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How Does MZU Schedule Games For Our Indoor Leagues?

3 Dec, 2015

 

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about how we make the schedule, how we allocate the various time slots, and just “how does it work?” We haven’t discussed this league operations issue in a while so we figured it might be time to chat about the schedule:

How does MZU schedule games?

  1.  One of our top priorities when creating a schedule is ensuring that opponents are of a relatively even skill level. You’ll never see a scenario where 1st plays 16th, as we control for that using a rating system (described below).  We’ve also set the no repeats rule to 3 weeks, such that if you play a team in Week 1, you shouldn’t see that opponent again until at least Week 5. This ensures teams get to play a variety of evenly skilled opponents over the course of the league. At the click of a button, Zuluru can generate a schedule that matches two similar opponents, keeping in mind the no repeats rule. But we don’t stop there…
  2. After Zuluru creates this schedule, our primary focus is balancing that 11 pm time slot. This current league is 11 weeks in duration and there are four possible time slots (8, 9, 10, or 11 pm), with the exception of a few teams every team should get three 11 pm games. Given that we are going into Week 10 in the schedule, teams should now be expecting to play their third game in the 11 pm slot. We try our best to ensure these games are evenly distributed and that there are no repeats in that slot (i.e., teams do not have back to back weeks at 11 pm).
  3. Given how much effort goes into balancing 11pm games, we know it’s not possible to balance all four time slots evenly for all teams. Our compromise is to look at the 8-9pm games and 10-11 pm games together, trying to balancing the number of “early” vs. the number of “late” games a team has to play. Again, this is an ideal scenario but most teams should finish with a minimum of five games in the 8-9 slots, and five games in the 10-11 slots.
  4. Final reminder that this is an 11 week league, and the hope is that at the end of the league, everything should balance! Trust that the League Committee takes balancing the schedule very seriously and that every effort is being made to make a fair schedule for all teams.

 

The Wager Ladder System

 

Also, while we’re talking about scheduling… We’ve recently moved away from the USAU Ranking system we’ve used in the past, and have adopted a new methodology called the Wager Ladder.

 

(Copied from the OCUA web site)

In this system, games are worth a variable total of points, based on the final score. Each team contributes some number of points from their ratings value towards this total, but the amount they contribute is not fixed — it depends on their relative ratings. This contribution is that team’s wager contributed to the pot. The losing team wins back the number of points they scored, and the winning team takes the remainder of the pot.

 

Here’s how it works in detail:

  1. A team’s percentage chance to win is computed based on the pre-game ratings values. This will determine what percentage of the game’s value the team must contribute. For example, if both teams are evenly matched, they will each contribute 50% of the total. If instead, Team A has a 60% chance of winning, they contribute 60% of the total value.
  2. After the game is complete, the pot value is computed. The pot value is double the winning score plus 10. For a normal game to 15, this would make the pot worth 40 points.
  3. Each team’s contribution is calculated by multiplying the pot value by the team’s percentage chance to win. This represents the maximum number of ratings points that team could lose.
  4. The losing team then gains back the number of ratings points equal to their score. In an evenly-matched game ending 15-10, the losing team would gain back 10 points for a total loss of 10
  5. The winning team then gains the remainder of the pot. So, for example, if their contribution was 20 points, and they won 15-10, they would get a pot of 30, for a net gain of 10.

Summary

The schedule is one of the most painstaking tasks the Board does. We work really hard to create fair match-ups and have a fair distribution of time slots. As always, if your team has questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact us at hi@MileZeroUltimate.com OR on Facebook/Twitter.

 

See you at 11 😉

 

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