Machine Politics vs L'Équipe, August 2010. Photo by Steph Simcox
Let's hear people's opinions about this important topic.
Would you like to compete in more bench format tourneys in 2012?
If you're an organizer, would you prefer throwing more bench tourneys?
What do you see as pros/cons of bench vs 3v3?
If you've played or organized a bench format, what are your thoughts relative to format? Format includes number players, time limits, game organization (I.e., single elim, double elim, Swiss rounds, other).
I'm against big team line style for anything other than exhibition. I could see it if it were city vs. city but I know I speak for a lot of people when I say that there can be good players in cities that don't run that deep.
Have the bench minor every year. Other cities host the same thing. Be creative with it, make it fun, allow wrist shots, etc... But regionals should be 3v3 for a long time coming.
...Other cities host the same thing...
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It kind of sucks to be mid- or low-level player and not be able to play in "the bench minor". I'm already hoping to rouse interest in one next year, plan it, play in it, whatever it takes. I've played some at friendlies etc., but I think it's worth a whole tournament's time.
But for regionals- I don't think we're ready for subbing/bench style. Especially with the rules established right now. The only alternative I could even consider catching would be 2v2, which won't get very popular at pickup because it means less play time per attendance.
I'm not a fan of bench style because I hate sitting off and really I don't know many people that like it. 3 vs 3 is where it's at. Chicago's Bench Minor this past year was like an All Star Game for polo. Exciting yes but not the same.
I like 3v3 for NA's, but bench is great for exhibition games.
I'd really like to see a country based team style tourney. I dunno how plausible it is, but if it was held sometime just before Worlds in Europe, I bet you'd have the players/countries for it. Lots of possibilities, but I think at the very least it would be super fun and probably get pretty rowdy.
I loved captaining a team a bench Minor team @ the New Mexico Friendlier , loved commentating the Chicago bench minor and loved playing in every tournament with the 3v3 format. Lets keep switching it up and down to keep it exciting and real. Having a seven team regional Bench Minor would be pretty damned sweet.
COMO vs the world!
As rory already stated, Bench Minor in Chicago was basically an all-star game. Fun to watch, amazing players, epic location, and lots of attention. So really it was like most professional all-star games- mostly for show (and fun) and fairly meaningless in the grand scheme of things (ie- the competitive schedule).
So, yes, more bench tourneys is a good thing, but in my opinion only as an exhibition.
That said....
Bloomington is planning a midwestern state vs. state bench minor event for early 2012. IN vs. MI vs. OH vs. KY, hopefully MO and IL, and WI and MN if they're interested and willing to make the drive. It started with a little IN/MI rivalry that has snowballed into what we hope will be a pretty awesome event. Plus we're using the location and oversized A court from MW9!
We got Indiana all wrapped up with a bow on top.
message sent, lets get on this.
damn keep us update on that tourney zach!
I have never met, or even heard of, anyone who plays polo in Iowa.
Checking your info i see Quad Cities started playing- that's awesome! But seeing as how your club just started playing last month i don't think this would be an appropriate first tourney for y'all.
Hahaha fuck yes QC! Zach don't be rude.
You are leaving us out too Zach. We are still Midwest. Maybe Winnipeg wants in on this Bench Minor event.
Zach is a swell guy, I think you're taking the internet the wrong way.
In my experience you don't get really good at bike polo unless you start traveling to play against/with more experienced players. So the fact that Zach has never seen you at a tournament/friendlies before makes it fairly safe to infer a thing or two about your skill level. That being said I think you guys should be included if you can fill a bench, and I can't wait to see you guys play the "weak ass" Bloomington club.
I'll put it this way: there are slayers in some of the more well-traveled clubs with the ability to embarrass you at bike polo in ways you didn't know you could be embarrassed. this was my routine tournament experience for the first couple of years, a series of spirit-dampening learning experiences with fleeting moments of glory. playing the same people in your city week after week will only take you so far.
I'm really not trying to be rude, so apologies if it sounds that way. But i genuinely have never met or heard of anyone from Iowa playing. I can't invite clubs that i didn't know exist...
The last Midwest Championships, for example, where were you?
and mecca of polo? where did that come from?? no need for hyperbole, we all know mecca is spelled MKE.
We actually have a few players that have been playing for 2 years I put the date in on when our club started on league of bike polo also I would put us over your weak ass Bloomington club any day. And if it is a true Midwest tourney why are you excluding teams from the Midwest pretty weak on your part Bloomington, way to grow the sport. I don't really give a shit if you think it is an appropriate tournament for us, without ever meeting or knowing any one from Iowa, you don't know our skill level. Sounds likes like Bloomington thinks they are the Mecca of bike polo. Where is Bloomington?
What, and who, are you talking about? We have the nicest, most inclusive people i know... have you ever actually met anyone from my club??
Calm down dude, we all just wanna play polo.
damn straight, son, damn straight. you may have just given us the new quote for our website....sorry, keith from chicago, your mke loving quote may be replaced ;)
Fuck yeah quad cities! Where do you guys play and what nights? I'm going to be in davenport sometime in a week and half or so. Could we hook it up?
This isn't the place for this though. I'll hit you up with my email.
I like playing. Therefore, I like 3v3.
For tournaments, bench is probably where we should head. City vs. City is a natural way to do team competition. Bigger teams, and City A/B/C teams simplifies organization. It creates a new dimension of strategy. Longer games with periods or halfs are more exciting for the audience.
The open huge 3v3 tourneys are fun, and best for players. It has drawbacks. Notice how few nonplayers come to tourneys. They are a lot like chess tourneys (not good unless you're a chess player.) Compare with something like rollerto derby, where they regularly sell out tickets. An outsider has no idea what a "48-team double elim" is, how to watch it, who to root for, etc. Another drawback is the scramble to form 3-person teams is a pain. If one person drops out for whatever reason, the other two are now in the lurch. It's not flexible like having the A squad along with a B squad where some substitution is possible.
So as long as I play, 3v3 is great. If Hardcourt is going to grow beyond a crazy niche novelty sport, I think bench is a necessary transition.
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I like playing. Therefore, I like 3v3.
For tournaments, bench is probably where we should head. City vs. City is a natural way to do team competition. Bigger teams, and City A/B/C teams simplifies organization. It creates a new dimension of strategy. Longer games with periods or halfs are more exciting for the audience....
So as long as I play, 3v3 is great. If Hardcourt is going to grow beyond a crazy niche novelty sport, I think bench is a necessary transition.
i think if you want to make a spectacle of your sport, you don't need to change the game. The BM style is fine, but it's a different game. It's like rugby v. american football. Dumbing down the game is weak. I think tournaments or matches can be re organized to allow for people to sit and watch. Maybe make the games longer. 30 minutes instead of 20 with 25 minute halves. It's still bike polo, played the way we play, and it's not making a new sport using the same name. (again, like football). There is nothing saying you can't have back up players, and if there is, why not modify it to allow for it instead of changing the game format.
If you want to attract more fans, you nee to lay the game out in a way that allows for people to watch it better. keep things organized, one game at a time. smaller tournaments. Growth of the game is a separate issue than the discussion of making bike polo into bike hockey. This is an interesting sport that really is it's own; made from it's own rules, own equipment and own culture. It's one of the few unique sports to come along in many years.
I think of bike polo tourneys (i'm one of the few exceptions where i love to go and watch, and have traveled to do so) the same as i think of youth track racing. I go and watch people warm up or play a few, nd pick out who i like and then cheer for them. (i used to live 2 miles from the track in trexlertown. I used to go with friends and watch the races. yeah i get it, it's weird). I think it's the same for anyone. why do people like any team? i live in ny and i love the Lightning. why? you just do.
Roller derby sells out because the people work really hard to sell their image. A good portion of people that attend have no idea how the game is played. It's just some (well was) girls with tattoos hitting each other. WE HAVE THAT IN POLO! and the girls are WAY CUTER! We just need to sell that to people if you want the sport to gain popularity. Also, Derby has ben around for like 40 years. It's more liek wrestling than a real sport.
I think the bench is a great way to showcase talent in a fun alternative way. But as a whole i think it's a good way to ruin the game.
it all depends on what we want this to be/become. if we ever want to create a product that anyone other than bike polo players are going to care at all about than it can't be 3v3. it has to be longer games and fewer teams. there has to be something basic for people to root for and city v city is the easiest solution, see every professional team sport. i personally would love for polo to be able to draw in an audience because the excitement level is so much greater with a crowd.
3v3 is a game.
Bench Minor is a sport.
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At least make 3v3 timed rather than 'first to five'. Timing a game is more exciting rather than a goal limit.
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^3
im gonna do my first bench minor format this weekend at the sf bike expo but being from a city that barely has enough top players to even get any competition at home, i prefer 3v3 for now... we are gettin some of our b players good enough to move up but its just hard to get quality games here at the moment... one or two tough games a night just doesn't help me improve much
getting 8 other players from the same club or team to a certain tournament is going to be tricky. tournaments would either have to be a week long or only 5 teams could play in it there were 54 players in the bench minor in chicago, and we really didn't get to play that much. i wouldn't mind seeing our season convert to more of a regular season then playoffs with a few other tournaments or something in the mix, but i dont think i could afford to make that east coast road trip late in the season, especially having to make the in-regional away games on a more regular basis. i do not think polo is quite ready to make that sort of leap yet. maybe if we sold the fuck out and could just all afford to be pro bike polo players....
i think it would be interesting to play 4v4 with permanentish goalies. they can have 29ers with fatass tires or something dumb. it would probably require slightly larger courts, but it would introduce a safer 3 player offensive and defensive dynamic. but again, this is a fundamental change to the game, that most people are probably not ready for.
but i dont really care. i will be playing polo regardless if i have to play a 15 minute game to 5 or with 2 other lines in an 60 minute match, or the same game for 2 hours because only 5 other people showed up to pickup and we have a fun game going.
I'm with you on this^ all good points.
I think Joe is right on. There's a ton of potential in the sub on the fly format, and I think it is the future of polo, but the devil will definitely be in the details. Done right it could be a big improvement, but done wrong it'll be awful. Most important thing is that the games are long enough to require lots of changing. For as tiring as polo can be, the nature of riding a bike means that there is more dead time compared to someone running or skating, and it's too easy in short games for a single line to dominate the entire game.
i think it would be interesting to play 4v4 with permanentish goalies. they can have 29ers with fatass tires or something dumb. it would probably require slightly larger courts, but it would introduce a safer 3 player offensive and defensive dynamic. but again, this is a fundamental change to the game, that most people are probably not ready for.
