I have no idea what Nick meant when he added "Funkypool Offical Leagues" to his to-do list, but I've been thinking about it quite a lot for the past few days. I'm sharing my thoughts so people can rip into them and put my mind at rest =)

My 'vision' is of 3 giant leagues, 1 for each format of pool. Each league has divisions of 10, up to as many are needed for the number of players. In a season, everyone plays each other once (total of 9 matches), with 1 match a week. Then the top/bottom 2 players get promoted/relegated at the end of the season. With a holiday week between seasons, that's 5 seasons a year plus a couple of weeks for Christmas or something. I think 1 game per week would be ok for most people.

I haven't really thought about how long each match should be, maybe a race to 4 (best of 7)? I don't think people would want anything too long, but nothing as
short as a speedy.

Edited at 00:16 Fri 16/05/08 (BST)

Now, time for something I've been trying to figure out. How do you get 2 people to play a match at a matually agreeable time but have it controlled by the server (and not left to the players to arrange it by pm - highly unreliable).

What I came up with was this: The server hands out matches on a Monday. Matches are played Tue-Sun, with specified possible start times per day. These should be spread out to cope with time zones (e.g. 6:30, 14:30, 22:30 GMT). This gives players several choices to play a match. Each player fills out a form where they give each of the time slots a "Preferred/Available/Not At All" status on whether they can play or not. The server then picks the best match (Pref+Pref, Pref+Avail or Avail+Avail).

I think the most difficult bit of my entire suggestion is getting people to be online at the same time to play their matches.

People wanting to join the league can join a waiting list. At the start of a new season, they can get added to the bottom division to start working their way up (if creating more divisions to satisfy demand, higher divisions should be allocated on a first come first serve basis). Obviously people can take their name off the waiting list if they change their mind.

With deleted/banned users, their results get scrapped, they get taken out at the end of the season and everyone else moves up (into higher divisions if necessary).

Obviously I've had too much free time on my hands recently. I've tried to think about implementation as much as posible - I sometimes had to restrain my imagination to keep it easier to create. Please add your thoughts on my 'vision', I'm sure it can be improved!

When i get time later ill add my thoughts on the official leagues- probably fill the entire thread though- me and G have discussed this no end of times and in short the sooner it comes in the better

gonna be great for sure

Yea, me and mike discuss quite a few ideas ya know

yeah- world domination is next but we want the official leagues first!

Do we get mascots for each league?

I want in! But for now, I'll have to make do with reading people's opinions on my lengthy essay. If anyone reads it all...

Completely agreed - it's already by far the hardest aspect for people manually running leagues too - and I like you're ideas on how it could be handled. It would definitely have to be something along those lines.

See no point in elaborating the number of divisions and players in each division yet tho - that depends entirely on the number of active players who will want to take part in this in the first place.

Edited at 14:40 Sat 17/05/08 (BST)