I think if the NHC Tour continues next year that the scoring system should be revamped.

I feel sorry for the players that are continuing to play for points that do not win the tour, they will surely have a losing season.

Winning a contest with 700 people should be worth more points than winning a contest with 80.

Also, and as many of you will agree, the players with the deeper pockets certainly have an advantage(or disadvantage,see line 2)

The current scoring system could stay in place, but a bonus should be added for the amount of players in the contest.
Example.
Contest has 802 contestants.
Winner gets 3000 points Plus 802---3802
2nd gets 2100 plus 802---2902 (and so on)
Amount should be capped at 1000 contestants (this way a contestant that wins one of those free contests doesnt runaway with a huge score)

Also,
perhaps a player's first 5 scores in contests should be the limit.
If after 5 scores a player wants to continue on, they must rebuy into the tour and start over at zero.
Their first score (5 scores in contests) stays in tact until they are able to pass their own score.
Example.
Contestant finishes 10th,3rd,8th,16th and 20th in 5 of 12 contests before June. He/she hasnt qualified yet and is going to continue playing....those scores are added together at 4671 and thats their final tour score.
They rebuy into the tour and start over. But this time they win a contest and earn 3160, decide to play on even though they've qualified and want to pad that 3160. They go on to finish 4th,8th,12th and 3rd.
in the next 20 contests...and now have 4740 added to the 3160 for a total of 7900. Their prior score of 4671 is dropped and their new tour score is 7900. They still have the option to rebuy to try and beat that score without risking losing that score.

I'm going to hang up now and listen to your responses.

[SPIKE]

I have stated in the past that the scoring system is WRONG for the same reasons TK listed. See TK and I do see eye to eye on certain things . LOL

As for the rebuy at $40 it aint gonna hurt the deep pockets.

[Ride That Pony]

Good suggestions, but the best solution is to drop the Tour altogether. I've been against it from the get-go. As I understood, the intended purpose was to keep people playing in tournaments year long after they qualify. Very few are currently playing that have already qualified. With the explosion of online contests offering no prize money, it just doesn't make financial sense. The Tour prize money should be added to the NHC pool. Maybe then they could reduce the number of nhc finalists. The increase in online tournaments necessary to send 500+ to Vegas is killing the "brick and mortar" contests. (500+ finalists...another horrible idea). You watch... Soon everything will be online...even the finals. A good start to remedying the problem would be to stop the Tour.

[OPM]

I have to disagree with all of this.
Anything that gets more people involved and keep them involved is worth it. Online is the only way way to go, this is the future. Some people don't like that but there will always be at least 1 live contest/day on the weekend but it's just too expensive to put on. You have to hire people, get space and oh yeah, the players want 100% of their money back in the form of prizes!!!

There should be multiple, daily $25 tournaments online that feed into monthly live or online tournaments for bigger prizes.

Now, the NTRA will probably not be around next year so there's might not be a reason to worry about the NHC tour:D
But, others will pick up and probably feed the Coast Tournaments and I am all for $25-$35/entry tournaments to feed this tournaments.

[Ride That Pony]

What evidence do we have that the Tour "gets more people involved and keep(s) them involved"? How many people are playing nhc contests that wouldn't be playing anyway to try and qualify for the nhc? 5? 10 max? (for the record, even I will play a $25 contest for points/fun) Whatever the number, it will get even smaller over the next three months. Most contest players I know like to play contests that offer prize money. Online contests have killed this. Not only do online nhc qualifiers not pay prizes, but folks don't have to go to "in person" contests to qualify so these contests are failing too. HOL had no prizes, surfside-very small, "Superqualifiers" are threatening to cancel if enough folks don't early register...and so on. How long do we expect these venues to host "in person" contests?

I agree online contests should be incorporated into the plan, but not like this.

Q:How do you fit/afford 500 people into a las vegas casino for the nhc finals?
A:Online finals.

No thanks. Not interested.

[SPIKE]

RTP . You have it all WRONG. There are alot of players that have qualified that have been playing contest and in turn increasing the NHC Final purse pool . Go to the contest results page on NTRA.COM and you will see that you are dead wrong !!!!

[OPM]

On the same topic, what never made sense to me is spending Thousands of dollars to qualify for the NHC when you can buy 3 tickets or more to the World Series. But with prize money for the tour it gives people a reason to do this. I'm not saying this is right or wrong but it's their money, they can't qualify more than once but want to keep playing contest, that's up to them

[njcurveball]

Personally I would like to see people who qualify for the NHC finals multiple times allowed multiple entries as they have done the work and won the spots.