I also think this is the future. Too many tournament games devolve into 2v2 in the run of play, and that is just ugly and boring compared to good 3v3 interchange. Unfortunately I've played games 4v4 and it is surprisingly difficult to keep track of the extra two players, so they should probably be limited to a particular area of the court, maybe behind a proverbial blue line.
3 on 3 for sure. No contest.
I love the bench minor format but as something you played once or twice a year.
The Euro bench (country based) in karlsruhe last year was awesome, the atmosphere in the teams make this tournament really special to me. The bench is Chicago was great as well, what a blast to be on the court with Brian and Jo against Julian, Rick Regan and Cody. To me this BM was clearly like an all-star game.
So even if I loved playing those tournaments, it's not that easy to manage a team in a BM. Some people play more and some other less, but I guess they're all ok with that as long as it's only for a WE.
I can't imagine managing a 8 players team during a full season. I've heard some people talking about making teams with 4 or 5 players for a season and it's the same problem to me. How to explain to one the player all the tournament that he's going to play less. It works in some sports because there are coaches, and as long you don't have proper coaches to manage the rotation in the team it might create conflicts. (exept for an occasionnal BM as I said previously).
So I can't imagine playing the whole season in an other format that 3V3.
Exactly Greg, I wouldn't like to be the guy who "clean the bench".
Great to play bench minor 2 times a year but not more.
great to read people's thoughts on this. we've been going back and forth on whether to run the boston indoor tourney this year as bench or regular for a lot of the reasons stated above.
bench style
- as organizers it's way easier to have a small number of bigger teams. fewer games to run, etc.
- as a player you get a longer game/potentially more court time. especially if we have shorter benches (6-7 players instead of 8-9)
- you get to play with more than two folks throughout a single tourney.
3v3
- easier to get a team together
- more people get to play, especially beginners
- play more games, but less court time for teams who get knocked out early.
personally i really like the bench style. It just feels more epic.i think the game/sport comparison has some merit. longer game times add a lot of drama and excitement and can be much more spectator friendly.
Because Greg mention it, i want exprime myselft about that: i can easily imagine this sport evolving in a 5 players teams, 20 minutes games and almost same rules about switching players during a game as in BM.
Maybe it's need to be more restrictive, like player entering the court only after a goal or during a timeout.
But i dont really see how a player will be restricted to "clean the bench" or play less, i mean it's already happening during classic 3v3 games, some players stay more in back (in term of presence on the court) than other during certain games, you can't really say after a tournament that each player have played 33% all the time.
And maybe having 5 players wont be mandatory, meaning that some teams gonna stay with only 3 players versus team with 5 players, the 3 players team will have the advantage to have more playing time and no using timeout for changes but 5 players team can manage more efficiently the tiredness, the broken bike or broken players.
The point is to add more flexibility, im not a big fan of "looking for a third" because one teamate is sick or shit like that, and it can potentially add some strategy.
That said, i won't fight for that, i'm ok with 3v3 full time and some bench in a year.
bench micro! so 30 minute games, any breaks or timeouts? how many teams and what format did you run?
I remember the day we talk about this...
For me that's clearly one of the way to see the futur of this sport, 5v5, switching line or players on the fly or not.
This "micro bench" can let the actual trio exists, so it don't hurt "historical" way to play, but can add a lot of strategy, at the end of game that you are winingyou put on the court your best goalie etc...
But a huge part of myself think that we gonna play 3v3 a long time before the official things change.
As I said, I think a team (with 5, 7 or 9 players) is easy to manage for a one time tournament, but on a complete season I'm pretty sure you'll have some trouble in the team with sharing the time on the court. I've played a lot of team sports and I remembered so well how the guys were frustated when they were not playing as they should, think they should or think they deserve...
But in all those sports you have a coach who's the "authority" and manage that.
What's gonna happend if in a team of 5 you're in the final of the world championship, it's golden goal and the 5 players thinks they deserve to be on the court and think they're all the best option to make the team win.
Someone will have to make a choice and I think if the team win, the guys who stay on the bench will be all right with that but if the team lost, I can tell you that conflicts will start in the team.
Well it's sure add some complexity in the management (talking about 5 players teams), but you just describe on what a team based game is and I'm not shocked abou that.
I mean, ok maybe some player will be frustrated to not to be on the court for the last minute of a final game, because of a lose or even win.
It's all about ego then, but it's already the case on a 3 players team.
I don't know, I can't find an example of a team sport without any substitute.
Maybe Rad-ball ? I watch some games and if I recall well it was the same 2v2 all game long.
The real question is how should bench develop, regular 3v3 has already developed. Tennis has singles and doubles.
I'd like to see club vs. club bench, which city runs deepest. We can still have 3v3 format, bench minor still is 3v3 incase yall are confused.
Leave the mixing to 3 man tournaments. I'd like to see how much polo can develop when clubs play and work together and stop competing against each other.
Also a bench format creates teams that can represent themselves, hate all you want but I wanna be an olympian damn it!
i like the way bench minor is play but 3 < 3 is where it all started and i think i speak for a lot of people ,that making bike polo into a bench minor game it is takeing what bike polo is all about and thats 3>3, yes i agree bench games are fun we had one a while back in east van and i had alot of fun, but some times sides can be stacked and that is no fun, its kind of funny i am in regina right now working and i was at this bar last night and me and this guy, i forgot his name but we started talking about bike polo and he said do guys play hockey style polo and then we started talking about the pros and cons playing bench minor polo
there are alot of good things and bad, BUT to make that transtion it means alot of work and are there people out there willing change it ???? also there has to be proper rules to be put into play, and are there people out there to properley make those rules?????? ,and there are the people that are willing to accept those rules and what about the newbies??? that want to play on a bench minor, are team captians going to pick them????, and if they are picked are they just going to be benched cause they are new , its all about the better players playing these day its not about the game its power triping Yes it would be fun to have city > city tourneys and maybe some kind of across league playing , but for know i think it should stay the same for now , but there are ways to see if it will work, and that is maybe try it for a year , like only have bench minor touneys in the the winter , like citys that have there yearley tounerys like seattle and portland vancover , they do there nomal one and have a bench ninor in the winter, its alot of work but it can be done man, me i will be retired in a couple of years and my time is coming, but i will sapport all of you in bike polo and what ever you decided
rob
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(not in the good place)
I am a fan of John H's bench micro version. I, like many people, worry that eight or nine player bench teams don't offer individual players much playtime. I played in a Bench Tournament in Feburary and I saw the politics of playtime become an issue. Some less developed players were upset when seasoned players stayed on the court for more of the game. As Greg (van Barben) said, without a proper coach this format could create a lot of conflict on teams- we aren't at the point in the sport where we can expect teams to have coaches. A five player team is more manageable and there's more playtime than a big bench. I do think the bench format is potentially better for clubs as well. There are many cities, mine (Bordeaux) included, which have more than three good players and could work together to evolve as a whole rather than as individual teams.
There are a lot of points to be made about both formats that are pro and con, but certain things stick out to me that need to change in order to invite a larger support audience (read: fans). That is longer games, unlimited scoring and more rivalries. When you've got bigger clubs or cities with teams, you're more likely to garner support because people can more easily relate to supporting a city or club than a team with a funny name. That funny name thing is indeed is part of the spirit of the sport and I don't think anyone wants to lose the best thing about polo (the grass roots and DIY community), but we need more support and more ideas circulating for posterity's sake. When I talk to people who've never seen or played polo and I say the games are most often ten minutes or first to 5, they are like "that's reall short!"- for me, this is another way of saying "that doesn't seem too serious". I know that people can be purists, especially in the cycling community, but something has to give soon. The euros had 60+ teams last year. No one could remember the names of most of the teams they played... I love 3v3, but it's too fickle (player injury, free time for tourney travel...)
As for things like an official rule book, I don't think we'll have trouble writing one- We've got thousands of talented people who play polo and are super motivated to support our sport. We are gonna be alright.
Longer games, 5 or 6 player benches and unlimited scoring gets my vote.
oh god where do I start... must keep reply short... gaaaaahhhhhh....
-NYC/Chicago Bench Minor... to me, this format is explicitly an All-star game. So far in this thread, city based Bench Minor is being promoted - not all star games. Other than the general rules used in NYC/CHI Bench Minors - I think it's important for people to not make too many associations between these events and whats being brought up... read between the lines if you will...
-Team Size/traveling... 8 players max per team. Multiple teams per city. In regional matches, cities do not play their own club mates - only opposing cities. One or two regional matches will quickly sort out who are the top teams/players within a city. (Yes, it creates an A/B/C ranking. And yes, this is something many people's ego's will have to get over.) For future events - and using this basic ranking - it is very easy to fill in gaps on a team when people are unable to travel. Within a city, teams will be able to "draft up/down" players from other teams for specific events. This will maintain the familial club dynamic that is so unique with city based bench minor and give people the opportunity to advance up to the next experience level.
-Warming the bench... By simply ranking the teams/players and organizing accordingly, you are essentially removing the bench warmers. When people are on a team with similarly skilled players - each person will play more minutes since their individual roles on a team become more important. Furthermore, I believe people will feel more valuable when they are on a team that they can contribute to instead of being the least experienced player and worrying if they are playing "up" to everyone's abilities.
-Professional Rankings... Excuse me if I'm wrong here, but... both the entire NAH 2011 qualifier season and NAH 2012 discussion thread are about creating a professional ranking system that allows teams to play matches that are better suited to their skill levels. By competing in qualifiers and major tournaments you are creating a Pro/Semi-Pro/Grass Roots ranking system. This same concept applies directly to the organization of city based bench minor teams. Within a city/club and during a multi-city regional match ups - the Pro team best represents the city/club's abilities(because they already proven it in previous events) in the final match and are the ones competing for the overall win. The Semi-Pro/Grass-Roots teams are competing to win their individual categories as well. In other sports this is called big final/small final. This isn't to say that the Grass-Roots team won't play the Pro team during events - Just not for any sort of official win or title.
-Unevenly matched games... Yes, there will be devastating blow outs because of mismatched experience levels. This is part of every sport - including ours. I believe that by including professional rankings into the regional match-ups, we can avoid this problem almost completely. When the Pro team does play the Grass-Roots team - Think of it as an "experience game" and a way for lesser experience players to have a very realistic understanding of what it takes to play at the next level up. Slay everyone in your ranking, prove your self to the Pro players in your city/club and get drafted up son!
