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Rating = ? Division

not taking offense to you personally blang, just what you posted...you said pros and advanced players show contempt/disdain? towards newer players..that is very damaging to getting new people to play..
 
not taking offense to you personally blang, just what you posted...you said pros and advanced players show contempt/disdain? towards newer players..that is very damaging to getting new people to play..

I am an advanced player and I am very welcoming too all players, new or old (age & play status). Who doesn't want too see more people involved in this sport, whether its for business or pleasure. More people playing disc golf is better for anyone who's touch a disc :) Sorry just played 90 holes and beat had to rant, I love DISC GOLF.
 
wish i was near a course i could play 90 holes in one day..must be kinda short? i played one round today and it took over 3 hours for a foursome..7400' beauty
 
not taking offense to you personally blang, just what you posted...you said pros and advanced players show contempt/disdain? towards newer players..that is very damaging to getting new people to play..

Copy the post where I said it...
 
what ever happened to am1, am2, am3, am4(no need for novice, rec, int, adv)...sounds pretty simple to me..roc is an advanced player and boasts to drive putt and approach and recover as a pro? i ASSumed you were a pro..dam i'm naive..the system is always going to screw some players but i take offense to something blang said...here in ny, we encourage newbs to play and root them on..i dont know where you play, but if advanced players and pros have "disdain and contempt" for newbs, the sport goes nowhere..sounds kinda sad..all it takes to make a division is 4 players? why cant 4 bottom feeders in rec have a novice division..a good td would offer this..

I get it. You thought that Roc1time and I were getting to serious in our discussion and you wanted to misquote both of us in the same post to throw yourself in as a distraction and bring us both together in an attempt to correct your statement. Thus creating an end result where everyone is friends again.

Very clever move! :)

That was it right? :confused:
 
not taking offense to you personally blang, just what you posted...you said pros and advanced players show contempt/disdain? towards newer players..that is very damaging to getting new people to play..

I said it, not him, and the fact that it dissuades new players was precisely my point. To be precise, I said

The contempt and disdain often displayed by Pro and Advanced players toward newbies doesn't help at all, and it baffles me -- the more people across the board who're playing in tournaments and improving their skills and moving up in ratings and divisions, the more money there'll be at the top end for those guys to pocket on Sunday afternoon.

I qualified it with "often"; I should have qualified that with another "around here". It seems to be a problem that's worse in the Atlanta/North Georgia area than other places, from what I'm gathering here.

As an example of what I mean, browse through the forums at http://www.discgolfatlanta.com (the Atlanta Disc Golf Organization's web site) and read all the disparaging comments about "barneys" and such; sure, some of them are specific to disc thieves, two-disc douchebags, and other lower life forms -- but many aren't. And after reading through some of the threads there, imagine yourself as a newer player who's come there looking for information about tournaments, or improving your play, or whatever, and seeing all of that -- how welcome would you feel showing up to play with those guys?
 
In South Carolina this is rampant---to the point that almost everyone playing Intermediate is under 900, and all the Advanced players are in the low 900s, and the 950s are playing Pro. Not sure why, but they do.

the reason is that when the pdga set the breaks they failed to account for the divisions all those players were already playing in by personal choice. guys who had been playing advanced for years were told they were really intermediate players, etc.- most didn't listen. (at least in our part of the country)
 
As an example of what I mean, browse through the forums at http://www.discgolfatlanta.com (the Atlanta Disc Golf Organization's web site) and read all the disparaging comments about "barneys" and such; sure, some of them are specific to disc thieves, two-disc douchebags, and other lower life forms -- but many aren't. And after reading through some of the threads there, imagine yourself as a newer player who's come there looking for information about tournaments, or improving your play, or whatever, and seeing all of that -- how welcome would you feel showing up to play with those guys?

That's why I spend most of my forum time here and little to none of it at the discgolfatlanta.com forums. I really don't understand some of those people's attitudes.
 
That's why I spend most of my forum time here and little to none of it at the discgolfatlanta.com forums. I really don't understand some of those people's attitudes.

Likewise, these days, though given my involvement with the RDGC I sort of have to keep up with what's there and post stuff there on behalf of the club.

It's really a shame, though, because I think a lot of local players who're just starting out find there way there, and don't know to look any farther for places like this. I renewed my ADGO membership this year only so that I could play the members SuperClass event at Redan next month. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.

