Co-Event Suggestion Box

[JackHurst]

I mean I tapped the phone to indicate I was having a guess but if someone is scribbling it down that would indicate they're also 'buzzing'. In terms of seeing what the other person has written, that's fine IMO but maybe does need explaining in the preamble

Is there a grey area here for people who like to write the letters down for working out? I think you should have to clearly indicate a buzz. Starting writing down should not be taken from granted as a buzz

[Fiona T]

I mean I tapped the phone to indicate I was having a guess but if someone is scribbling it down that would indicate they're also 'buzzing'. In terms of seeing what the other person has written, that's fine IMO but maybe does need explaining in the preamble

Is there a grey area here for people who like to write the letters down for working out? I think you should have to clearly indicate a buzz. Starting writing down should not be taken from granted as a buzz

Yep makes sense - a tap should do it - don't think you need something to capture it - the phone thing is purely to indicate who got there first when it's close (and has had the advantage of preventing the karate chops to the table that some participants employed! )

[Marc Meakin]

Are there bona fide ratings for players at Co events ?
Scrabble has a ratings levy and players can be obsessed with ratings points.
Could it work in co events ?

[Fiona T]

Are there bona fide ratings for players at Co events ?
Scrabble has a ratings levy and players can be obsessed with ratings points.
Could it work in co events ?

No, but there is an annual points competition where the top 8 players play a round robin at the MK finals.

If you want ratings, apterous has pro-ranks which is pretty similar (as well as a rolling rating)

It could work, but personally I don't think it would be a good thing to add.

[Marc Meakin]

Are there bona fide ratings for players at Co events ?
Scrabble has a ratings levy and players can be obsessed with ratings points.
Could it work in co events ?

No, but there is an annual points competition where the top 8 players play a round robin at the MK finals.

If you want ratings, apterous has pro-ranks which is pretty similar (as well as a rolling rating)

It could work, but personally I don't think it would be a good thing to add.

I think as it's spoken about many times Countdowners and Scrabblers are different animals.
I have made suggestions about a cheap as chips Scrabble tournament without prize money and got a poor response

[Ben Wilson]

Are there bona fide ratings for players at Co events ?
Scrabble has a ratings levy and players can be obsessed with ratings points.
Could it work in co events ?

There have been ratings in the past going as far back as COLIN 2006, but they were quietly discontinued ages ago. Jack Hurst recently generated Elo* ratings for the whole of Countdown, TV and co-event alike, but nothing for co-events alone. The large number of one-timers may result in a lot of random largely meaningless ratings, but it's not like the same can't be said for Scrabble, and last time I checked (admittedly this is 2012 we're talking about) you had to have played 30 rated games to feature on the main ratings page.

*not an acronym

[Marc Meakin]

Are there bona fide ratings for players at Co events ?
Scrabble has a ratings levy and players can be obsessed with ratings points.
Could it work in co events ?

There have been ratings in the past going as far back as COLIN 2006, but they were quietly discontinued ages ago. Jack Hurst recently generated Elo* ratings for the whole of Countdown, TV and co-event alike, but nothing for co-events alone. The large number of one-timers may result in a lot of random largely meaningless ratings, but it's not like the same can't be said for Scrabble, and last time I checked (admittedly this is 2012 we're talking about) you had to have played 30 rated games to feature on the main ratings page.

*not an acronym

It's still 30 rated games in Scrabble.
I think there will be a tweak in ratings calculations soon , though as the ABSP follows WESPA in (almost) everything I don't know why we don't just adopt their ratings too

[JackHurst]

Co event ELO would be awesome. I tried to do it but gave up because aggregating the data was hard. Asking hosts to produce accurate individual results of games with the correct variation of Tom/Thomas/Maus/TCap as the player name initially sounded doable, but honestly I think a host has so much going on at an event that adding extra hoops for them to jump through during and afterwards isn't reasonable.

[Ian Volante]

*Elo.

[Gavin Chipper]

Elo Elo Elo - it's the capitalisation police.

[Marc Meakin]

*Elo.

(Mr) Blue Sky thinking

[Marc Meakin]

Elo Elo Elo - it's the capitalisation police.

Elo Green maybe.

[Marc Meakin]

Co event ELO would be awesome. I tried to do it but gave up because aggregating the data was hard. Asking hosts to produce accurate individual results of games with the correct variation of Tom/Thomas/Maus/TCap as the player name initially sounded doable, but honestly I think a host has so much going on at an event that adding extra hoops for them to jump through during and afterwards isn't reasonable.