-Coaching... At these events, you're not playing your own city - ever. What better way to encourage club/team/player development than having real time, in game, coaching from your own mates? I firmly believe that cities should be coaching each other and passing along knowledge to each other. For example: when a Grass-Roots team plays a Pro team, the Grass-Roots club mates or Pro status should be coaching and giving valuable real-time advice. Furthermore, after games, same city teams should meet to discuss what is/is not working for them... team building, team building, team building...
oh, if you couldn't explicitly tell - I am absolutely for Bench Minor! 3v3 will always be - but my ass ain't playing in a major arena with title sponsors and a large crowd with only two other people on my team. Professional sports just don't work that way. nah wut I mean...
keep this in mind people....this is just one of many different formats of our sport..let the people who want to do bench minor...do bench minor...
i might be getting ahead of myself...and this might be off topic..but...we could have sub-leagues inside NAH such as..juniors...ladies...masters...A and B traditional 3v3...and of course bench minor style...
just sayin..it would make it really easy to set your goals for the year to have the most fun..
Go Bench Minor! its easy to see how this format makes for so much more drama and excitement for all
This team won the first Stanley Cup. Nice jerseys eh? 9 players, so only 3 on the bench. I'm sure at the time few people imagined that a professional hockey roster would eventually number 23 players. But having bigger teams doesn't change the fact that hockey is still a six-on-six sport. 120 years later, pickup hockey where i play is 5 on 5 (no goalies). Once there are 15 players or more, we make three teams. Once there are 20 players or more, we make four teams and rotate after a goal is scored. Having a 23 player roster in pickup hockey is stupid. I think there are parallels in most other sports, and i don't see how bike polo is somehow special.
It's true that the best players might get the most playing time, this is true in most team sports, which is why i think 6 or 7 players is the right number for a one hour game, to ensure that there aren't too many bench warmers. At Chicago Bench Minor, where i ended up coaching my team with 9 players, i pulled myself (partly because i was playing like shit that weekend), and focussed on making the most of the eight.
If being "inclusive" is the goal, I think bench minor can be actually more inclusive than 3v3. As several people have said above, this format is a great way to mix both skill levels and playing styles, and that's how individuals improve as well as the sport as a whole. I know i came home from Chicago with a lot of new strategy, especially around communication with other players.
Just cause the biggest bench minor tourneys so far have been "all-star" games does not mean that this is an all-star format. There have also been city vs city, country vs country, region vs region, pickup / throw-in, etc, which are all well-suited to this.
I don't think we're ready for switch to larger team format for any kind of "championship" play in 2012. But i hope people organize more one-off BM events and series of events. (They're easier to organize and manage, but that's another story).
nobody has yet to put forward an argument for 3v3 that doesn't revolve around "that's the way we've always done it" or "I don't get to play enough, waaaa" and mind you these are the players that would play the most in a bench minor format that are doing the whining.
and just to clarify. a player who in "A" player on a normal team, not an allstar team could probably expect to play 15-20 mins in a 45 min game. and eight team tournament on two courts could reasonable expect to get 4 games per team in a single day. that is at least an hour of playing time, versus 48 mins playing 4 games in a 48 team clusterfuck
Uuuuh. There are lots of reasons.
1)Organizing/logistics reasons - big tournaments at the moment need to be able to host a minimum of 48 teams. Thats at least 3 courts, a lot of complicated bracketing, finals that often run after sunset on sunday. Bench means, less teams, less courts, less games, less brackets, less headache.
2)Development as a sport - No other team ball sport exists where there are no subs. Bigger benches mean more tactics, fresher legs, faster games.
3)Teams - No more panicking if one player of the team cant come to a tournament. Its not game over, the core of the team is still there. Injury or mechanical mid-game? No biggie, sub another player on. No more waiting 20 mins to fix someones bike.
Need me to keep going?
No i dont smoke. Take your assumptions somewhere else.
Week-to-week pickup is obviously not affected by any of this.
Also i have a brake and most definitely use it more frequently than once every few minutes.
I love playing 3x3 and I will till the day I stop playing, and honestly don't care if it ever changes. I do however understand the reasons some would like to test other formats.
As far as other formats are concerned, I think the idea of having subs could be rad, but a 9 player team with only 3 on the court at a time is superfluous
Teams of 5 or 7 would have my vote. With 5 being my overall preference. Having 5 players on a team allows for subs which means a little rest, which means longer games with the same continued intensity.
5 players means that there is no way to effectively sub without everyone on that team being able to play well with all other members. When you have 6+ there are a number of combinations that insure certain teammates never touch the court at the same time.
As far as the time limit on games goes, I think that with even just 5 players on a team games would need to be at least 45 minutes long especially if there are set breaks. Any shorter than this and I don't think fatigue, which is a major reason for having larger teams and longer games, is really much of a factor. In my opinion this would just bring about a tendency to not sub which then takes away the whole point of a bench-ish format.
For number of players on the court from each team, gotta stick to 3. Three players per side means each player must be good at every major element of the game as I see it: Goal, Mid field, and Point (shooter). All top level teams for the most part consist of people that can take any one of these positions when needed. Adding players confined to specific roles just seems silly. Of course if the court is massive exceptions may have to be made.
Well, isn't this an interesting discussion! As it turns out, I myself have put a fair bit of thought into this exact question. Rather than spam the thread with a TL:DR screed, which is inappropriate for a forum post, I'll link you to my thoughts on the subject.
Find it here: http://mistermenace.de/poloupgrade.pdf.
I'm happy to see that a lot of people on this thread are particularly clueful. I'm pleasantly surprised.
Well, i think your document summarize well the "pro" of a 7-9 players team and the "con" of the old format.
The more i read and think about it the more im pretty convinced that it's the near future of the sport.
To be objective i'd love to find some "con" about the Newformat, even if they are not dealbreaker at all but to reflect the reality of what it's gonna be to "manage" 7-9 players.
I think it's the main point or concern of Greg for exemple, and i think its worth thinking about it.
Summarized i think the basics points are:
lot of small teams = bad from a macro view of the sport (season, tourney, organiser, etc)
few big teams = harder to manage from a micro perspective (coaching and managing a real team)
Any other "con" about New format?
I just found it a bit harder to be emotionally invested in the outcome of my team as compared to battling through two days with just two other dudes.
I just care more about how my team performs in 3v3 than I did at bench minor.
I can't speak to the pros/cons of the new format, but I think a few of your critiques of swiss are a little off..
- Duplicate match ups: with Podium, or another smart approach, there have never been, nor will ever be duplicate match ups in swiss rounds.
- First round pairings: I think there are very good ways of handling this. On Podium, all the input that you need is a pre-rank of A, B or C, which could even be self selected. the first round is "suicide" i.e.: with 32 teams: 1v32, 2v31, 3v30 etc. the results are meaningful in the long run since goal differential matters, and it acts as a bit of a warmup
- I think swiss has been shown to do a very good job of getting an accurate seeding for a double elim.
The regional system needs work, but I don't think there were as many continuity problems as you suggest. Of the teams that were seriously contending for the title, they didn't seem to have any trouble getting there. Why would we care about perfect continuity anyway? I don't think it takes away any legitimacy - you still have to work damn hard to win once you are in.
To be honest, I think the problems you have noted with the current format are ones that can be solved, they aren't inherent in the style. Simply a matter of organization and the fact that we've only just tried it out for the first season
I'd be happy to see more new format tourneys, but it'd be very disappointing if we dumped the current format in its infancy...
in its infancy?? old format was in its infancy six years ago. it is a fossil by now.
i'm sure podium is great software and i do appreciate that, but that doesn't change the fact that Swiss rounds is a bad system. the fact is, it's a bad workaround for a situation where you have too many teams to have a group phase. this is where it's important to solve the real problem instead of finding better workarounds. in this case the real problem is that 3v3 simply makes too many teams. regardless how good a job you think Swiss rounds does at generating KO round seeding, a group phase does that better, guaranteed. the group phase has all the perceived advantages of Swiss rounds with none of the drawbacks. the only caveat is that you can't do it if you have 32 or 64 teams because of the scale. so solve the real problem and fix the scale.
if you really truly want to keep 3v3 -and- continue to call someone "world champion" or "national champion" each year, then you must require that every single triple remain static for the entire season. failing that, if someone gets sick or injured, the person who fills in can never have played as part of any other triple. this is not feasible. the continuity problems are real and obvious. you must understand that it makes no sense for you to say "we don't need continuity for legitimacy". yes, we do. mixing and matching across triples is not an adequate method of determining a champion. that system was designed for pickup and it works great for pickup. it was never designed to work in the sense that NAH tried to make it work last year, and the results were as expected: a total clusterfuck.
it's important to note that by pushing for New Format as the system by which annual champions are determined, I am in no way telling anyone that they're not allowed to continue playing 3v3 or organising 3v3 events. what i am advocating is exactly this and nothing more: National, Continental, and World Champions should be determined by the New Format. outside of the framework of these championships, do whatever the fuck you want. the point is to bring continuity and credibility to these big-name titles, which they have not previously had.
in its infancy?? old format was in its infancy six years ago. it is a fossil by now.
I'm saying that our attempt at a championship series is in its infancy.. also, there is no "old format" yet... it's called bike polo.
regardless how good a job you think Swiss rounds does at generating KO round seeding, a group phase does that better, guaranteed. the group phase has all the perceived advantages of Swiss rounds with none of the drawbacks. the only caveat is that you can't do it if you have 32 or 64 teams because of the scale. so solve the real problem and fix the scale.
I disagree. With full rounds, all you get is a ton of extra games that are blowouts. Its pointless, for example, for the eventual #1 seed to play against the entire bottom half of the teams. They'd beat them bad every time. Swiss rounds is not a "workaround," it is a really smart, really accurate scheduling strategy. It works in practice, and it works out statistically... 5 games gets you statistically accurate rankings for 32 teams. Play out all the extra match ups and you'll get almost exactly the same thing, you just wasted time.
To me, tons of teams is not a disadvantage, it is what makes this sport great! It is what makes a tournament feel like a festival rather than a competition.
if you really truly want to keep 3v3 -and- continue to call someone "world champion" or "national champion" each year, then you must require that every single triple remain static for the entire season. failing that, if someone gets sick or injured, the person who fills in can never have played as part of any other triple. this is not feasible.
The definition of Champion could simply be the team that won the Championship tournament, not the team that stayed exactly the same for a whole season. Other sports have midseason trades of various sorts... Qualifying was done on an individual basis anyway, not by team. I don't see why we couldn't have a system that is as flexible as we need it to be... There are no rules except the ones we design.
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A point I haven't heard much: 3 person teams can practice together regularly. I doubt it's very feasible to practice when you have up to 10 people on a team, possibly from very different locations. And you'd need another team to play against, which means 10 more people if you want to do it right. Then you'd have to take up the court for an hour to get the full experience.
Bench seems great for exhibitions, city vs city grudge matches, etc, but I'm not convinced that its an improvement significant enough to ditch the style of play that made the sport what it is...
