How do you manage yours?

[rachyuk]

Something very dear to everyone who attends their club night, is the right number of games at the right level.

No matter how successful you are at picking evenly matched games, there is always room for a little bit of 'politics'. I was wondering, how do other clubs run their club nights?

I play at one club that doesn't have a club night, instead a practice whenever the team changes or a practice is needed and the other club, we use a peg board system. Where you each have a peg and as you play your games, the pegs are moved around from 'On court' to 'Waiting'. If you win you move up the board quicker.

The 'peg board' is a very old and well used system, if not a little random at times and open to 'manipulation' ;0)

Peg boards are usually built by someone's dad on the back of an old bit of plywood - I have never seen one for sale in a sports outlet!

What are people's thoughts on 'managing games' at club night? and what kind of systems currently exist?

[pkho]

I have seen several. At my current club, you just sign up for the next available spot (doubles) and play with the other three in that slot. Yeah you do end up playing with players below/above your level but usually, the partnering tends to "even" out. The stronger player with the weaker player, etc. This allows the weaker player to gain/improve their game by playing with more advanced players.

Another venue is free for all. That is, sometimes you get a group of four who always play together. This is wrong as you ended up playing the same player and getting to know their quirks and habits and thus was able to predict the kind of shots they would make under the same conditions.
Another place that I'd played at has the resident coach who assess your level and group you with other players at similar level.

Another one has a ladder system where you play with the same group of four and the two who came first (out of 3 games) move up two spots whereas the other two move down two spots. This is in the hope that everytime you play, you end up with players of similar level. I don't get how you can improve if you don't play with better players but then again, who knows?

[Justcoll]

We have a roster system at our club, with columns for names and games. For each game, the four participants are allocated a number and they play together, so that we can keep track of who has played with whom. We have found it works really well, giving everyone strong as well as weak games. Since we start playing at around 7.00pm, we have a rule that after 9.00pm members of the same team or strength who then wish to practise together for league purposes, may then be given games together for their benefit.

[Grover]

What is the latest thinking on managing the games played at a club night? Has anyone come up with a perfect system?

[danbelcher]

People generally pick games from the peg board to get even games which is ok but sometimes it is good to pair the weaker side against the stronger side. This way it gives the weaker side the opportunity to raise their game and the pleasure of possibly beating the better side.

Our club runs regular handicapped tournaments which allows players of different grades ( we run graded session nights) to play each other.

[Tomsk]

We have a club of ~40 members, of which there are usually ~30 on a club night. We use a peg board to keep track of members during the night.
The first player picks themself and 3 more, freely from the next seven. They are then moved from 'waiting' to 'playing' and everyone in 'waiting' moves up. Players coming off remove themselves from 'playing' and add to the bottom of 'waiting', winners first.
This gives everyone a chance to play with others and prevents 'elitist' behaviour eg teams only playing amongst themselves and ignoring non-team or less skilled players.

[coachman]

Our club has 35 members, with an average of about 28 attending once a week on wednesdays.We use a pegboard system with two players choosing from the next four to come out the board.The two who are not chosen then take the place in the 'to choose' slot and hence you do not get people being left without a game for long periods of time.
It is allowed to hold yourself back from the board if you wish to change the fours as sometimes they do repeat.
We also run a handicap evening once a month with players being allocated their handicaps by the selectors at the beginning of the season.
The results of the games are logged and players best 15 games during the season go towards choosing the player of the season for which we have a trophy.The better attendees have a better chance as they can lose their bad results.Only the first four games each evening count unless a player is struggling to reach 15 games in total.The necessity to be able to drop games is because we have matches each week so some players may be unable to take part on all of the handicap evenings.It does encourage players to think more about the partnerships and selection of the games as they try to balance out the handicaps.We do not allow games to start with a negative score but make the difference positive i.e 5 points difference will start at 5 - 0 as we feel this gives the weaker pairing a better chance.A good pair will overcome a handicap given more time to do so.

[Grover]

Andy, does the handicapping work? What do the members think when they have a reall yshort game due to someone having a head start and then they are at the back of the peg board very quickly? Thanks

[coachman]

The handicapping does work as a general rule and it is amazing how many games finish in double figures.The competitiveness of the night is noticeably more than general club nights with the better players playing more seriously with the lesser players than they do normally.Often the single figure games are those you would least expect with prospective good games not 'happening'.We do review the handicaps each season to take account of player improvement during the previous season and we review new players handicap after the first month.

[michael123]

Like the earlier clubs mentioned we have 30 odd members attending each week.

With five courts the systems mentioned earlier would struggle to work in our case.

I unfortunately do not now play and have decided to work on the peg board each evening selecting the games. With mixed standards I can select fairly balanced games.

Whilst my club is fortunate that I am prepared to work like this, a rota could be set up for a clubmember to select games as I do.

Mike Worship
Fitzwimarc BC