I would have thought that the demand for ratings hasmore of a novelty level in FOCAL events
Countdown has more of an obsession , with Grand Masters and Expert ratings for players who sustain 170 + and 180 + over 3 and 5 years respectively

[Adam S Latchford]

I guess my main suggestion now would be to go back to 6 rounds as opposed to 8 in lincoln.

I know i'm part of the problem why it became 8 but 8 every now and then is better than 8 as the norm.

Blackpool was refreshing with 6, I've actively started to feel myself enjoying it less with the more games to the point 8 game events are now less appealing to me

[Graeme Cole]

I guess my main suggestion now would be to go back to 6 rounds as opposed to 8 in lincoln.

I know i'm part of the problem why it became 8 but 8 every now and then is better than 8 as the norm.

Blackpool was refreshing with 6, I've actively started to feel myself enjoying it less with the more games to the point 8 game events are now less appealing to me

I don't think I've ever played at a Lincoln-style event with 8 games, but I tend to agree.

Playing 8 games rather than 6 would be great if the extra games could be comfortably fit into the day, but usually they can't. To accommodate the extra games, you have to do one or more of three things:

• Start earlier.
• Finish later.
• Play the event in a horrendous rush.

I don't have much other than anecdotal evidence to back this up, but I think that for every hour earlier you push the event start time, you're reducing turnout. Prospective attendees who previously had a slightly early start to get their train now have an obnoxiously early start, and those who had an obnoxiously early start now can't get there on the day at all and are now looking at staying in a hotel the previous night. And in both of these categories, there are people for whom that will tip the balance from "yeah, I guess I could go to that" to "nah, I'm not going to bother".

Finishing later is preferable to starting earlier, but presumably venue hire timings limit this. After about 6pm, you're leaving the "hall hired for a day event" part of the day and entering the "hall hired for an evening event" part.

And playing the event in a horrendous rush is not advised. The words "well, if we play the games quicker, and have less of a gap between rounds..." sometimes end up marching with misplaced optimism into this discussion. Unfortunately, unless you've invented an incredibly effective optimisation that nobody's thought of in nearly two decades of co-events, the amount of time you need for a round of Lincoln or a round of Bristol is pretty much a constant. Setting a tighter schedule won't make the games get played quicker, it'll just cause your event to overrun.

[Adam Beach]

I guess my main suggestion now would be to go back to 6 rounds as opposed to 8 in lincoln.

I know i'm part of the problem why it became 8 but 8 every now and then is better than 8 as the norm.

Blackpool was refreshing with 6, I've actively started to feel myself enjoying it less with the more games to the point 8 game events are now less appealing to me

Agreed. From experience, it's easier for hosts, less exhausting for players, and means we can start later (which particularly benefits the growing number of parkrunners in the community). I'll only be doing six games at Durham next year.

[JackHurst]

The most chaotic/slow/overrunning event I can recall from past couple of years was Liverpool 2024 and that was 6 Lincoln games. Both Birminghams and Rugbys from past two years had 8 games and I found them to be smoother and feel less rushed.

I strongly prefer 8 games! Very happy with the current mix tbh.

[Callum Todd]

I also prefer 6 games but I'm not as arsed about the gameplay side of things. Both have their merits!

[Dan Byrom]

The most chaotic/slow/overrunning event I can recall from past couple of years was Liverpool 2024 and that was 6 Lincoln games. Both Birminghams and Rugbys from past two years had 8 games and I found them to be smoother and feel less rushed.

I strongly prefer 8 games! Very happy with the current mix tbh.

I'm in this camp

[Matt Rutherford]

The most rushed event in recent times was GoatBrum 2024 where I tried to play six games in an evening. If you do this, you are a profound idiot.

Do enjoy 8 games more-think that the specific running of the event (for your standard day-long affair) makes the biggest difference rather than the number of games. Variety is always good though.

[Matthew Brockwell]

I do prefer an 8 game Lincoln and actually think there's a fair bit of difference between 6 and 8 games. With 6, almost always one person wins 6 and you either need to be that person or carefully manage your scores to get 2nd with a 5-1 record.

With 8, 7 wins are probably good enough for the final and you can focus on winning first without worrying that the impossible 6 small that may come up could be a hindrance to you making the final.

[Ben Wilson]

From the perspective of an organiser who hosts his event in the middle of winter in the middle of nowhere, 8 games almost certainly isn't going to happen. COLIN would need to start at about 11am instead of 11:45am (and that's just the actual 'sit down to start playing' and not just my pre-event waffle), lunch would be shortened and the more games you play, the greater the chance of something going wrong and the event overrunning.