I don't really understand why your boner for Swiss rounds is so big, but if you're arguing that it is inherently a better way to run a tournament then you're wrong. If it was, respected institutions such as the FIFA World Cup, the Olympic Ice Hockey tournament, Ice Hockey World Championships, etc... would use it. Instead they use variations of the initial group phase in order to seed the KO round. Swiss rounds only makes sense when the numbers are too big. We've covered this already. You and I are clearly of different schools of thought on this issue, and it's not even the central issue of this discussion.
Tons of teams is a disadvantage for the following reasons:
- it's more difficult to organise events and you need more time and space to do it
- it's difficult for fans and spectators to know or care about who is competing and who to root for. 'festival' atmosphere would still be there in a New Format event, I can guarantee you that. as an added bonus, you might even have some people show up to watch and follow along who don't also happen to be other participants in the tournament.
- a small portion of those teams are actually 'teams' which stay together and form a cohesive identity over any period of time longer than one event. it doesn't even really make sense to speak of 'teams' in the 3v3 format, because it's mostly just random triples.
- relatedly, take a look at any event with 32 or 64 triples entered. how many of those triples are actually competing to win? i'd say at most maybe 10, best case. at events like this, everyone knows that only a few individuals actually have a chance at any degree of success. under the New Format, every team has its A-level stars and down the bench are some B- and C- level players as well. these are the players that never even have a chance to sniff the quarterfinals at a 3v3 event, but under the New Format, every player goes as his/her club goes. this provides incentive and motivation for entire clubs, not just three or six of their top stars.
that brings us to your point about the unfeasibility of practicing together as a club. i must tell you i really don't understand this argument. clubs are geographic entities... your club members are the people you play pickup with every week already. you've already been "practicing" with your club team each week for years... (maybe something other than pick-up would be a better use of some of that time)
saying that the definition of a champion should be simply whoever can win some single tournament labeled as "The Championship" is bogus. at the very least, there has to be some kind of legitimate qualifying system for this, which we have not had to this point (the abomination that happened in 2011 cannot be called legitimate). and how do you reconcile the incongruity of the fact that a "team" as you call it (a triple) competes for a championship, while qualifying is considered on an individual basis? that specifically is a core fatal flaw to the NAH system. if you qualify as an individual, what sense does it make to even define 'teams' at all in the championship? it would actually make more sense to take every qualified individual and randomly organise them into triples for the "championships", and then award the title of "bike polo champion" to the person who scores the most goals. that would be great for the game... passing is way overrated anyway right?
Good post. It's very true that the people who stopped in chicago to watch did so because there was one red team, one blue team, one green team, etc.. Can't deny that. It's much easier to follow.
What I disagree with though is that through this new format you're talking about, A and C players will be on the same team and you say that's a good thing.
The way it is now, Columbia, Missouri is pretty competitive, planning on being even more so in the future. If you formulate it your way, by club, we are no longer competitive. I think this would happen to a lot of cities, or enough for it to be a downer. You have to remember that you're at an advantage living in one of the biggest cities in the world.
How would you account for good talent in small clubs?
if your club has seven or eight top-level players, then your top squad is going to be pretty damn good, no doubt about that. if your particular club is weak toward the bottom of the bench, that's a good problem to start with in your practices. bring your worst players up and make your entire team better. it's a fallacy that bigger cities automatically have better clubs. sure NYC is huge but we also have a lot of veterans who have been around for a while; the same is true for smaller towns like Ottawa. that's a small place but they've got a good team because they have a strong club. the size of your city has very little to do with it. we also have a number of really terrible players. it's the same for every club out there. the object is to practice and make your club as good as you can be. there's absolutely no reason -any- club can't be competitive with any other club, regardless of the size of the city. granted, some clubs are going to be better than other clubs at first, and possibly for a long time. that has nothing to do with the format and everything to do with the individual clubs and players. that's how sport works, universally.
if you really are planning on being more competitive, and you feel that your club isn't up to par at the moment, then it seems like you've already got a good start on solving your problem. get more competitive as a club and suddenly your bench is deeper, problem solved. and don't forget that there are chemistry aspects to the game as well... two teams who may not be that close on paper can deliver some surprising head-to-head results, that's part of why sport has universal appeal. it's a team game, especially under the New Format. play well as a team and you may just kick someone's ass who everyone thought was better than you.
the best way to find out, honestly, is to just go for it. take your top seven guys to St. Louis or wherever is easiest - or get them to come to you - and play a match. practice as a team, play as a team, see what happens.
In principle you are absolutely correct. In practice, there are good players and there are not-as-good players and the idea you are proposing destroys the chances for the good players in the not-as-good clubs.
Every person in every club is always getting better at playing polo. But right now, polo does not have the public draw to get enough good players to put cities on an even keel. That is the heart of the current 3v3 format. You only need yourself and 2 other teammates that you feel are on your level and you stand a chance at competition.
In a sense, 3v3 the way it currently happens is a product of this being a growing sport. Yes, I can see your ideas being absolutely spot on in the future but as of right now, the talent is not deep enough to support it.
You say that in the current system, only 10 or so teams are competitive. By spreading those 30 players into larger teams distributed across regional boundaries, you're basically guaranteeing sub-quality bike polo by including lesser players in more important games.
We want the best of the best, and right now, the way to do that is with 3v3 swiss rounds. 5 years from now, I think this could be revisited as a natural progression but I just don't feel that this is even close to the time for the switch. But I agree that the switch to larger teams will eventually be necessary and is imminent.
it looks like once again we disagree on some basic things. bike polo is no longer a growing sport, it's a grown sport. that's not to say it won't get any bigger, but it's certainly no longer fledgling. that's exactly my point: 3v3 does not scale even to the level that the game has reached -now-. if you really think it's going to take another five years for the sport to mature to the degree that 3v3 is no longer sufficient, i think you're crazy. we've reached that point already and the 2011 season should be more than enough evidence to convince you of that.
also there's no way that having club teams battle other club teams guarantees sub-quality game play... do you think it's better to have 70% of the games in a 3v3 event played between two not-so-great teams, just so you can get 30% of the games between "slayers"? (what a stupid term...) there's already so much sub-quality polo at 3v3 events for exactly that reason - a majority of the triples aren't there to compete. changing formats will bring the overall level of play up, i guarantee it. fresh legs, team strategy, and more balance among the teams can only help the game play. there's no way it will be worse than two not-there-to-compete 3v3 teams spending 10 minutes insulting the game. worst case, two shitty lines are out against each other and you see bad polo for 90 seconds (or less if one team is clever enough to make a change first). even that isn't worse that what you see on the bottom level at a 3v3 event.
and on the subject of parity between teams... you must understand that New Format does not seek to generate teams that are all equal to each other. some clubs are going to be better, clearly. that's the case in every league of every sport ever. five years is such a crazy long time... if you really think that it's going to take that long for your COMO club to get to a level of competitiveness that you're comfortable with... start practicing now.
i'd bet you $100 right now that a 60-minute match between Milwaukee's top squad and New York's top squad under New Format would be many times more exciting and intense for players -and- fans than any 3v3 tournament final you've ever seen.
"slayers"? (what a stupid term...) ...you're a stupid term...no really GO MENACE!
Your last sentence is based on nothing, just for 100$:
Look the 60 minutes game long Boston VS NYC on vimeo and tell me that's a better game than the 2011 World final game...
http://vimeo.com/17537518
http://vimeo.com/29082076
(ok that's maybe not "top" squad from both side, but not so far).
That's not to talk about the new format idea, but clearly a 3v3 final game can be way better than a New format one. a Boring game in old format last between 10 and 30 minutes, in the new format, they gonna last at least twice the time.
- relatedly, take a look at any event with 32 or 64 triples entered. how many of those triples are actually competing to win? i'd say at most maybe 10, best case. at events like this, everyone knows that only a few individuals actually have a chance at any degree of success. under the New Format, every team has its A-level stars and down the bench are some B- and C- level players as well. these are the players that never even have a chance to sniff the quarterfinals at a 3v3 event, but under the New Format, every player goes as his/her club goes. this provides incentive and motivation for entire clubs, not just three or six of their top stars.
Take my new home town Portland for example... We have enough slayers to fill an entire 8 person team of A, and another team of A/B. Back in COMO we could fill up one team, and thats about it. At a bench tourney, COMO's only team would be good, but it couldn't compete in depth against Portland, Milwaukee, Seattle etc - and that makes sense, those cities are huge comparatively.
But break it down to triples, and como can put together a team that can compete against and often beat the best teams around. And the players that would have been down the bench can compete against teams at their skill level, play full games, and have fun
I think I like swiss so much because it matches skill levels. Newbies and Champs can play in the same tournament, play the same number of games, and all have fun, and both be challenged to get better.. In New Format, it seems that Big cities will trump little cities almost always.
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I think the flaws you are pointing out are simply the artifacts of trying to create a complex system that adapts to the needs of a huge number of people over a vast distance. But it doesn't mean the the results aren't legitimate.. I think we can take a lot of the critiques you make, and use them to improve the tour for this year, and at the same time, those who really love new format can build a tour too.
Well said vince. Man everyone has good input I don't know what I want anymore.
For sure it's a good point in a short term and individual thinking, but i think the point of the New Format is that it add a new layer in the competion other than A, B or C players, a layer of team managment and strategy that no one can predict who is better at.
In overall usually good communities will beat smaller one and yes C players will play less than A players in a tourney but it's not a fatality.
Bigger team involve player in a different way that i think the few benchminor this year only scratch the surface.
In a bigger team player can be complementary to each other rather than in a 3 players team where each player has to be good at every almost every task.
What that means is that some average B or C player can revel themselves to be in fact B+ or A defender, and they would be valuable in this task and eventually never be more than C+ attacker but never care much about it.
The can be very valuable in late game when a team needs to be very defensive against a team who need to put like 3 A+ players on the court to score a lot.
Well i don't know if im explaining it well but i think that in overall it will a win/win way to go, good players will still be good and average players will either progress overall or become better in specific task.
One other benefit is that some player don't like to play some other, with bigger team you can adjust the configuration the avoid some issue or to provoke them.
I mean, do you remember the "mighty ducks" movie? When the coach send a player to hurt an other? Fun isn'it.
In other hand i talk to clement and he said a good point "against" bigger team: the court as to be "ready" to that, that mean two entrance for example. Or maybe the changes have to be during a timeout or something like that... don't know.
i wanna do both formats in 2012. is that too much polo?
SF did that a few weeks ago.