If someone wants to push enough money into contests to win 4 entries into Vegas, then they deserve 4 entries.

Heck, let them win 10 entries. I would love to see someone try to manage that on the big day. I think there is an entry "threshold" that is hit after the 2nd or possibly the 3rd entry. You wind up having all the winners, but on different tickets.

If two people team to make it to the NHC at this point, they simply can win an entry for partner #1 then win another for partner #2. If a single person tries, they are done after winning entry #1. The rule which is meant for protection winds up going the other way.

Then beards come into play and on and on and on. Just give people what they win and then if they want to keep playing for tour points, they have a real incentive to try to win multiple entries to the big dance.

Jim

[SPIKE]

SPOT ON NJC !!!!!

[Mayo]

Last week I wrote a letter to the owners/tourney directors of the online contest sites giving my opinion (as requested by some) on the current situation with the online contests. That letter is attached to the bottom of this post for your review if you wish.

In the early years of the NHC, the only way to qualify was to attend an event at a racetrack. About 6years ago when NHCqualify was started, it became a very convenient (and pricey) way to qualify for the NHC without leaving our living room. Many players did mind not paying the $400 per event, because in many ways it was still cheaper than traveling to a racetrack qualifier. Obviously the tournament landscape has changed. Many saw what was perceived as a potential windfall the online tourney business could become, and several new sites have come out this year.

In September 2010 when the NTRA announced the increase in purse money to $2 million and qualifying spots to 500, they estimated that approximately 10-20 thousand players would attempt to qualify (based on past years estimates). As we now know, those estimates were exagerated since only 4000 players have signed up (to date) for the tour in an attempt to qualify for this years event.
This put a greater burden on the NTRA to achieve the advertised goals. That being said, they are now selling spots to as many sites as possible in order to attain these objectives. As the attached letter points out, we now have too many sites chasing too few players/revenue.

This year has obviously been one of transition with the NTRA and the NHC. New venue, increased spots, increased purse, and many more contests. The TOUR also has a place in all of this. Many players like and many do not. It certainly not for everyone, however it does need improvement. Hopefully, things have been learned and adjustments can be made going forward. Only time will tell.

One final thought. For those of us who have been playing tournaments for over 20+ years, we all remember the days of attending tournaments in Vegas and later at racetracks. Many of the friends we have made are a direct result of attending those events. Many of us would have never met otherwise. I think most of us can agree that attending a live event and seeing your friends certainly means something. This past weekend at the Orleans was a classic example. Sitting with good people, enjoying the day, playing the horses is pure fun. That is something we could never get with an online contest. I truly believe we must have a balance of both types of events. Too much of one is not good. Hopefully things can be worked out so this can happen.

Mayo

[OPM]

Hi Mike:

Thanks for your efforts on our behalf. However, we must take a long-term view of these issues if we have any chance of success. Thus, I strongly disagree that we have too many venues currently. Quite the contrary, I think we need more. Now, someone might point out that all of these contest are not selling out which is true. But in order to be successful, it takes time and this is something that people in horse racing really don't get. I don't mean to be too harsh here but that's the bottom line. These sites have only been up for 6 months, give them a chance, WSOP was not built in a day, a week, even in yr, it takes time. There will always be bumps in the road but the oasis is at the end of the road, not in the middle or the beginning of the road. The job of the NTRA is to make sure all these entities give to the players what is promised. It would be a serious problem come January if players who have qualified get to Vegas only to find out that their spot is not there. I would not be concerned at all about the Feds, we are not doing anything illegal. To my knowledge, all the players who qualified on online pokers sites competed in the recent WSOP.

Again, we need time, time to get people there, time for takeout reduction to take effect, time to build goodwill with players both current and future. Too many sites are not the problem, too few are.

Again, thank you for your efforts on our behalf.

[Ride That Pony]

D,

Sorry I got everyone sidetracked from your original message. I like your ideas. Clearly something needs to be done with the Tour scoring system. While I am sure the good people on the Player's Committee will make solid recommendations, I have less confidence the ntra will listen.

[herlman]

Just a few thoughts.

Spike is correct. In last week's Sunday Horsetourneys contest, 14 out of the 87 entries were purchased by players who had already qualified for the NHC...and until some at the top of the leaderboard started to separate from the others, many more were playing. Without the tour, they are not playing.

