OK, today the Fanatic wants to tell you about a points race conjured up by me and Terry Blanco (aka The Makita "because he drills ya") used to turn Cucamonga into that hotbed of foosball it now is.

WHAT YOU NEED

-Computer...much easier than by hand
-Spreadsheet...tabulate weekly results
-Printer...to print weekly results

WHAT IS A POINTS RACE GOOD FOR

It's good for a new or weak location where you want to attract new players and stimulate old player to play more and increase your tournament turnout and quarter counts.

HOW LONG SHOULD A POINTS RACE RUN

12 weeks is optimal. You can then run 4 a year. Most people get sick of running them after one to two 12 week periods. By then your counts will be high and you can go back to standard dyp's after that. If you can last one year you will have a very strong location. Also, if you make the race too long than someone can get way ahead and others will be frustrated since it will be impossible to catch up. Newcomers will be way to far behind.

HERE ARE THE INSTRUCTIONS

Take the number of teams and add 3. Example...if you have 8 teams, then 8+3=11, if you have 11 teams, then 11+3 equals 14, 20 teams...20+3=23.
Multiply the total by 1,000,000. Why? Don't ask why, just do it...are you mental? The secret is you multiply by 1,000,000 because it's American. Do you want to get 13 points a week or 13 million? Have you played pinball lately? Well the current pinball scores are in the billions!. When you show little Freddy hacker that he got 15 million point last week a brick will fly out of his butt. He will then be bragging to everyone in the joint! So will the above example, we would have 11,000,000...14,000,000....23,000,000
Now we have to take the above total and break it down so everyone gets points. So example 1...we have 8 teams...we add 3 so we have 8+3=11, multiply by a million, and now we know first place gets 11,000,000 every place under that gets 2 million less.

8 TEAMS example

1st 11,000,000
2nd 9,000,000
3rd 7,000,000
4th 5,000,000
5th 3,000,000
5th 3,000,000
7th 1,000,000
7th 1,000,000

9 TEAMS (check 8th place)

1st 12,000,000
2nd 10,000,000
3rd 8,000,000
4th 6,000,000
5th 4,000,000
5th 4,000,000
7th 2,000,000
7th 2,000,000
8th 1,000,000 <--- last place always gets a million..not 0

Last place is always 1,000,000 If you have and odd number teams, you end up going 2,000,000 - 2,000,0000 equals 0 BUT the Fanatic says always give last place 1,000,000

To quickly reiterate, first pace gets the (number of teams + 3) *1,000,000) and every place after that gets two million...last place always gets 1,000,000. Then when you keep track each week, give both players that point total. For example... let's say Roxanne and Mildred won 11,000,000 points...give them both 11M in the points race.

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT THIS POINTS RACE

- You are rewarded points based on the turn-out...3rd place in a 22 team DYP is much more important than 1st place in a 6 team DYP...and this system reflects this. - You get point each week for showing up...even last place gets 1,000,000 and if you finish last 12 weeks in a row you still get 12,000,000!

PLAYER'S REALLY LOVE SEEING HOW MANY MILLIONS THEY HAVE

-Each week players love to see where they stand and if you have a spreadsheet like Excel...you can sort the points each week so everyone knows there ranking. Little groups of competition form. People just 1-3 million apart love to razz each other and they show up each week so they won't fall behind.

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS WITH THIS POINTS RACE

Any points race takes work. You must be consistant and do it every week! I've always hated in the past when someone started a race and they do it great one week and then it gets sloppier and sloppier and then by the 3rd week the print-outs stop and everyone gets bummed. Another problem is the race gets big. Oh sure...it's fun the first week when you only have 16 names to keep track of...by the end of 12 weeks you may have 60-100 diiffferent players that will be on your list. It may take 30-60 minutes a week to update this list.

WHAT IS CRITICAL TO THE SUCCESS

Make sure you bring 20-40 copies of the race each week. If you are really crazy then mail it out each week. Update th list every week, don't miss a week. Don't be late with the list. At the end, give away some groovy prizes. That's all for now, email me if you need any areas explained differently. Make it fun and pomp those millions.

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