In all honesty it was too much polo. The 20-team double on Saturday went smooth & fine & ended on time. Sunday's bench started later (shocker!). 30 minute games were plenty, we scaled back plans for 60 minute finals. Most people were pretty worn out and most of those not playing went home. Young Forrest was the only one scoring goals. We ditched the final final to clean up and go home.
I did like doing both in one weekend. The way the bench was organized could use some tweaks.
It was a hoot!
While you're ignoring many of Forests fine team mates, don't forget one of mine: Jess the newbie slayavictorian scored the last (seconds) sweeeet team goal of the night on the side of C Murder. And we didn't ditch the last game after loosing a first ... Jess saved us embarrassment by keeping that game to 7-12 or something, and then we beat them cleanly in the second final game of drinking.
seriously.
we did at all floridas this year, swiss rounds till 6, break for dinner, then an impromptu BM that night. people were tired but it was still a solid way to end the day. this seems like a solid compromise, and for the people dead set on not doing the BM, they don't have to.
one reservation.. with this format the BM teams wouldnt be city based for the most part, just whatever regional teams you could hobble together. unfortunately, this wouldnt address some of the city-based team hopes that are driving this discussion but it's a start
.
I'm a big fan of the team format, but if I had to get 7 other dudes/dudettes to commit to traveling to every tourney throughout the season just to compete, I'd rather stay home and play pickup.
it's hard enough to find a couple teammates who can take off the same days to drive/fly ten hours to play polo. With infinite money and time, this bench season sounds awesome, but most of us are still amateurs with real lives and jobs.
x2
it might not be far from the future to have more of these new format tourneys happening and actually have a separate 'championship' type of regime, and regions/cities/continents are organizing these on their own [ahem* boston and nyc and the northeast has been particularly good about getting these started/going/continuing] but i don't see it feasible to say that this is the future until we can be paid to play and that it becomes your job.
i like that it's happening i just don't think 3v3 is going anywhere either.
I dont' know for other city but speaking for Geneva we often move with 2-4 teams for tournament, so a 6-9 players team would be possible.
As a dude who also has limited time and resources (as well as other interests), i understand this. That's why the New Format represents a shift not only in the make-up of your team and the format of the game, but also in the structure of the season. Under New Format, there's no reason to travel to ten far-away places a year to play and have to drag your entire crew with you. Within the framework of regional/continental/national/world championships, your club actually gets just the one chance to qualify, and that is at your regional tournament. There's no reason to assemble your entire team and take them to four different qualifiers because that's not even allowed. It makes more sense to have the regional qualifier toward the middle of the season, and outside of that tournament, your club team plays games against other club teams on a more-or-less ad hoc basis (we can discuss yearly minimums, etc...). A model I've seen work in this regard (stolen from roller derby) is one in which a number of clubs meet in a more-or-less centrally located place relative to their location (example: NYC, Boston, Phila, Toronto, Ottawa meets one weekend in Boston) and each team plays one match against every other team over the weekend. You keep score and post it for the world to see. This way you've just played four 'regular season' games in one weekend, and only had to travel once to do it. Another weekend, for example, Boston, Phila, NY, RVA, and DC can meet in Phila and get another four 'regular season' games in. If your club has the good fortune to be able to travel out of region once or twice a year, that's even better, you can play games against far-away clubs on your trip. The regional qualifier is a short trip because it's within your own region by design, and should be scheduled before the start of the season so that everyone can plan around it. If your club qualifies there for the North Americans, then you'll have to figure out a way to schlep your whole team to whichever city it's being held in, but somehow I don't think that would be a problem considering people already travel en masse to those things anyway.
The New Format does not seek to simply morph every 3v3 event into a New Format event. That's not practical. The above suggestions represent a better way to provide all clubs with a significant number of matches without having to become professionals in order to manage it.
Something to think about:
Team 1: Three "A" players with no subs
Team 2: Nine "B" players that can change out whenever they want
Question: How long does their game have to be before Team 2 ever gains the advantage?
Assuming that all players are equal, whenever the first player from team 1 is in a situation that in which it would be beneficial to sub. These situations include being tired, mechanical error, dabbing harshly by the sub point, &c. These could happen at really any point in a game.
edit: oops, didn't see that it was A players vs. B players - in that case, I don't think the B player team would have much of a chance unless the game was longer than an hour
really pete, you know, we haven't even really officially defined A players to B players
this is something I'd love to discuss with you, how do we define A players and B players? NAH doesn't really even do this.
Iron ponies was a B team before worlds, now they're an A team, how does the transformation occur?
There's a few categories we can rate players by, but, you just know when you see A players. B players are just struggling A players, (could be bike, could be playing style, competitive level, etc) and the line between is so blurry.
by the way, if wizard tactix upsetting beaver boys isn't a good example of why 9 B players can't beat 3 A players, I don't know what is. ;)
<3
"A" or "B" is not the best system but FWIW I would not call Iron Ponies or Wizard Tactix B teams regardless of how they compare to other teams in their respective cities.
Menace put some solid shit on this thread. The only point im not conviced is the number. For me 5 is better than 7 or 9. 7 or 9 make game too long, bring more trouble into team management, and become to be hard to handle for court structue (a lot of space for bench requiered).
How many strangers (from club) per team allowed?
X2 - Lots of good points from Menace, Crandall, and others.
When we say teams of 5 or 7 or 9 players are people talking about a cap, or an exact number?
the proposal is between seven and 10 on a roster for any particular match. i'd be willing to compromise on the bottom end, though... bring five or even just three if you want... but get ready to be run ragged over 60 minutes by a team with eight or nine guys who change cleverly and always have fresher legs than you.
capping it at five is too few. that fails to solve the 'too many teams' problem because you still have a shitload of teams of five out there. the questions about bench management and worries about why that might be "hard" are an advantage to the New Format, not a disadvantage. it's a completely new element to the game, which provides excitement and opportunity to outsmart your opponents, even if you might be outmatched on paper.
Menace put some solid shit on this thread.
some of the stuff outside the thread is soft and mushy.
Maybe somone pitched this already. How about simply allowing but not requiring a team to have 1 or 2 subs in the existing tournament format? For competitive serious tourneys (qualifiers and up) some last minute/ multi-team ringer prevention might be needed. But it would give some of the benefits people are asking for from the bench format without discarding what's good in tournaments as it stands.
"How to stop crowning illegitimate champions and introduce continuity and credibility to the sport."
This title is soft and mushy excrement. I know I come across as a dick for calling that out. And I'm not even drunk. But the champions are the champions of competitive intercontinental hardtop bike polo as manifest on Earth through 2011. TSure there's chance involved, but that will always be true. There's all kinds of team work involved too - including how to keep a band of 3 together long enough to be way more than a pickup team, and be able to travel widely with 3 kick ass bikes etc.
Picking from the things I like in this thread:
A /pro/ pinion for bench is that more wrecks happen when players are exhausted, or a bike is half-broken during play for example. The bench makes exhaustion and playing half-broke less likely so play can be safer for all. Also keeps mechanicals from making games boring.
A /pro/ for swiss rounds. Done right (and it's not easy the first times I think) they give the best seeding information possible based on who showed up for the touney. Group phases to determine double elim seeding doesn't save any games if I understand correctly. Come to think of it, we're doing group phases WITH swiss rounds when courts are separate or AM/PM groups for example. Asking for a group phase outside of the tournament week is a good and lofty idea. But I don't think it makes any sense or is even possible until the game can pay and legitimize 6 weeks of methodical group phase play (for seeding information!) before the championship.
Anyway,
My 2cents.
Devin
ps ... you know you don't take bike polo seriously enough if you say "'till the day I stop playing ..." without also mentioning death or severe dismemberment ...
I love playing 3x3 and I will till the day I stop playing ...
haha!
I do hope they take organization to a deeper level in the future, maybe I'll find a way to volunteer and consequently work on throwing tournaments for polo players 30 years from now...right now I'm just gonna play whatever format is available.
I do like this idea of bigger teams and an added level of competition with bench minor. What I don't understand is why it would be one or the other. The step in this direction is really up to the organizers to host more bench tourneys. As the number of players increase it seems only natural club teams and city teams of nine to five players would have easier time finding sponsorship. These teams could rep at two 3v 3 tournaments on the same weekend or a single bench minor. I also see indivdual rankings playing a part in this larger team format. Looking at it from a team size perspective rather than a tournament seems like a more managable step by step aproach.
Anyway typing on my phone is driving me crazy, there is a lot between the lines in my post. Just trying to get some ideas down and spark a few more. Lets avoid drawing a line in the sand.
When it comes time to elect regional reps again, I will vote for whoever champions large team format. Long games, 5 or 6 players a team, full size hockey/lacrosse courts.
Sport/game.
for the record the 2012 bench minor tourney is in ottawa! alexis will be posting details soon.
coach goose..tell alexis to suck it with his little peacock beak! it's to expensive to travel to canada... twitterings around the court here in portland have that event maybe happening here! besides leave it up the "new format commissioner" sir menace...
After reading all this, with so many good points above I gotta say I agree with Andre. Drizz hit it on the head for me. also I had a thought about evolution of a sport while reading this post and what if things moved toward a 5 man 45 min game, and then sometime in the future we consider a larger fromat longer game, I wanna play in a bench micro with the aforementioned format. that would be fun.
BM seems like a different game, and a special occasion to me. but whatever. i suck.
We just did a BM in team this Sunday and it was a lot of fun - everyone was paying attention to the game and we got livid as shit with every goal.
But I definitely see drawbacks - I think the overall idea of BM being an exhibition event is right on. 3v3 is just a solid way to do tourney play.
Talking about new tournament play, means we have to talk about new club play. Bench changes the strategy of play, and because of this fact, clubs that even have the numbers to play locally can develop strategies to the new paradigm, smaller clubs can't or must exert more effort to travel to even practice the new format.
Example:
City A: 20+ active players.
City B: 8+ players.
City A is able to set up their own local BM matches where strategies can bee developed in house and perfected for the tournament setting. Roles, and the roster is able to be tested in many permutations. City B has enough players to have a bench minor team. However, during their club play, they don't have enough people to practice the format and develop strategy without visiting neighboring clubs. City A has an inherent Bench Minor advantage not only in play, but in the development of their club. Keeping the 3v3 the default format means the sport is more accessible in more areas.
Here's the thing, I am really stoked about the idea of city v city (club v club, state v state, etc) bench minors, but I think for any gain in the growth of the sport, we might lose the spirit of the game. The reason we have fewer teams in professional sports is due to how much money is out their to support the teams, not because having fewer teams is more interesting yada yada.
If growth into a sport is a goal (Do we agree it is?), then perhaps focusing on growing interest, not reformatting our tournaments is the best path.
