Pool is now Handicapped

I get surprised when I read or hear people complaining about pool tournaments being handicapped. Whether that's State league tournaments, National tournaments, or Tours.

The one thing I keep hearing from players who excelled about 10-15 years ago is that most are adamant against handicapped tournaments. These top players (not professionals, but high-level players) explain they got good simply by playing better players all the time, and they put in the time and got beat for many years without a handicap system.

They see that they eventually excelled and became very good. So, in their eyes, they see it as why should there all of a sudden be a handicap system?  They had to play everyone even when they were younger and got better just by playing better players and getting beat - that's how they got so good.

Almost every sport has a handicap system. Chess, bowling, golf... I could go on and on with how many sports have a handicap system. And light bulb moment here:  they are all actually very successful and mainstream!

So, it confuses me when people complain about pool having a handicap system, when in reality every other sport has a handicap system. The only difference about pool is:  we are starting later in the history of the sport instead of having it all along or from near the very beginning like the other sports.

However, pool players from Arizona and Oklahoma hardly complain about any handicap system because they have had a tradition of a state handicap system for quite a while. But run into Texas players and many are still apprehensive, concerned, and vocal about it.

And as I wrote back in 2017, using the Fargo ratings helped me immensely when I ran the Omega Tour (read that blog post here). Just in one tournament, I had a new player from CA and from another country play who were already "established" in the Fargo ratings. This made it easy to rank them on the Tour instead of guessing what they should be ranked.

In the personal viewpoint of Melinda, my thinking is complaining about handicapped tournaments isn't going to stop pool tournaments from becoming handicapped.  That ship has sailed. So, why not simply stop the complaining and just play pool?

Hahaha.

Simple, right?

(Note: and see below for the updated worldwide golf handicap system, which still includes weekenders to pros [click image to enlarge])

click image to enlarge