Though that said, the last time there wasn't an unbeaten player at COLIN was 2010...

[Thomas Carey]

Yeah I like both, some are more suited to one or the other that's fine, keep both pls. We've had events that have run to time with 8 and not felt rush, we've had 6 game events that have massively overran (can't help but feel partially responsible for the last event), and anything in between. Do what you want <3

[Fiona T]

I do prefer an 8 game Lincoln and actually think there's a fair bit of difference between 6 and 8 games. With 6, almost always one person wins 6 and you either need to be that person or carefully manage your scores to get 2nd with a 5-1 record.

With 8, 7 wins are probably good enough for the final and you can focus on winning first without worrying that the impossible 6 small that may come up could be a hindrance to you making the final.

I enjoyed doing 15R at Reading, but 5 games didn't feel like enough to get proper rankings. 6 (my original intention) would have been very tight. Maybe the different options available on atropine to match on wins only might help things. Will probs stick with 15R for next year as it's traditional for Reading but try the #wins match.

[JackHurst]

I enjoyed doing 15R at Reading, but 5 games didn't feel like enough to get proper rankings. 6 (my original intention) would have been very tight. Maybe the different options available on atropine to match on wins only might help things. Will probs stick with 15R for next year as it's traditional for Reading but try the #wins match.

Yeah it's good to keep at least one 15r event in the Calendar.

6th game would be nice to have imo. What were the limitations last time? Was it just the data entry between rounds? Was there a strict curfew on the booking? I think at London, Phil has Sam assisting him with data entry, and it seemed to help quite a lot.

[JackHurst]

From the perspective of an organiser who hosts his event in the middle of winter in the middle of nowhere, 8 games almost certainly isn't going to happen. COLIN would need to start at about 11am instead of 11:45am (and that's just the actual 'sit down to start playing' and not just my pre-event waffle), lunch would be shortened and the more games you play, the greater the chance of something going wrong and the event overrunning.

Though that said, the last time there wasn't an unbeaten player at COLIN was 2010...

I suspect everybody agrees that the traditional 6 game Colin format doesn't need tweaking at all. That's part of the fun with Colin is that its been going on for so long in the same way.

[Fiona T]

Yeah it's good to keep at least one 15r event in the Calendar.

6th game would be nice to have imo. What were the limitations last time? Was it just the data entry between rounds? Was there a strict curfew on the booking? I think at London, Phil has Sam assisting him with data entry, and it seemed to help quite a lot.

I think I'd just overestimated the time that would be saved by using RoboRiley and didn't really have a baseline for 15R games, but yeah Sam was a demon at score-entry and that definitely took me a lot longer! I've added game timings to the RR logs (Phil's excellent suggestion) so should have a clear idea going forward about how long a game takes, and how long the lapse between games was.

[Fiona T]

I was perusing the standings spreadsheet, and thinking about the burgeoning number of add-on events, especially with the COLIN bumper weekend at the end of January. Anyone attending those events can hit the 8 events threshold quite quickly, but increasing the threshold would make it tough on anyone who can't attend double/triple headers. My suggestion for the committee to consider is that for weekend multi-events, only your best result from the weekend should count. So people attending have a good chance of getting a good result, but would need to attend a variety of events to secure their top 8 spot. Thoughts?

[Gavin Chipper]

I was perusing the standings spreadsheet, and thinking about the burgeoning number of add-on events, especially with the COLIN bumper weekend at the end of January. Anyone attending those events can hit the 8 events threshold quite quickly, but increasing the threshold would make it tough on anyone who can't attend double/triple headers. My suggestion for the committee to consider is that for weekend multi-events, only your best result from the weekend should count. So people attending have a good chance of getting a good result, but would need to attend a variety of events to secure their top 8 spot. Thoughts?

I agree.

Another thing is the hangover events - Because some events have a Saturday and Sunday competition, they are effectively worth double points. Arguably that's fine because they're two separate tournaments. If the Monaco Grand Prix also had a separate Monday race, I think it would be right to award full points to both races. But F1 is a professional sport and all drivers participate in all rounds. CO events are very different. People can't make all the events, and because of that, it's a massive advantage to someone to be lucky enough to be able to make an event that has a hangover as well. However, I think it would also be wrong to simply discount the hangover. So I think the best compromise is probably to allow each player to only use their higher scoring of the two competitions in a weekend in their end of year total. Since not all events count anyway, this isn't that big a deal. Also, it's still an advantage to go to an event with a hangover relative to another event because you get two shots at a good score, but it's reduced to more acceptable levels.