My two cents on the best way to make the game/sport grow, is to have the NAH draft kits for clubs to pass on to their local municipalities to get proper places to play, letters to bike and athletic shops on the commercial opportunities in supporting BP players. A concrete example would be here in DC, we're about to get a velodrome. Wouldn't it be great if NAH would help cities like ours appeal to the developers to use some of their green space and build a polo court? The advantages of this to them would be to gather interest and to us (beyond the obvious) is that we'd be better equipped to host more events, more tourneys in 3v3 could help thin out the numbers. My point is simple: Help polo communities, and get people playing polo, don't worry about the national tourney circuit. The national/international championship is not what will develop the game.
What is 'the spirit of the game' and how exactly does the new format work against it?
What is 'the spirit of the game' and how exactly does the new format work against it?
Forgive me for taking liberties here. I'm nobody to assert what the spirit of the game is. Speaking for myself exclusively, I find the appeal of polo is in it's accessibility and the encouragement of the DIY culture surrounding it. If polo had been a sport with pros and it required large teams, I might have not picked it up. I might have just looked from the fence, said "whoa, that's cool!" and moved on. Instead, I was able to show up with my old beater bike, learn a fun game, and meet some cool people.
I don't know if I want things to be so serious, and it seems that part of the push for Bench is to make things more serious. Am I alone in feeling that way?
I think you're needlessly equivocating the new format with big sports. The new format means nothing for bike polo culture. It'll remain DYI as hell, accessible, and friendly. It's just that the so-called championship tournaments will have a different format. There will probably always be more 3v3 (fun) tournaments than new format (competitive) tournaments. Just imagine if each of the qualifiers was a new format tournament... there would still be way more 3v3 tournaments.
Calling the new format "more serious" acts as if getting serious is a bad thing. The people who are placing in the top 8 at the qualifiers already are serious. There already is a whole bunch of competition and desire for competition, but right now it seems like those needs aren't being met. The goal of the new format is to foster more legitimate competition, as well as make it a more spectator friendly sport. If you don't want to play at the qualifiers because you don't feel that you're serious enough, that's your prerogative. There will be other tournaments. It's not like those who are in favor of the new format want to ban 3v3 tournaments.
I feel like some people who are against the new format want bike polo to remain this ragtag unorganized community-governed everyone-gets-gold-stars festival-esque sport. I hope you're not one of these people because that's just a silly position. Some people (myself included) practice hard and want to win and there's no reason to think that meeting the needs of those who are competitive would undermine the needs of those who aren't.
x2 doesn't describe how much i agree with this post.
If you believe there will be more 3v3 than Bench tourneys, then I think you're essentially admitting that organically, the community isn't trending this way. Bench as a fun city v city thing sounds cool. As a formal imposition from above (NAH), it seems to be counter to what you admit people will elect to organize given their own deices: 3v3 tourneys. If Bench tourneys become the new organic favorite, then it makes sense to move to it.
Where are we seeing that?
Serious isn't bad. Not-serious isn't bad either. I'm not promoting one view or the other, I'm only asking if anything near a consensus on this question has really been reached, or even asked.
The entire community trending that way isn't because the entire community isn't competitive. But we shouldn't let those who don't want to be competitive be able to keep old formats that ruin competition for the sake of tradition.
Also, democracy sucks, tyranny of the majority, &c.
The entire community trending that way isn't because the entire community isn't competitive. But we shouldn't let those who don't want to be competitive be able to keep old formats that ruin competition for the sake of tradition.
Also, democracy sucks, tyranny of the majority, &c.
One of the base premises for advancing the idea of the Bench tourneys is that there is a number problem at 3v3 tourneys. Specifically that lots of people are entering them. Why assume that people don't want to be competitive in 3v3? It seems that many are eager to find tourneys to compete. I don't think that a few people advancing the idea of Bench can assert who is interested in being serious or competitive. 3v3 doesn't ruin competition. That's being unnecessarily dramatic.
3v3 doesn't ruin competition. However, the logistics of running tournaments from sun up to sun down in order to get all of the seeding completed and finals ran properly does ruin competition. Also, a point can be made about making the competition interesting by introducing more of a team element to our sport. Which seems more interesting: team portland united a, team portland united b, team portland united c competing against one another for the same slot OR is it actually more interesting seeing a whole club called Portland United playing Seattle Guardians. There's a matter of spectator friendliness as well there. Much easier for an outsider to give a damn about City A versus City B than it is for them to care about than the 30+ teams. Case in point, RVA played NYC during the new format tour. A week later, a gentleman who happened to have watched from the sidelines asked if we won. This guy remembered a week after it happened that we were playing a higher stakes game than the usual pickup.
All valid points. I understand that long tournaments create fatigue and interest fades for potential spectators. If this is the problem, it seems that moving to Bench is pretty large shift compared to other alternatives on making tournaments manageable, competitive, and interesting.
Also, the city v city thing is what I find really appealing about Bench. I'm not anti-Bench. I simply question if this is the best path forward as the default. Something that hasn't been brought up in this thread is that Polo used to be played on grass with larger teams. When polo went to hardcourt changes were made. I think looking at those changes, is instructive.
Two considerations/observations:
1) It was gaining interest in urban areas that didn't have large amounts of green space; public areas that we're accommodating. The urban areas did have paved areas, and so this increased the accessibility of the game.
2) The team size went down meaning it took considerably less coordination to gather enough people to play. This also improved accessibility.
These two things have a lot to do with why HCBP grew in ways BP didn't over a full century. I think it may be hasty to make changes that will decrease accessibility and diversity.
Um, you're completely misunderstanding the diagnosis of the problem. The problem isn't that there are too many players at tournaments. The problem is that there are too many teams. This makes scheduling harder, increases amount of time wasted between games (due to there being more short games), and creates some difficulties for ranking. It has nothing to do with the shear number of players.
And 3v3 doesn't ruin the competition at a singular tournament, but if you want to talk about 'world champs' and 'NA champs', it very well should be something other than merely winning one tournament, especially in situations where the players didn't even play together in the qualifier.
If you have read Menace's new format proposal and the reasoning behind it, take a look. There's a link up above somewhere.
Here's a practical question. For 3v3...
1) What is a manageable number of teams a for a single day tournament with one court?
2) What is a manageable number of teams a for a single day tournament with two courts?
3) What is a manageable number of teams a for a two day tournament with one court?
4) What is a manageable number of teams a for a two day tournament with two courts?
etc
Some events like marathons/triathlons have huge numbers. The organizers know that they can't let everyone in. Perhaps NAH tourneys could divide entries in similar ways to how these events do? One example could be to use lotteries for entry. Perhaps some spots could be reserved or require special qualification. It's not perfect, but my point is simply that alternatives exist.
I think everyone would be against lotteries. Imagine if the Beaver Boys didn't get into a midwest tournament. Special qualification is exactly the idea but the current system (the 2/3s rule and qualifying multiple times) is flawed. I'll admit that I qualified twice and if there was someone else at one of those tournaments who was willing to go to NAs but got assed out because of my team, then that's an unfortunate result of how the qualifying system worked.
Like I said, it's not perfect. Additionally, there's nothing to say this exact problem would not exist for Bench if it were to take off like the proponents of it suggest. No matter the format, you can only play so much. That means if you have small teams with short matches or large teams with large matches. Changing to Bench won't fix this, it may only temporarily make it less an issue. How many Bench Matches can you have in a day?
If you crunch the numbers, it should be painfully obvious that you get more playing time in a bench style tournament. Let's assume that there are 144 players at a tournament. That's 48 3v3 teams or 18 8-man teams. It should be obvious that 48 3v3 teams would require more and shorter games. What matters is the ratio of game time to time between games. For a 12 minute game, you still probably need a 5 minute turnaround, 3 if you're really, really fast. The ratio there is 4:1. For a 50 minute game, if you have a 10 minute turnaround (should be way more than enough), then your ratio is 5:1 on the court compared to turnaround. If you want to see how it affects your time on the court, see below:
--- 3v3 ---
You have 8 hours of daylight (480 minutes), 12 minute games on 4 courts and 3 minutes turnaround between games. So for every hour, you can get 4 games on each court, a total of 16 games an hour. Time 8 hours yields the maximum number of games you can have is 144, so 6 games per team. That means you get 72 minutes of court time in a 3v3 tournament.
--- 8-man team ---
You have 8 hours of daylight (480 minutes), 50 minute games on 4 courts and 10 minutes turnaround between games. So you get 1 game per hour on each court, 4 games an hour times 8 hours = 36 games. 36 games = 4 games per team, that's 200 minutes where you have 3 people on the court. So that's 600 player-minutes total, divided by 8 players, yields 75 minutes of court time in a bench tournament with the same number of players.
And all of this is assuming that the turn around between games will be longer with a bench tournament. I just plain don't think that's the case since it'll be much, much easier to calculate standings and schedule the next rounds. Also, I don't think you're going to find a bench team that isn't at the court when their game is scheduled to start. That happens all the time with 3v3 and can burn precious minutes of daylight.
TL;DR surface area/volume
So, three more minutes of play with two fewer matches, and with 30 fewer teams.
Personally, I don't see this as a benefit to competition. I think this hurts competitive players in smaller clubs. I think this hurts clubs that have to travel longer distances to tourneys.
Three minutes isn't worth it.
I think it'll be way more than 3 minutes because in these calculations I've assumed that the turnaround between 3v3 games is 3 minutes when it's closer to 10. I'd say you'd probably get 10-15 more court minutes at a bench tournament, that's like an extra game at a 3v3. Not to mention that you'd get to play against more players in a bench tournament.
Clubs won't have to travel further to tournaments. You'll go to your qualifier and if you qualify, then NAs, then Worlds. It's no different than the current system in terms of travel, why would you think it is?
It's a benefit to competition because of the inherent team consistency that goes along with city-based teams. You're going to have the same players on the same teams for a long time. Thing about how many 3v3 teams have stayed together for more than a year... not that many. You can't have the same kinds of rivalries or history between teams when teams rarely stay the same. I also think that having more people on your team will generally make everyone want to succeed more. You're letting down more people if you don't play well, so to speak. I think that would make competition better.
I'm guessing you say that it hurts competitive players in smaller clubs because presumably their teams wouldn't do as well because they'd have worse teammates than bigger clubs and thus would lose more. So the idea is that the competitive players in smaller clubs (or just clubs with less A players) wouldn't like losing more games because of their worse teammates. I think that's a perfect incentive to work as a club and help your B players become A players.
Just to pipe in as one of the clubs that is super isolated. With the amount of distance that we have to travel for any tournament a Bench style format would make it a lot harder for Winnipeg to compete regularly. It is not a problem for 3-6 of us to travel to a whole bunch of tournaments. However bringing a team of 8 to every tournament would make it really hard. I believe at least Winnipeg was present at 5 different tournaments this year. We only fielded 8 or more players at 2 of them. Part of this was because of distance.
