Some cool ideas in discussion have come up within this thread which is great. But, I just want to clarify my original idea.
I was generally responding to the trend that there has been multiple tournaments organized with serious prize money which (somewhat arbitrarily) has excluded the very top players in our game. I'm not really sure how that idea snowballed into such a popular format, but it leaves some of us out that are extremely active in the game. Interestingly, I think someone touched on some of the true motivation already within this thread when they said:
One thing about a no-handicap open is that it would basically have to be no-prize, purely for fun, otherwise you might as well just hand the money to Dean and Jeff.
Ok, whether or not this is really true in the context of a short tournament is debatable, but if this is how a lot of players feel, then I can see why perhaps participation might be lower if the top players could enter. Obviously, for a major event like the Kong Off(s), there should be no handicap since that's pretty much our championship event for our game. But, for these "side" tournaments that pop up where additional prize money is offered, in order to make it more "fair" and interesting, I think handicapping is a nice compromise.
Keep in mind I'm using the word "compromise" because the whole idea is basically to try to convince tournament organizers to allow the top players to enter these tournaments where we have previously been excluded for whatever reasons.
But anyway, let me clarify my original handicapping idea here:
I was using a baseline score of 900,000 points because in the specific case of Donkey Kong, that's approximately the score that can be reached by hitting the killscreen without going out of your way to do any additional point pressing beyond just using the top hammer on the barrel screens, which most players do anyway for safety reasons and because it requires almost no additional effort beyond skipping it.
*** Players with a top score BELOW 900,000 points should NOT be handicapped! ***
There are several reasons for this. Players with scores under 900,000 points simply have not played the game anywhere near as much as players with scores over 900,000 points in general. So, just by virtue of playing the game just a little bit more their scores will improve dramatically. The main reason for that is because it's just a matter of progressing a bit further into the game in order to improve their scores which could happen at any moment, including during a tournament.
However, achieving scores beyond 900,000 requires more and more strategy, knowledge and skill in point pressing the game. The effort required for every additional 100 points earned beyond 900,000 goes up exponentially, not linearly. Because of this, I feel like the large pool of players who are kill screen players or near kill screen players feel like perhaps they just would not be able to keep up with the top players in a tournament so the solution has been to just exclude the top players. So, my solution instead is to handicap the top players to create "a more even playing field" between players who can point press the game and players who are not there yet. But in no way does it make sense to me to just hand a 200,000 point player the tournament by shipping him a huge amount of points so that if he has any sort of break out personal best game he wins the whole tournament -- I mean, we're still competing here right? Let's reward high scores and not go TOO crazy with handicapping.
So, if 10 players enter the tournament, it would go like this:
Player A: PR of 250,000 (handicap 0)
Player B: PR of 500,000 (handicap 0)
Player C: PR of 750,000 (handicap 0)
Player D: PR of 850,000 (handicap 0)
Player E: PR of 900,000 (handicap 0)
Player F: PR of 950,000 (handicap -40,000)
Player G: PR of 1,000,000 (handicap -80,000)
Player H: PR of 1,050,000 (handicap -120,000)
Player I: PR of 1,100,000 (handicap -160,000)
Player J: PR of 1,150,000 (handicap -200,000)
So, I hope that helps clear up what I was suggesting and the ideas behind my suggestion. Of course, anyone who is willing to put up prize money and go through the trouble of organizing great events for our community can do it however they wish. But, I just wanted to point out that some of us have been left out and I hope that there might be some future tournaments besides just "Wild Card" events. Don't get me wrong -- I think the Wild Card events have been great, and it's especially interesting that it seems to have morphed into a way for many players to try to qualify into the Wild Card division at Kong Off events, which I think is great. But hopefully we'll see some other events here soon where we can all compete.