Also if it's best x scores from y, then if this is generally a fixed ratio then you'd do the ratio from the number of weekends rather than total individual competitions.

[Ben Wilson]

Fwiw if I do a COLIN triple-header in 2026 or afterwards, the Friday event wouldn't be FOCAL-rated but would be in a different format. 2025 is very much a one-off in that regard.

[Graeme Cole]

I was perusing the standings spreadsheet, and thinking about the burgeoning number of add-on events, especially with the COLIN bumper weekend at the end of January. Anyone attending those events can hit the 8 events threshold quite quickly, but increasing the threshold would make it tough on anyone who can't attend double/triple headers. My suggestion for the committee to consider is that for weekend multi-events, only your best result from the weekend should count. So people attending have a good chance of getting a good result, but would need to attend a variety of events to secure their top 8 spot. Thoughts?

I don't like this idea at all. Double-headers are popular for a reason - you get to play at two events, but with the travel costs of only one. The same applies to accommodation costs, assuming you would have stayed the night anyway. I certainly don't think we should be doing anything to discourage them. What are we testing and rewarding when we work out the top 8? Performance over multiple competitions, or the ability and inclination to spend more time and money on travelling to different places on different weekends?

You can certainly make the argument that the COLIN Hangover should only be worth two-thirds the FOCAL points of the main COLIN event, but only because it has two-thirds of the games, not because players should receive less reward for travelling fewer miles.

[Fiona T]

I was perusing the standings spreadsheet, and thinking about the burgeoning number of add-on events, especially with the COLIN bumper weekend at the end of January. Anyone attending those events can hit the 8 events threshold quite quickly, but increasing the threshold would make it tough on anyone who can't attend double/triple headers. My suggestion for the committee to consider is that for weekend multi-events, only your best result from the weekend should count. So people attending have a good chance of getting a good result, but would need to attend a variety of events to secure their top 8 spot. Thoughts?

I don't like this idea at all. Double-headers are popular for a reason - you get to play at two events, but with the travel costs of only one. The same applies to accommodation costs, assuming you would have stayed the night anyway. I certainly don't think we should be doing anything to discourage them. What are we testing and rewarding when we work out the top 8? Performance over multiple competitions, or the ability and inclination to spend more time and money on travelling to different places on different weekends?

You can certainly make the argument that the COLIN Hangover should only be worth two-thirds the FOCAL points of the main COLIN event, but only because it has two-thirds of the games, not because players should receive less reward for travelling fewer miles.

That's a reasonable perspective, but why then does the threshold change (or has done in the past I think?) depending on the number of events in the calendar? I thought it was to encourage people to attend a variety of events. I don't think only counting one event from a weekend would discourage attendance at those events - most people attend to play countdown with friends, not purely to get focal points, and if focal points are your motivation, then 2 or 3 chances to score highly is better than one! You still get to play at two events with the travel costs of one.

[Gavin Chipper]

Someone could set up an event where instead of e.g. 8 rounds there are 8 events of 1 round. What are we rewarding? If the idea is to get people to go to a variety of events then it seems strange to make some events worth more - twice as much, three times in the case of COLIN this year.

[Fiona T]

What are we rewarding? If the idea is to get people to go to a variety of events ...

I guess this is the the actual question - is that the idea, or is it just to find the best players? (In which case we're failing - we all know players who, if they attended enough events, would almost certainly make the top 8, but haven't because of the threshold)

[Gavin Chipper]

Well whichever way we look at it, currently we're rewarding people for happening to be able to attend the events that have multiple competitions, and that's just about luck really.

I think people tend to just go to the events they will go to anyway. I don't think the league and how it works makes much difference at all.

[Graeme Cole]

I was perusing the standings spreadsheet, and thinking about the burgeoning number of add-on events, especially with the COLIN bumper weekend at the end of January. Anyone attending those events can hit the 8 events threshold quite quickly, but increasing the threshold would make it tough on anyone who can't attend double/triple headers. My suggestion for the committee to consider is that for weekend multi-events, only your best result from the weekend should count. So people attending have a good chance of getting a good result, but would need to attend a variety of events to secure their top 8 spot. Thoughts?

I don't like this idea at all. Double-headers are popular for a reason - you get to play at two events, but with the travel costs of only one. The same applies to accommodation costs, assuming you would have stayed the night anyway. I certainly don't think we should be doing anything to discourage them. What are we testing and rewarding when we work out the top 8? Performance over multiple competitions, or the ability and inclination to spend more time and money on travelling to different places on different weekends?