Teams will be from 6-9, ideally. I understand that going to a 6-9 man team format would make it harder for some of the smallest clubs to get enough people to travel and field a complete team, but that's a bullet that I'm willing to bite. If you want to participate in the new format style tournaments, then you gotta motivate members of your club to travel in the same way that if you want to do well, you need to motivate other members of your club to get better.
I feel like the drawbacks that folks are mentioning are really just ways of incentivizing the A-players from smaller/worse clubs to find ways to grow/progress as a club.
Oh it has nothing to do with the club size for us. We generally have lots of players. We brought 14 people to Saskatoon. What we don't have is people who can afford to travel 20 hours for tournaments. Don't get me wrong I am not against new format. I like a bunch of things about it. I just wanted to chime in about the difficulty that new clubs or isolated clubs have in getting those kinds of numbers out to a tournament.
What you mean to say: If you want to participate in the new format style tournaments, then you gotta move to Portland.
It's really easy for you to sit with the club you sit with and tell others that to compete in the future of the sport, that they have to "motivate other members of their club to get better". It's frankly bullshit. Talent is somewhat innate in people, and when you have cities like Portland or Seattle that are drawing talent to them, the new format becomes pretty unbalanced and it limits good players in small clubs from being competitive.
And the only answer that you will have to that is, "well, then those good players need to inspire others in their club to get better".
It's pretty flat rhetoric if you ask me. The bullet that you are truly willing to bite is the fact that small clubs will become irrelevant and any good players that can't move themselves to a city that runs deeper with skill is going to be left behind. You don't care about that, because you moved to Portland from Columbia.
And that's a fine position to take, but come on Pete... be honest about it.
Tell me how you really feel about me moving to Portland.
Do you seriously not think that COMO could field a 6 man team that could compete against other 6 man teams? Are you so upset with the quality of your club members that you want to keep a format that's terrible for competition in many, many ways that have been mentioned here many, many times just so you can have a better chance at winning? It really sounds like you're saying "let's keep 3v3 because my club will never be good enough for the new format". And it's not at all about the size of the club, it's about the quality. Our club here in Portland has maybe 18 active players. In COMO, you guys probably have around 15. We just happen to have people who have played for longer and many of them started in other cities. Portland just has more years under the belt than COMO, it has nothing to do with size. Hell, one of the guys I play with is the person who introduced the hockey ball to bike polo.
It seems like you're trying to say that I like the new format because my new club will be good at it and the club I left will be bad at it. That's just plain false and I find that suggestion offensive. You're making it sound like I want COMO to not succeed at polo. That's bullshit. I want COMO to be great at polo and I wish I could see how John/Nic/Christian/Aaron are progressing. I've put forth my reasoning for preferring the new format here and as you can see, it has nothing to do with where I am or where I used to be. I miss COMOPOLO and I have no ill will for you guys. Why would you think that I do?
i am pro-nf its just i don't even know who the closest team that would give us any issue would be. como, mobile, lawrence... maybe, but probably not. all of which are over 10 hours away. so its hard to get excited about it and it actually be competitive. playing competitive nf twice a year (sc regional and NAs) isn't really working for me.
It's an unfortunate reality of all sports that some people (if not everybody) are going to have to travel a lot if they want to compete against the best people. I don't understand how the old format is better at handling this problem than the new format. You're going to have to travel anyway if you want to go to the 3v3 qualifiers and NAs, right?
If you're saying that the problem is that there won't be good teams to practice against and you'll easily win your qualifier yet still be unprepared for new format NAs, then your gripe is not necessarily with the new format, but rather the suggestion that registration for qualifiers is restriction to in-region teams. If all new format qualifiers were open to all teams, I bet a south central qualifier would have a few out of region teams show up. Think about the SE, SC qualifiers. Some out of region cities brought 6 or more to those.
I don't understand how the old format is better at handling this problem than the new format.
i travelled a lot last year, by myself. e.g. na's and worlds. it was old format and it accommodated this, i met a bunch of new people and played a ton of good polo. new format would not support this type of thing. obviously i am more than okay with travelling for competition. look at how many tournaments machine went to and how many of them were with SF people? few. ..and woadie. to name just a few.
i think dc may have been on to something when he said that this sport has sort of been up and down over the last century but has never exploded like it has now. why? why did this happen? biking has been popular before. maybe its the internet. maybe its cheaper travel. maybe some combination of them. maybe its unemployment. i would just hate to see the explosive growth that we are seeing being squelched prematurely. people play for all different reasons, but i think that part of what is making bike polo what it is IS this non-city based teams, and people are getting much more out of this than just the competition and 'minutes' on the court. we obviously do not know this, but the vertical growth of bike polo that we are seeing could be attributed to the flexibility of 3v3. do not discount this.
I'm not completely against new format, much the same as I'm not completely against 3v3. But to me, it has just as many obvious flaws as the way we've been playing.
If this trend continues and one of the next years' seasons turns into a new format style NAH championship, I'll be looking to move to STL at that time and I would think that some of the other players from COMO might as well. And I'm fine with that, but I know it would not be a good thing for bike polo in Columbia and I have to ask if that would be good for the sport in general. And at this point in its development, I'd say it's not. People should be playing polo everywhere, not congregating to select locations in order to remain competitive.
I know you don't mean harm to COMOPOLO and we miss you too, but moving to Portland can easily change your perspective on how the game is played and who it is important to consider. If I lived and played polo there, I probably wouldn't give a shit about small towns in the midwest either.
Why do you feel that the only option for a member of a smaller club who wants to be competitive in the new format is moving to a city with a more experienced club? Do you seriously think that no small/new club will ever come to challenge the older/bigger clubs? Isn't that kinda the way that bike polo already is? Think of the cities who have 3v3 teams finish well at major tournaments, they're all old or old-ish clubs.
And I still think that COMO could field a better team than you think. But regardless, if it turned out that COMO fielded a team that didn't win a lot, would that be enough to discourage you from playing? I think you have a bad attitude about formats, you don't like formats that don't let you do well. I don't think that's a fair reason for not liking a format.
If you have any responses to the numerous other virtues of the new format that I've mentioned, please do let me know.
how integral is the city based team to new format? multicity teams are so prevalent in 3v3; would this have to stop? would we have to move to stl? whats to stop us from just sending a team of the 6-9 best players out of the 30 or so people that play polo in missouri, much like the state by state midwest tournament later this year?
Nobody has to move to STL, COMO could easily field a 6-8 person team.
It seriously sounds like you and Kruse are not confident enough in your club to want to field a 6-8 man team just from COMO. You could, but you don't want to because you don't think it would be good enough. That's a shitty attitude. If you hate losing so much that you don't even want to play, then you have a shitty attitude.
So if the decision to be made is between (1) state-based teams to appease the few states that have clubs that couldn't field a 6-8 man, thus making it harder for the bigger states and (2) city-based teams to appease the bigger clubs in states with more clubs, thus making it harder for the small clubs, I'm going to choose 2. Now don't try to be like Kruse and suggest that the only reason I'm making this choice is because Portland blah blah blah. That's dumb and false. We're probably the only club in Oregon that could field a team. The reason I think it's the better option is because of a couple reasons. Team uniformity would be better because if you're taking players from a larger pool (you said 30), then you're going to have more changes in who's suiting up for each tournament. Part of the problem with 3v3 is that the teams keep changing, city-based play would remedy that. Another reason city-based is better than state-based is because state-based teams from Wisconsin, California, and other states with a few large clubs would have really, really hard team selection processes. They'd have waaaaay too many people to pick from.
There's nothing about the new format that is necessarily city based, but I do think that it's the best way to do it. The only exceptions should be 2 clubs that each can't field a 6-8 man merging to field 1 team. But again, both COMO and STL could easily field 6-8 man teams.
Blah blah blah, I moved to Portland, blah blah blah.
I find it so funny that you are scolding me for "having a bad attitude" because I would want to be on a team that is more competitive, yet you move to a whole different city half way across the country, partly because you want to play somewhere that is, get this, more competitive. Everything you are saying reeks of hypocrisy.
First, let me remind you that you have put forth no reasonable objections against the new format other than the fact that smaller/newer clubs won't initially do as well under it. That's a bullet I'm willing to bite. I think that the fact that smaller/newer clubs would do worse wouldn't be terribly different than how 3v3 already is: think of how many teams from small clubs do well at tournaments compared to how many teams from big clubs do well at tournaments. If you're against the new format, you're going to need to provide some better arguments against it other than "my club will suck" because that's not necessarily showing that there's something unfair about it. Clubs can get better, yet you see to ignore this fact. You really have such a negative attitude and you consistently avoid my questions about your opinion of the COMO club these days. Have you told them yet that you'd rather move away than play with them on a new format team and not do well? Have you told them that you think that "Talent is somewhat innate in people" and that you'd have a better chance moving than helping them improve? Maybe you feel like they'll never be good enough to be worthy of being on your team. If you do feel that way, maybe you should tell them so they're not offended when you move.
There are two fundamental things that you consistently ignore:
(1) PEOPLE GET BETTER AT BIKE POLO OVER TIME - so even if a small/new club isn't good at the new format initially, if they have members that are motivated and can motivate other members of the club, then that club's bench team will improve and could become competitive. This happened already happened with 3v3 because of the size of the teams. When I first started playing polo, COMO wasn't competitive. By the time I moved, COMO had won some small tournaments, finished top 18 at the first Worlds, and gotten top 5 at some big tournaments. See how the club went from being bad at 3v3 to good at 3v3? Why do you think that the same shift isn't possible for 6 man teams?
(2) TEAMWORK IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN RAW TALENT - If you have a 6 man team that players together very well, they'll probably beat 6 players who are more skilled on average. That's why city-based teams make so much sense, because you can improve your teamwork and raw talent at the same time. You get to practice with your team regularly. Think about how many 3v3 teams get to practice together regularly, not that many. I think city-based teams would thus improve teamwork overall.
Regarding calling me a hypocrite, you're being silly and typically I don't like to take the time to explain to people why they're being silly since it's often better for them to figure it out for themselves. However, despite the facts that in this case I don't think that you're going to be capable of realizing why you're being silly on your own and I take such an accusation pretty fucking personally, I feel no need to reply to your ridiculous accusation solely in virtue of its ridiculousness. If there's a single thing I am today, it's consistent. I moved to Portland because of a million reasons other than polo and if I was still in COMO, I'd still be pushing the new format and trying to prepare the club for it. I wouldn't be worried about my own personal winrate because I'm not a self-centered clown.
