Mountain Mike^^ wrote:
> Dave, is it a fact that *innings* are the only criteria for your
> SL? For example, if a guy loses every match, but only takes 2
> innings per game, does his SL go down? What's the reasoning,
> please?

A few years ago I got into some legal troubles for being way too specific on how the system worked, and I'm not going to risk that again, but I think I can be vague enough to answer your questions and still keep the lawyers away.

In your example, if a player ends up with a 2 innings per game match for the night - whether he won 1 game in 2 total innings, 3 games in six total innings, or whatever, that's still shooting pretty good. It really doesn't matter how many games his opponent won, or who won the actual match. Our hypothetical player won, on average, every second or third trip to the table. If his opponent just happened to win, on average, every first trip to the table that takes nothing away from the fact that the first guy still shot pretty good.

Now this can be a bad thing at times. Several years ago I played against a 2, so it was a 7-2 race. I broke and ran the first 6 games, then made an early 8 in game 7. In game 8 my opponent didn't make anything on the break, and I ran out. While my 7-in-1-inning score did not affect my rating snce I was already a 7, that 1-in-1-inning score haunted that poor 2 for her next 19 matches. In fact she went up to a three because of that match. Some L.O.s will correct fluke scores like this to help eliminate this type of problem, but it's not required, and the L.O. in Omaha at the time did not do it.

Win/Loss is not a big factor in APA - it's mainly used to help prevent sandbagging, and I'm not going to get into how it's used.

The best, but not necessarily the easiest thing to do is just play and not worry about the handicap system. One thing that happens as a result of people like our friend Rick is that legitimate and honest players begin to fear they may be mistakenly over-rated, and that can naturally start people questioning the system and its reputed fairness.

Hope this helps.