You can certainly make the argument that the COLIN Hangover should only be worth two-thirds the FOCAL points of the main COLIN event, but only because it has two-thirds of the games, not because players should receive less reward for travelling fewer miles.

That's a reasonable perspective, but why then does the threshold change (or has done in the past I think?) depending on the number of events in the calendar?

It doesn't. I think the original plan was for it to be something like 2/3 of the number of events in the year rounded up to the nearest integer, but that got quietly dropped at some point. AFAIK it's always been your best 8 events that count.

What are we rewarding? If the idea is to get people to go to a variety of events ...

I guess this is the the actual question - is that the idea, or is it just to find the best players? (In which case we're failing - we all know players who, if they attended enough events, would almost certainly make the top 8, but haven't because of the threshold)

To me, this comment implies "the threshold" means something other than I thought it did. I think the threshold is the maximum number of events from which you can score FOCAL points. If you attend more than eight events, only your highest-scoring eight events count. It's not "you have to attend at least eight events to be considered for the finals".

Someone could set up an event where instead of e.g. 8 rounds there are 8 events of 1 round.

In the unlikely event that someone tried this, and FOCAL chose to recognise this nonsense as eight separate events, then my earlier comment about the COLIN Hangover vs the main event applies. It would be reasonable to award only 1/8 of the FOCAL points for each of these "events", because they only have 1/8 of the games. (Or 1/6, or whatever number of games/rounds we count as a "whole" event.)

What are we rewarding? If the idea is to get people to go to a variety of events then it seems strange to make some events worth more - twice as much, three times in the case of COLIN this year.

It sounds like you're using the word "event" to mean all of one weekend's events collectively, so I'll use a different word. I'd say the idea is to reward people entering a variety of competitions, not to specifically reward travel to different towns on different weekends.

If you travel to North Hykeham and play COLIN and the Hangover, you've played in two competitions. That's two sets of games, and two competitions to evaluate performance from. Why should it matter that they were on the same weekend and in the same town? The only thing that matters is that one of those competitions consists of fewer games/rounds than the other, and if we want FOCAL points allocated proportionally on that basis I'd have no problem with it.

[Gavin Chipper]

If you travel to North Hykeham and play COLIN and the Hangover, you've played in two competitions. That's two sets of games, and two competitions to evaluate performance from. Why should it matter that they were on the same weekend and in the same town? The only thing that matters is that one of those competitions consists of fewer games/rounds than the other, and if we want FOCAL points allocated proportionally on that basis I'd have no problem with it.

It comes down to why we have the rule about your best 8 competitions counting in the first place. It's because it's unreasonable to expect people to be able to go to every event, and we don't want it to simply be a case of those who are able to make 14 events (or whatever) being the ones who qualify for the finals. People can only travel to the places they can travel to on the weekends they can make it. But to be able to have a chance to qualify for the finals, it's reasonable that there's a certain minimal amount of travelling someone would need to do.

But on top of that there's this extra lottery that if you can make certain weekends, you can get double or maybe even triple the normal allocation of "turning up".

I can totally see actually why it is done as it is by default. It takes an extra step to think about it the way me and Fiona are. But I do think it's something worth considering, and I'm not sure you even see the point that is being made.

[JackHurst]

You can certainly make the argument that the COLIN Hangover should only be worth two-thirds the FOCAL points of the main COLIN event, but only because it has two-thirds of the games, not because players should receive less reward for travelling fewer miles.

One thing we need to be careful about here is saying that certain characteristics of an event make it carry more weight than others. We have all sorts of variations of events
5/6/7/8 games
Bristol vs Lincoln vs heats and pots
Swiss vs Random
9r vs 15r vs 14r
Final, Semi finals + Final, no Final

So, while understandable and intuitive that COLIN Hangover would carry 2/3 weighting of COLIN main event due to their similarity in nature other than by size, its not necessarily obvious how you'd do that (if you wanted to) for other event formats.

I think the most important disctinction would be Main event vs Additional event. Any standalone event is always a main event. Any double header most likely has some kind of format where there is a Saturday event that's longer and has more participants. So going back to what I said a few months ago, if you wanted to make any distinction, the most logical one would be for additional events to have a 50% weighting. I am loosely in favour of doing it that way, or just sticking to how things are.

[Graeme Cole]

But on top of that there's this extra lottery that if you can make certain weekends, you can get double or maybe even triple the normal allocation of "turning up".