Most people are playing the no prize money online tournaments for tour points, in an attempt to qualify. With only one and on occassion two NHC slots available, players are happy to get into the top 5-10 to get significant tour points. If you look at the way many play the last race or two in every contest, many are not trying for the cap horse in order to win the contest...they are playing lower priced horses to jockey themselved into position (so to speak) for tour points. Without the tour, most of these online contests would not exist. There would be no reason for anyone to play them at this point in time.

And there are too many online contests. There are not enough tournament players to fill them and most don't have enough money to play more than occassionally. Some week ends, one could spend up to $1,400 if you take max entries into all the available contests. And that is just one week end. This week end I believe it would cost you about $700 to play max entries into all the NHC qualifiers.
Next week end looks like another $1300+ weekend if you want to max out on all contests. As early as last year, NHC Qualifys, with their $400 per entry price tag, would sell out within hours. Last week, when they were hoping for 220, they got 80. Instead of giving out 10 NHC slots as they had hoped, they gave out three. None of these contests will sell out anymore. There are too many that are too costly and NONE PAY PRIZE MONEY! They can't all survive.

Even if the NTRA does not exist next year, and I have no information to think it won't, I am certain someone will pick up the NHC and it will continue to run. It is too valuable a property.

Also, even if some of the online website shut down, for one reason or another, the NHC slots that have been awarded are already paid for and there would be no issue for the NTRA to have the people who qualified in those contests at the NHC.

The scoring system definitely needs to be revamped. The problem this year is that no one knew how many contests would be run during the course of the year. Most thought the extra slots into the NHC would be filled by "superqualifiers", which have been a bust. I like Tejaskidd's idea with regard to adding points for the number of players in each contest. I think it has merit and could be tinkered with. Don't think you can limit scores to a player's first five with a rebuy. That would have an effect on players participation in contests. If your first two scores are good ones, you are not going to want to play in a tournament where you can get a bad score. Why play in a 250 person contest and risk coming in 25th, with a score that would count but not help you, when you could play in a 80 person contest and the worst score that would count would be an 8th? Also, what if your first two scores were a 20th and 21st...useless scores in all likelihood...could you rebuy at that point in time or do you have to keep playing until you get five scores. Why would someone rebuy later in the year with no guarantee of getting five top scores. It also would affect how you play a particular contest. If in a 200 person contest you are in 40th with a few races left, would you stop playing to avoid the possibility of coming in 20th? Don't think it would work, but I do think that many problems would be resolved with an overhaul of the points system.

I agree wholeheartedly with OPM when he says anything that gets people involved and keeps them involved is well worth trying to achieve. But I believe, like RTP, that you need a mix of onlines and on-site contests to make this thing work. You can't survive with mostly online contests that just take your money over and over again and give you back very little in return. You need to reward players for their play and their loyalty.

By the way, I have not made any lifelong friends playing contests online...I have never gone out to dinner, or hung out with my fellow tournament players after playing an online contest. I have been to tracks I would never have gone to, I have been to places I have never been, I have met and made friends with people from all over the country because of my participation in on-site contests. It would be sad to lose this aspect of this great game.

Herlman

[Bob]

Mike,

Thanks very much for your efforts.

I sat with Kevin and Lee Geraghty, owners of HPQualify, at the tournament last week and we discussed this very subject. They are the nicest couple you would ever want to meet and have done a great job, in my opinion, since their debut 3+ years ago.

It certainly would be a shame if we lost any opportunities to qualify. I sincerely hope all the venues get together and map out their futures, as Mike has suggested.

Regards,

[SPIKE]

I agree with Bob the HPQ crew are without a doubt AWESOME !!!!

Another reason players should keep playing the TOUR, is the End of Year contest where the TOP 100

Tour members play for 15 spots in 2013 !!!!!

[SPIKE]

I finished 15th in Publichandicapper.com contest among Tour Players and got 300 pts. REALLY !!!!!

That is all you get for beating 1000's of other players in a contest from May to Nov !!!!!!

[stringmail]

I'll assume you finished 30th and there were multiple non-tour members who finished in front of you. You get the points for where you finished, not where you finished relative to other tour members. If you see the points assigned from that event, you'll notice that no one received points for finishing 2nd-4th. The logical assumption would be that 2-4 finishers were not tour members and just playing for "fun". Pure speculation as I can't recall the rules of that tourney. I give up after basically registering as I don't have the patience or totally forget about it.

With that said, it would seem that finishing 30th out of thousands would have some sort of weighted points to reward the effort. It does not seem equitable that a person finishing highly in an underattended event would receive comparable points as the same respective placing in tournament with X times more participants.

It is an area that the Committee will need to think about.