How Do TD's Determine Pools and Seeding?

[InSider]

There are a ton of ways that tournaments are run. Each as individual as the TD running it. One question I hear a lot is about how pools are determined and how seeding is determined.

Some TD's will do a blind draw for pool play. That can be good and it can be bad. You could end up with a pool stacked with the best teams in the tournament and a pool with all the worst teams in the tournament. This would carry over into seeding, where teams end up with seeds that they don't deserve one way or the other. That is assuming seeding is done by pool record and by pool. If they seed 1-10 or whatever, then it gets really tricky.

Some TD's are notorious for asking teams in their organization what teams they want or don't want to play in pool play, and that's how the pools are set up. And that also affects seeding, possibly setting "home teams" up for an easier ride through brackets. There was an organization that did this a few years ago in a major tournament and lost the ability to host that tournament again.

I know yet another TD who would take the teams and separate them by strength. The strong teams went in a hat, the weak teams went into another hat, and the TD pulled 2 from each hat to make a pool.

As far as seeding, the overwhelmingly accepted method is by pool play record, head to head, runs allowed, runs scored, then coin flip. However some TD's choose to do a blind draw for seeding into brackets as well.

These are just some of the ways these things are done. Most alphabet sanctions have rules on how these things have to be done in qualifying tournaments. Your best bet is to ask the TD how these things are being done before the tournament.

Anybody have any experiences with pool draws or seedings that they would like to share?

 

[wpaguy]

I never really started to think about pools until this year. I guess I thought it was always blind ...But started to see a pattern this year ...One thing that I hate seeing , and should try to be avoided is when 2 teams from same area travel out of state and get placed in the same pool . this could be avoided in most cases ...nothing like driving 200 miles and getting a hotel room and playing the same team for like the 4th time ...this should not happen

 

[coachjwb]

I liked it best and always thought the best/fairest way was to have pools determined by a blind draw (allowing for a few exceptions like not having 2 teams from the same organization in the same pool), and for bracket seeding done either by the method you laid out (i.e., pool play record, head to head, runs allowed, runs scored, then coin flip) or where there were 4 teams in the pool and winners played winners and losers played losers. As long as all of the pool games are in the same time frame, a team will know in these cases pretty quickly when their first bracket game will be. The other option is to have the first bracket game already assigned which makes the pool games meaningless in terms or determining the overall winner.

By far the worst method in my mind is when bracket seeding is determined by the pool stats of all of the teams in the tournament. That usually means no one knows for sure their first bracket game until all of the teams are done playing and puts a ton of burden on the TD to calculate and communicate all of this. Any TD who does this is just asking for trouble and unhappy teams, and frankly deserves it when it happens.

I can see the advantages of grouping teams by level, but think this should be communicated up front so teams know this going into the tournament. But then of course some teams won't like either which group they're put in or the fact that a borderline team put into the higher pool may take a beating in pool play. Some will be OK with it because they understand they are getting a good challenge.

 

[Davemy]

Not to make a joke of this thread but if I tell you I will have to kill You... or whatever that saying is. LOL For me it can be a complicated process. Even using Tourney Machine it is not always a easy process. Helping Teams with Travel requests, Trying to limit local Teams playing each other, Making sure out of town teams from the same area don't play each other. Putting Teams randomly into pools then merging them before the Tournament starts. Moving a Team at the last minute from one slot to another slot to try and shorten their day and on and on. I can tell you that I absolutely do not give better Teams a free ride in pool. I also hate seeing Teams go 0-4 in pool play which does happen.

 

[MD 20/20]

I would never play a tournament that SEEDED by blind draw. That might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I've spoken with a few TD's and it's like anything else....Some are better than others. Some just Blind draw and it is what it is. Some massage it a little to avoid the "same area" or my absolute least favorite, "Same Org." in pool play. I had what I thought was the best one, whom was a friend ask me if there were any teams I would really like to play. My response was, "There always seems to be a pool in your tournament that is an absolute meat grinder. If you think I belong and am good enough, I want in that pool. The last and least favorite was the one who told me at lunch one day, "look at what I did to "so-and-so". I really screwed him." That is the reason I didn't play their tournaments. Anyway, I run our little local Rec boys and girls all star tournaments and that is really tough. They are not accustomed to tournament ball and the headaches of scheduling, so they think nothing of saying, last minute...."I can't play at that time" It's the worst 3 weeks of my summer..LOL