You say all these mean things since I'm not there, but you know that if I was still in COMO, I'd be saying the same things I'm saying now and you wouldn't be saying shit.
Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy" would fit nicely here.
don't put that evil on me. i love playing with the como club and i think we'd do pretty well as a 6-9 man team. however, i don't ever want regulations telling me who i must or must not play with.
I was basing my 3 minutes on your calculations. How that number changes depends on a lot of variables. I appreciate the math, but if we're going to do it, let's do it all the way. What's the tipping point when variables move? Your calculations were based on 4 courts. How many tourneys have four courts?
The number of courts is irrelevant. It's about the ratio of time spent on court vs. time between games. With longer games, that ratio would naturally be less.
The number of courts is most definitely relevant.
We're talking about managing a tournament, the longer matches effect the down time for other teams. Having more courts decreases the down time.
Time to play - T
Down time - D
Round time - R
Match time - M: M = D+R
Number Courts - C
Number of matches during time to play - Nmax: Nmax = (T/M)*C
Number of matches to play for N number of teams in double elimination: (N-1)*2. If the winner bracket team wins, then it's 2N-1.
Using 8 hours of play:
3v3 (12min game, 3min downtime)
=====
1 court - 17 teams (51 players),
2 courts - 33 teams (99 players)
3 courts - 49 teams (147 players)
4 courts - 65 teams (195 players)
Bench* (50min game, 10min downtime) (*Using a min team size of 6)
=====
1 court - 5 teams (30 players)
2 courts - 9 teams (54 players)
3 courts - 13 teams (78 players)
4 courts - 17 teams (102 players)
It occurred to me as I was doing this another point that hasn't been addressed. Who plays for tourney's? Fewer players means that the cost per player goes up for individuals. With Bench, you'll pay more, play fewer matches, and have a shorter path from the beginning of the tournament to the end. Do we ant to pass those costs off to hosting clubs? There's no free lunch, and somebody will have to pay. Does the community have a good enough sponsor base to assist with this kind of thing?
I don't think that time spent on the bike/down time is a good metric for competition. Not to mention that while on the bench you're not playing, so you're court time is divided among the size of your team--you get less play.
I think we're being hasty to call Bench the "new format." It's a fun alternative form of play, but serious things should be considered before a debate on the merits of 3v3/Bench is turned into an informative session by the proponents of Bench telling others how it's going to be.
just out of curiosity, how many tournaments have you been to? i dont recognize your silhouette or name, so if i know you i apologize. i think pete's math above if better than your math here. and also, i do not see a lot of you late in the day sunday on the court. you'd think that would be reason enough for you guys to want a bench format. you could possibly get games in late or even at all on sunday, rather than just watching us slayers jerk each other off more.
bench is going to be the future of this sport. for years it has been discussed and menace has ideas how to make this sport better and bigger. you can include more people when you have more people on a team, it is simple as that, especially when we are talking about major tournaments that already have too many teams who will not qualify for the brackets. why not get these players on a team with better players so they can learn, but also play with better players and get experience in a tournament where they actually have a chance to win.
and are you seriously talking about money? have you responded to my first question yet? i have been to tournaments that were $80 a person and also some that were $free and you know what, they were probably equally cool. money or not, if there is good polo to be played, we will be there to play it.
Edit: Nevermind. I've stated my opinion and provided things for consideration. I don't have anything else to say. The powers that be will do what they will.
Here's my bottom line, skip the polite formalities. Is this a debate on the two formats, or is this where slayers and large established clubs tell others how it's going to be?.
Talk is cheap. We could debate online all day long, but the only way we're really going to hash out these issues is through action (ie having new and different events). You don't have to be a slayer or from a large established club to make something happen. In my experience once you try things out "in real life" it's pretty easy to see what works and what doesn't...
The Beaver Boys suck.
Pete, I appreciate your logic.
3v3, Bench Minor? I'll take both, thanks.
I agree with much of what is said above. And as much as I'd hate to cause more work for our volunteers I did think this pretty interesting
"My two cents on the best way to make the game/sport grow, is to have the NAH draft kits for clubs to pass on to their local municipalities to get proper places to play, letters to bike and athletic shops on the commercial opportunities in supporting BP players. A concrete example would be here in DC, we're about to get a velodrome. Wouldn't it be great if NAH would help cities like ours appeal to the developers to use some of their green space and build a polo court? The advantages of this to them would be to gather interest and to us (beyond the obvious) is that we'd be better equipped to host more events, more tourneys in 3v3 could help thin out the numbers. My point is simple: Help polo communities, and get people playing polo, don't worry about the national tourney circuit. The national/international championship is not what will develop the game."
We already lobby locally but sometimes invoking a "legitimizing authority" (in a way stimulating nationalistic or parochial competitiveness in the local bodies being lobbied) helps the request appear more serious than mere "vanity project".
x2.
Like you said, if we want 3v3 or new format, we need the legitimate authority to help create an infrastructure/courts, and we need a consistent quality of courts that can be found across NAH so that whatever happens next (3v3, NF), the infrastructure is ready to support it.
we still have clubs building their own boards at courts that will be used once a year for the big 3v3 tourneys, and most clubs still struggle to find a local pickup spot.
I like both formats, and I think both will continue to exist as log as people organize tournaments.
NAH probably could have more easily considered adopting the "new format" had their been more than a handful of such events organized in 2011.
If people want to see this happen in 2013, the best thing they can do is to organize a new format tourney ASAP.
Cascadia and Midwest new format tournaments already scheduled, ESPI is going to be a new format tournament too. So what's up, SE/SC/SW? Make some new format tournaments happen! I know SF had a 1-day bench tournament, but if someone in cali had a city-based one, I'm sure it would draw a crowd.
"new format" no longer means what you think it does...
it just means we mix it up..to keep it interesting for us and others...lets not over manufacture this like leon bringing the ball up...
could someone please provide cliff notes for this discussion as it has already become way too wordy for me to even bother to read.
X2. If we stop pete from having an opinion about things related to bike polo my quality of life would improve. Good lord. ;-) pete
If you have a problem with the content or tone of my posts, I'd love if you could be more specific. Posts like this of yours make me want to think that you just don't like reading or thinking or something.
Cliffnotes:
Hardcourt bike polo has seen a lot of growth in the past decade.
3v3 has something to do with the growth, but we're not really sure if the growth hinges on 3v3
"new format" has been played for over a century(and by the way its called: bike polo)
What I might add is, the dicks at the top of bike polo didn't complain about courts because those fuckers played everywhere, they even played on grass!
What I would really like to add is:
1) it is time for us to own bike polo
2) the players interested need to form bench teams(no regulations here)
3) think rose city park team vs. alberta team or a cal anderson vs. judkins, can you imagine how local communities would support this flavor of competition?
4)most of all let's not limit ourselves, after all this is the www
P.S. pete is the new fuckoffjason, who was one of the nicest players i've met in person:)
I don't know what you mean by 'the new fuckoffjason' but I certainly am also super duper friendly. I just really really really don't like being called a hypocrite.
I picked up a little bit of NAH needs to figure this out for us and tell us what to do. Lame.
Also, people are concerned about qualification/selection. I think those are valid concerns. For example, about once a day i ask myself WTF is Portland's Western Conference? The SF bench was all-inclusive. While fun, the inclusion screwed up the balance between teams. If planning another bench, i'd stick with fewer, smaller, more selective teams and everyone else is playing pickup or spectating.
If you think I said something I didn't say I didn't say it.
I envision bench size teams forming independent of any regulations; encouraging inter-city, club vs club, state vs providence, college vs college, ect. competition. Nothing would inhibit these teams sending 3 to 3vs3 tournaments. No, I'm not in favor of NAH changing format for 2012. However, I would encourage clubs to start forming bench size teams and the people on those teams deciding who travels to tournaments, both bench and 3vs3. It works for both large and small clubs if you look at it from the team level. Example: teams form by location, skill set, sponsorship, community, ect. no one regulates how teams are formed but the people forming the teams.
There, I said what I have to say more then once.
.
wow, it's not that hard to see why i haven't logged on to this site in thirteen months. i've really missed stunningly insightful and redundant debate, it feels so 2006 that i get shivers. where is drumplestiltskin? someone tell him i want to buy something but i don't know what, i've got lots of money and need to know where to spend it.
are we trying to showcase the best polo or make it so that everyone gets a participation ribbon?
perhaps the two are mutually exclusive, perhaps other sports have figured this quandary out years ago.
my personal opinion is that polo should re-invent the wheel in everything and develop a silo mentality, because we are completely different from every other sport and have nothing to learn from them. we are cyclists and they are idiots. only then will we truly discover how intelligent we really are.
ben, i've missed you.
fuck daniel, after reading this i'm about to catch the next flight to ethiopia.
joel, for once you had an idea that i agree with, but it was from 2011 and you've probably changed your mind by now.
ps christchurch bike polo rocks
Major issue with more than 3 players, a coach. I really think you need somebody to manage switching lines... and i really think we don't gonna find enough people who agree to don't play. And if we find them, i really don't think that actual players gonna easily accept to get directed by somebody.
there are player coaches in many sports, and it being a team game, that we have played many times, the goal is to play as a team as does the 3 v 3 game. i have never seen the problem that you are describing here. the only thing i can think of that comes close is ovechkin being the prima donna that he is and refusing to come off the ice. part of the reason he is not in ottawa this weekend for the all star game.
one thing that folks seem to be overlooking is that bike polo is an evolving sport and will continue to do so for some time. im not saying that the larger format is the end all but it will be part of the evolution because it is fun to play and poloists like to play it.
I'll x 2 you on that. It'll be the measure of a good team where the coach is smart enough to know when to go into and then come out of play. Vis a vis this is the individual players willingness to follow the directions of the coach, sometimes against their desire for glory and sometimes even allowing a coach to make a "bad call". I like polo because it seemed like a game played by individual glory hounds, those of us who "don't play well with others", who accidentally bump into a capacity for teamwork.
I think some people may find this to be a blessing. I know I play SOOOOOO much better when someone is focused on good communication with me, and is actively helping me field the court. Having a person whose entire effort is devoted to looking at the whole court and helping out is huge. Finding a person to do this I think is not as hard as one might think. In fact, many less physically skilled players who have a good mind for timekeeping and strategy might find a very useful role on a team in circumstances like this. They might want to be on the sideline instead of on their bike. Just a thought.
Thank you for posting this joel
what is your opinion?
i think the general consensus is that 3v3 is classic and going no where,but bench is really fun for now and may be the future...
at least that's what i've heard around many parts of this sport.
personally i agree but don't know if i like it.
CHIME IN PEOPLE.