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Handicapping

If you are starting a new league or your league player base consists of players with a wide variety of skill levels, then you should consider running a handicapped league.

Handicapping provides an even playing field for everyone to compete. You will also find that during the formative period of the league, more new players will join they if they know that a handicapping system is employed and they understand how it works.

The National Dart Association (NDA) was formed to help promote the sport and resolve these types of issues. The measure of player performance chosen by the NDA was Points per Dart (PPD) for X01 games and Marks per Round (MPR) for Cricket games.

Point per Dart

Point per Dart is the basic calculation of player performance. It is simply the total points scored in X01 games divided by the total number of darts thrown (for all games played by the player). The end result is an average that reflects the amount of points that the player can achieve with a single dart. While this value in theory could extend anywhere from zero on up, in practice the effective range of the handicap tables is 10 through 40 PPD.

For example, if a player has a handicap of 7.5 PPD and they go to play on the Radikal machine their handicap is hard limited to a 10 PPD. Conversely, if a player is a 47.5 PPD they will be limited to a maximum of 40 PPD.

The important thing to remember is that the PPD is not the handicap system, it is a universal standard for measuring dart player performance.

How Handicapping is Achieved

Now that we have a value that determines player performance we can now look at how the handicapping is implemented on the Radikal system.

Handicapping is achieved on the dart machine by examining all the players that are playing in the particular game and assigning the highest starting score to the player with the highest PPD.

For example in a team 501 game we might have:

Player 1 : 28.5 PPD

Player 2 : 19.6 PPD

Player 3 : 17.9 PPD

Player 4 : 7.5   PPD

The starting scores in a 501 game for these players would be : 501, 345, 315, 201 respectively.

Note that if the fourth player's PPD was 10.0 that the above starting scores would not change. This player's PPD is below the minimum cut off point.

Percentage handicapping adjustment

You may be looking at the above numbers and feel that the spread is too wide. In fact, the best player will often complain about the low score that the worst player is starting at. They usually feel that they don't have a chance against them. What they fail to understand is that the lowest player is at that score for a reason! The lowest player stinks! The whole purpose of a handicapping system is reward players who SHOOT ABOVE THEIR AVERAGE.

Unfortunately better players feel that they must win all the time.

If you have a lot of complainers in this regard there is a way to bias the handicapping towards the better players. In the AdDiana program you may specify the amount of spread by adjusting Percentage Handicapping value for League Play. The important thing to remember is that this does not affect the players PPD! The default spread is 100%. You can also specify 90%, 80% and 70%. As you adjust this value down the players starting scores will get closer together.

So, with 100% handicapping the starting scores would be : 501, 345, 315, 201.

For the above example a 80% handicap adjustment would result in starting scores: 501, 376, 350, 261

For the above example a 70% handicap adjustment would result in starting scores: 501, 392, 371, 291

When would you want to adjust the percentage handicapping? You might want to do it under the following situations:

Keep in mind that the default 100% handicapping has been found to be most successful, especially in newly formed leagues.

Marks Per Round

A different measure of performance has been devised for Cricket because the differences in how the game is played. In Cricket we are interested in Marks Per Round (MPR). This is calculated by taking the total number of marks hit and dividing by the total rounds played by the player (across all games played by the player). Most of the principles mentioned above apply to Cricket handicapping as well. Handicapping is achieved on the machine by "giving" free marks to the weaker team/players.

Converting between PPD/MPR

A simple formula can be used to convert MPR to PPD and vise versa. You simply multiply MPR times 8.25 (or PPD divided by 8.25). It is not entirely accurate due to the differences between the games but it is sufficient if you only have an MPR stat on a player and you want to start up an X01 league and vise versa.

Substitutes and Handicapping

Very often, teams may not have enough players on the night of a match.

Under these circumstances they may wish to bring in a substitute to fill in for the missing player. This works out well for the league coordinator because with the Tracker/DX system it is an almost automatic method to recruit new players into the league.

We have only one problem. If this new player has never played in the handicapped league what handicap shall we assign to this player?

The Radikal System will assign a default "high" average for the player (in other words, the Radikal System assumes the player is very good until otherwise determined). For each game that the substitute player plays, the Radikal System records the player statistics and dynamically calculates a new average for each new game played. We call this a "floating average". Since the Radikal  System interrogated the substitute upon league setup (name and gender) this information is recorded by the Radikal System and sent back to the AdDiana Program. Once this data is imported to AdDiana you can assign the player to the League and should that player play again, they will be in the system with an established average and they will not float in the next match that they play in.

Typically the "default average" assigned to substitutes at the beginning of the match is 25.0 PPD/2.5 MPR for males and 15.0 PPD/1.5 MPR for females.

You can override these default settings in the AdDiana program.

If the Radikal System is running a match that consists of a mixture of X01 and Cricket games it will convert PPD/MPR for the floating substitute using the formula mentioned above.

League Starting Averages

There are two options for how to handle starting averages at the beginning of a League Season.

The choice on this is really up to the operator and the league team captains. If in doubt, have a captain's meeting and let the players themselves decide.

Game Choices/League Format

As a league operator another choice that must be made is the'types of games that are played in a match. If you are running a handicapped league you are for the most part constrained to X01 and Cricket games. If you are not running handicapping then any game is usable in the league mode.

In handicapped leagues there is one exception to the above rule. You can have a TIE-BREAKING match in a league format that has an odd number of games. In this last game of the match, all players will participate and no statistics will be recorded for any of the players (only the team win will be recorded). If the game is X01 or Cricket, it will be handicapped by combining the handicaps for the players who play on the same score.