I can totally see actually why it is done as it is by default. It takes an extra step to think about it the way me and Fiona are. But I do think it's something worth considering, and I'm not sure you even see the point that is being made.

Well, no, I don't, not really. There are a small number of weekends on which a double helping of FOCAL points are available if you play in two competitions, and I don't think that's a problem.

I think I see where you're coming from: I'm coming from the point of view of the people who can and do attend the double-header events and might feel short-changed if only one of them counted, and you're coming from the point of view of people who can't do those weekends for whatever reason but don't want to fall too far behind because of it. But it's not even as if COLIN is the only double-header event any more, where missing that weekend puts you at a serious disadvantage. There have been three this year.

But anyway, at some point there has to be an element of "well, this is when the event's happening, and if you can't make it, hard luck". You can't please everyone. If someone got into the top 8 but wasn't available to go to Milton Keynes on 30th November, the response would have to be the same.

[Callum Todd]

The deal with the threshold is to try and strike a balance between two factors. I think most of the arguments made in this thread thusfar regarding the threshold or the influence of double/triple-header events seem to be heavily in favour one of these factors over the other.

- One factor is to reward elite performance in co:events.
- Another factor is to reward repeated/consistent performance at (and therefore requiring attendance of) events

If only the best performance mattered and not how many times it was repeated, the scoring system itself would be totally different. We could just have a 'Champion of Champions' style end-of-year finals, where either the 8 best single event scores, or all players to have won an event that year (the two lists would probably be quite similar) would be invited to take part.

If only repeated attendance and decent performance at these events mattered, we could have no threshold and all events count. This season there will be 18 FOCAL-affiliated events that count towards the standings. To the best of my knowledge one player looks likely to end up playing in 16 of these, and there are already 10 players in double figures. Naturally these people would have a lot to gain from an increased threshold!

Graeme is correct to say that the initial threshold was 2/3 of the number of events in a year, rounded up (always up, never down). This happened to be 8 in the first few years, and it was decided at the time (2019 iirc) that we would stick with 8 for convenience's sake as people had gotten used to that, even though that year the 2/3 rounded up rule would have equalled 9. I believe a simulation was run at the time and 8 or 9 would have made no diffference to the 2019 Finals line-up so no controversy there.

Obviously with 18 events this year, the 2/3 ratio would mean 12 events could count in a year like this, a huge increase on the current 8!

Personally I think the threshold of 8 is about right. I certainly think 12 would be far too high.

Here's the difference that would be made to the current FOCAL table if there was no threshold:



I'm not convinced this is a better representation of form/repeated strong performance at co:events than the current table. It's worth noting that only one player to date has played more than the 12 events that the 2/3 rule would give, so very little difference would be made by using the 2/3 rule rather than no threshold at all.

So in summary, I'd be against any significant increase to the threshold. I think 8 is a very good number and would certainly be against it increasing beyond 10. If there's a debate to be had about that then I can explain why but I'm not sure there is: I hope most of us are in agreement that some threshold is needed and it shouldn't be too high.

As for the double/triple-headers, my initial reaction is that I really like Fiona's idea. I'm going to analyse the data before responding publicly though.

[Dan Byrom]

I think the current system is excellent.

Those players that play more than 8 events can still keep playing to push their score up. But equally those regular players that can't make quite so many events are still able to compete. And also those players that don't come to many events won't make top 8. I think that ticks the boxes of what I'd want to see from a league table.

[Fiona T]

Yeah I'm being persuaded by the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" approach.

Looking at 2025 calendar we have one triple confirmed, and two doubles with one of those being a tentative triple pencilled in. So if that translates to actual events, 8 games could be achieved by playing 3 'full' standard Saturday countdown events with the associated add-ons. But maybe this isn't an problem that needs solving - a player would need to perform very well at all of them to get their top 8 place, or attend other events to improve poorer results.

[Adam S Latchford]

It's quite an exciting conclusion with who makes top 8 with it being 8 wins this year. I do think in future years there's merit to moving it up to best 10 results just because the calendar is much larger. Not for this year though of course, this year has a genuinely exciting conclusion (can't wait to miss out)

[JackHurst]

I enjoy the FOCAL season system because it gives me a bit of motivation and focus to try and keep good at the game, and it's a nice outlet for my competitive side.

However, the amount of spare weekends you have to sacrifice for all this is already untenable at 8 events. I like all of you, but it's pretty bonkers that I see you all more often on an annual basis than I see my own family members.

