There are a few ways to go about point systems for sit & gos. You can use negative points or not, they can be balanced or unbalanced and you can design them to reward not only winners but frequent players as well.
From “pro” point of view it should be only about winning (money), so the simplest way would be: (money won minus entry fee) / entry fee. So, for $30 entry fee ($15 would be the same and $50 would be very similar) we would have for first place 70/30 = 2.33 points, for second place 20/30 = .67 points, and for third to fifth –30/30 = -1.
To get rid of decimal places it would be: first place 7 pts, second place 2 pts, third through fifth place minus 3 pts each.
This would be a balanced system. The additional benefit of it would be that (if you disregard the vig) it shows who is better than the average. Anybody who has a positive total point score is better than average, and if you keep the numbers of participation you could easily determine average value. For example, if you score is plus 6 and you played eight tourneys you expected value is 6/8 times the entry fee, so in this case ($30 entry fee) every tournament would be worth on average $22.50.
You can design another system where you goal is to find out how much better you are than the average player is. You need to keep number of trials. First place 3.33 points, second place 1.67 point and third to fifth 0. Your score is points divided by plays.
Once again, to get rid of decimals, let’s make it first place 10 pts, second place 5 pts and each tiral has 3 pts. So, if you played 10 tourneys and won three and finished second once you would have (3x10 + 1x5) / 10x3 = 35/30 = 1 and 1/6
This would mean that you are 1/6 (16.7%) better than the average player. This would also mean that you could expect to earn 16.7% of your entry fee minus vig every time you play.
Over long period of trials this would work perfectly. However, over short period of time you can try to “improve” the point system by correcting temporary fluxes by rewarding third place finisher. I don’t think that sixth place is any worse than fourth as often times good and skilled player will go for the goal (money and pride) and if they fail they wound up dropping to fifth or sixth rather then playing “safer” but not optimally and placing forth (or even third). So if you want you can add a point for third place in an unbalance point system.
You can also add a point for the first place as “champion” reward.
From casino point of view they would like to reward frequent players so a point for any no prize worth place should get a point. This way somebody who plays fifty times gets 50 points and some champions would need to play at least ten times and win it three times and finish second three times to match this score.
So this populous system would go like this:
First place 10 points, second place 5 points, third place 2 points, fourth through fifth 1 point.
(Other alternative point system would be: 18, 8, 3, and 1- tourney total 30 points)
You can think about it some more, and if you like it submit this message to Global Casino.
Regards,
S. Yama