Oh, and the 893-rated player registered in Rec for Hotlanta moved up to Intermediate on site today, so it was just us sub-850 chickens in Rec. Not that it did me much good :) .
 
as the sport continues to grow, more people will play in their correct division because there will be more people to compete with who are near their correct skill level

I think the current ratings breaks are fine, they just do not work so well when a tournament has less than 100 players - it makes little sense to have 100 players at a tournament break up into 12-15 divisions - in the future when there are more events splitting up the Adv/Pro players and the other Am divisions, each course can then hold more players and if the sport continues to grow, then you will see players in these divisions, playing where their rating puts them (never mind all the overlapping masters divisions)
 
My only comment/complaint in the ratings system is that some people take advantage of it just to get "prizes". Case in point.....we have a "gentleman" who is usually playing Sr. Grandmaster, has YEARS of experience, been to several Worlds tournaments, numerous titles, has more discs than anyone could ever need and 10 backups for his favorites....anyway because his "rating" allows it, plays Rec at our tournament, just because there were not enough "older" people to have his division. Now the players in the Rec division were just that.....players who were just getting in to tournament play...maybe had played 1, or for most was their very first. They were all competitive with each other, but the "gentleman" smoked their division by 10 strokes or more each round...just to win more merchandise. This is WRONG! Now how do you think these "newbs" felt? Now they have a bad taste in their mouth about tourney play. Will they come back to ever play again? I think doing away with division names like Novice, rec, so forth is a good idea...go with am 4,3,2 etc... and the divisions like am4 having a stipulation that if you have played more than say 10 tournaments, you need to move up a division, leaving the lowest division for the newcomers in the sport, so they can get addicted, and want to move up....anyway just my rant for the day....
 
because his "rating" allows it, plays Rec at our tournament, just because there were not enough "older" people to have his division.

10 strokes is supposed to be worth 100 points in the ratings, isn't it? How can he play in a division with players rated 100 points below him?
 
If this older player's rating was in the Rec range, how is he taking advantage? Did he shoot 100 points over his rating (unusual for an experienced player)?

Were the players he beat also in the Rec range? If they were "Novice" rated players playing "Rec", they've no complaint; that's like me playing Open and complaining about getting whipped. If they were playing Rec because the TD didn't offer Novice, it's hardly the fault of the ratings system.
 
People in the bottom divisions are often non-PDGA folks who don't have a rating, so there's a good likelihood that at least a few of them are true rec players probably playing their first or second tournament. They likely will shoot a round that is 100 rating points less than a player who is still eligible to play MA3 (Recreational). Also since MA4 (Novice) is often not offered, players who would be eligible for that division are forced to play MA3.

Sometimes MA3 isn't offered, and those players have to play MA2 (Intermediate)....or stay home. This leads to huge bottom divisions and the likelihood that some folks near the bottom are going to get crushed. The last PDGA event I was in had 95 players and 36 of them were in my division.
 
I think the lack of offerings at the low end is a problem. By my nature, I'm relatively competitive - I swam competitively through college, and have competed at all sorts of other sports and games. From what I've been able to see from posted scores at courses I regularly play, it looks like AM4 is currently the right division for me. Maybe not for a ton longer, but for now it is. However, it is very rarely offered at tourneys around here, which is frustrating. NOT as frustrating as I'd imagine getting crushed in AM3 would be, but frustrating.
 
If this older player's rating was in the Rec range, how is he taking advantage? Did he shoot 100 points over his rating (unusual for an experienced player)?

Were the players he beat also in the Rec range? If they were "Novice" rated players playing "Rec", they've no complaint; that's like me playing Open and complaining about getting whipped. If they were playing Rec because the TD didn't offer Novice, it's hardly the fault of the ratings system.

There was not a Novice offered, so the lowest offered was Rec. however, it was explained that "rec" was for the newer players, or players with limited experience. A player with 10+ years, and Worlds experience should not be playing a Rec division, at least in my opinion. Yes, I know that the player rating says that he can, but to me it's just wrong. My division was not offered either, so I played adv. Open, the least he could have done was stepped up and played Int. I know what he did as far as PDGA guidlines was correct....but just to me it was not ethical. You have 5 or so people in a division with limited/no tournament experience, playing against a 10+ year player. As I said before, if you want more people hooked, give them a fair chance to win in their own division. Again...just a rant
 
Seems a better solution would be to encourage more tournament directors to start offering MA4, or an unsanctioned equivalent (therefore no $10 fee) for tournament newbies and restrict that division to non-PDGA folks who have been playing for less than a year.
 
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