The plus side of there being so many events everywhere should be:
- Everybody has more events in their local vicinity, so it makes things more accessible
- Larger supply for the super keen players who want to play as much as possible

The larger number of events shouldn't be a justification to increase the threshold for FOCAL finals.


This season, you will need over 6K points to get in the top 8. There are 11 Calendar months of the year with a Co-event. So if Apterous rex turned up to a single event 6 months out of those 11, and won everything they could, this would still not be enough for them to qualify to be in contention for the end of year finals! To phrase it differently - winning a co-event more months than not is no longer enough to qualify for the finals.

My opinion is that the current system is too kind to the "xp grinders", and under-rewards being consistently excellent. This season will be my third time attending finals, and looking at how it's shaping up in the league table, it's going to be the third time where the open is looking significantly harder to win than the finals. Bit of anticlimax if you ask me... Has it always been this way?

[Gavin Chipper]

My opinion is that the current system is too kind to the "xp grinders", and under-rewards being consistently excellent. This season will be my third time attending finals, and looking at how it's shaping up in the league table, it's going to be the third time where the open is looking significantly harder to win than the finals. Bit of anticlimax if you ask me... Has it always been this way?

It's definitely happened a few times. But it's a difficult balance. The best players might just turn up to a couple of events including the finals. What do you do about that?

[Callum Todd]

My opinion is that the current system is too kind to the "xp grinders", and under-rewards being consistently excellent. This season will be my third time attending finals, and looking at how it's shaping up in the league table, it's going to be the third time where the open is looking significantly harder to win than the finals. Bit of anticlimax if you ask me... Has it always been this way?

Iirc the last three year-end events saw the strongest performance come from the Open winner. Jen was clearly the best performer on the day at Wolverhampton 2019, I think Rob nearly maxed the whole co-event in MK in 2022, and I'm sure Ahmed did similarly last year. No offense to you as you were excellent in the last two Finals! Fuck that guy who won the Finals in 2019 though.

I'm inclined to agree that the current threshold maybe slightly under-rewards players who consistently perform excellently at a small number of events (Conor, Rob, Ahmed, Jack W, Zohaib all being good examples from recent seasons who have turned up to 3-5 events in a year, won most of them, and not qualified for top 8).

I'm less sure how you address that though. You'd have to decrease the threshold by a few for it to make a significant difference though and I think that would be a bad idea.

An alternative would be to keep the threshold at 8 but make the points distribution per event non-linear, such that the increments per position gets greater the higher up the event standings you are. Currently two mid-table event finishes score as many or more points than one event win.

You make a good point also about calendar months. I think that's the main argument for why the threshold shouldn't be tied to number of events, as with so double/triple-header events and some quick turnarounds between events (especially with overseas events) we are at risk of effectively locking Top 8 qualification more behind ability to travel (and thereby, indirectly, wealth) than ability at Countdown.

If you apply the 2/3 and round up rule to calendar months rather than number of events? You get 8! 10 is far too high imo, even 9 is probably too much but might not make a huge difference to top 8.

[Gavin Chipper]

There is of course the question of whether we really need this top 8 FOCAL finals thing. Winning the FOCAL championship isn't as prestigious as winning COLIN anyway.

[Fiona T]

There is of course the question of whether we really need this top 8 FOCAL finals thing. Winning the FOCAL championship isn't as prestigious as winning COLIN anyway.

Well people do care about it, as can be seen by Adam's post above and various group conversations I've seen. I think it's fair to say quite a few people are planning on attending Braintree because of focal points!

[Dan Byrom]

I like the non-linear points idea a lot.

[Gavin Chipper]

There is of course the question of whether we really need this top 8 FOCAL finals thing. Winning the FOCAL championship isn't as prestigious as winning COLIN anyway.

Well people do care about it, as can be seen by Adam's post above and various group conversations I've seen. I think it's fair to say quite a few people are planning on attending Braintree because of focal points!

Another option would be just to have a points championship and no top 8 thing at the end. I find the finals thing a bit disjointed with two separate tournaments and with often the best performing player not in the "main" one.

It also comes across as a bit "last goal wins" regardless of the score.

[Marc Meakin]

Maybe you could have Majors throughout the year that warrant either higher FOCAL points or would be exclusively FOCAL points.
That way the elite players may be more likely to enter.

But it's probably bullshit from someone who hasn't even played in one , yet .

