In the past, whenever we have held a bounty tournament, it seems that the majority of the knockouts go to the top finishers in the tournaments. Not all the time but probably most of the time. We have thought about adding some kind of points for knockouts but in the end, decided against it. It seems like if most of the knockouts go to the top finishers, then adding points to knockouts will just widen the gap between the top and bottom finishers in the tournaments. The top players will run away with the lead earlier in the season and the bottom dwellers will have less of a chance to catch up if they keep playing how they play. I would rather keep the scores a little closer throughout the season. You don't want the bottom of the league to totally lose interest halfway through the season.
FWIW, leagues are new to me. I've been hosting for 6 months, and want to add league scoring to our group. So I appreciate all perspectives.
You make fair and excellent points. But I think it is highly depending on the players.
For me right now, a lot of my players are really nitty. Last tournament (6-players deep because of Christmas), the short-stack was T8K in a T10K tourney at the first break. League points is a way to try to incentivize them to play a little looser. And because of that, I want to give something for knockouts.
Also, I prefer first place to get the most points and have the score mean something. If you can counter balance the loss of points from rebuys with extra points from knockouts then it kind of makes winning a tournament with no rebuys not mean as much.
Agreed. It's tricky. For me, I plan on doing a final TOC free roll with the top 6 (maybe 8) players. So I think the top 3 people will be the most skilled players, and the bottom 3 will be the mediocre players. But knockouts might help break that 6 player bubble for the bottom 3.
If you were going to add points for rebuys then I would make them a fraction of a point like .1 or .2 points per knockout. Anything higher and it might possibly be more important to get knockouts than wins.
I agree with this. This is my aim.
I think once most tourneys become heads-up, it's essentially a coin toss who wins. And a few times in our game, the second place winner has done the most leg-work knocking others out, getting maybe four knockouts to the 1st place's one or two. So I want to find a way to reward that. Not
massively reward it, but to give some edge that looks small per tourney, but can add up over the course of a season. That way if two players are on the bubble of a final TOC table, knockouts might be the factor that pushes them over.
As it currently works in the formula I tweaked above, each knockout in a 16-player tourney seems to increase points by about 3%, so it hardly offsets the 10-30% penalty of those who rebuy or add-on. But it can kind of make up for it.