[Gavin Chipper]

I think it makes perfect sense to leave the number of counting events constant even if the total number of events goes up. It's a question of how many events someone can reasonably be expected to travel to and attend each year. If that's 8 now, it doesn't suddenly become 30 if dozens of people decide to run events. But then it's a question of whether 8 is the right number. It could be reduced to, say, 6, and then if some of the players weren't scoring enough, then I think it's reasonable to say that they're just not really participating in the championship. Winning a championship isn't just about being the best; you have to turn up. So it's about striking the balance. But I don't think reducing scoring events to 6 would be insanely low.

I like the non-linear points idea a lot.

A non-linear system was previously discussed - originally for the duel but it's the same thing really - (e.g. here, here and here) that works on a reciprocal relationship to how well you've done. Your score would be (players + 1) / (your position), or something proportional to it. It would mean that the winner gets double the points of 2nd, three times the points of 3rd and so on, but still adjusted accordingly for the number of people present.

So if there are 50 people, it would be:

1. 51
2. 25.5 (51/2)
3. 17 (51/3)
...
50. 1.02 (51/50)

You could multiply by a constant and get rid of decimal places or whatever.

Whether this is too extreme is open to discussion, but I consider it to be fairly mathematically unarbitrary and neat.

[Thomas Cappleman]

I ran the Focal scoresheet generator for the standings as they currently are for counting each number of results from 10 down to 5 (covering all the top 12 as potentially relevant):

10:
Jack Hurst
Thomas Carey
George Armstrong
Adam Latchford
Jonathan de Souza
Dylan Taylor
Dan Byrom
Tom Cappleman

9:
Jack Hurst
Thomas Carey
George Armstrong
Jonathan de Souza
Adam Latchford
Dylan Taylor
Dan Byrom
Tom Cappleman

8:
Jack Hurst
Thomas Carey
Dylan Taylor
Jonathan de Souza
George Armstrong
Tom Cappleman
Adam Latchford
Dan Byrom

7:
Jack Hurst
Dylan Taylor
Thomas Carey
Tom Cappleman
Jonathan de Souza
George Armstrong
Adam Latchford
Dan Byrom

6:
Jack Hurst
Callum Todd
Dylan Taylor
Tom Cappleman
Thomas Carey
Jonathan de Souza
Tom Stevenson
George Armstrong

5:
Jack Hurst
Rob Foster
Callum Todd
Dylan Taylor
Tom Cappleman
Thomas Carey
Zohaib Rehan
Jonathan de Souza

Points of note:
- Jack is always first (this only changes if you go down to just 1 event)
- The contents of the top 8 are the same for all of 7-10 events
- 6 and 5 introduce Callum, then Rob and Zohaib, having played exactly that number of events
- Tom Stevenson appears at 6 (having played 7), but disappears again at 5

[JackHurst]

Points of note:
- Jack is always first (this only changes if you go down to just 1 event)
- The contents of the top 8 are the same for all of 7-10 events
- 6 and 5 introduce Callum, then Rob and Zohaib, having played exactly that number of events
- Tom Stevenson appears at 6 (having played 7), but disappears again at 5

As the only players whose position in the table is unaffected by the threshold values, I believe this gives me total authority over setting the new threshold. 5 it is. Effective this season. Bring on Rob, Callum and Zohaib c u in mk xxx

[Matt Rutherford]

Given that I'm responsible for most of the double-headers and you can see the stats above, you can see the bias should you wish...

The scoring system is not broken (in my view-from various conversations no-one else has any glaring issues as well). To try and 'fix' it not something we need to do. You may as well spend the time entering my hairline into a beauty contest.

Should I run any other doubles, I would want them to both count, in full, as they do now, and would push for that if possible.

The only possible change is linking the number of events that count to the number in the calendar, and changing accordingly. That seems like it would be small at best. Otherwise, it seems to work well

(N.B-given the data, if people suddenly decided all events counted, I would not be complaining )

[David Harrison]

As someone who has attended a few events over the years but not attended/played well enough to get anywhere near the top 8 I think there needs to be a balance between awarding attendance and good performances. I personally think that a formula based system could be something that works. A formula I suggest to work out each player’s FOCAL score is (1000+a+r).

A=attendance
For each event the player attends they gain 150 attendance points, for each event that they are absent they loose 100 attendance points (e.g if there are 12 events in a year and attend 6 they will gain 300 attendance points)
The formula for working out the ‘a value’ is thus ((number of events attended*150)-(number of events missed*100))

R=result
I’ve never agreed with awarding more points for an event win with more participants, a win is a win. Therefore I propose the following format (101-position) - no event has ever had more than 100 participants, in the unlikely event this changes then everyone from 100th position and below will be awarded 1 point.

No need for a ‘quota’ as the ‘a value’ factors this in.

Thoughts?