Club Championships [interest check]

I'm just looking to see how people feel about a large scale team contest between the individual clubs, and get some feedback or suggestions about how to run such a competition.

My idea so far:

Teams

Teams will be the official breed clubs (who choose to participate), and maybe also the player groups as well? Players enter a horse they own, and nominate a team for it to be on. All horses must be on a registered team.

Club presidents or group owners can register their club/group as a team by paying an entry fee, e.g. $100,000, which will then go towards the prize pool. (This fee should come out of club funds, and will be a one-off fee regardless of how many entrants on the club's team.) Presidents will then be responsible for encouraging their club members to enter the contest on the club's team, and organising their members who do sign up. It will be free for players to enter a horse.

I'm not sure yet what sort of restrictions should be in place for the number of entries a player can have. I'm thinking either one of the following:
- Players can enter no more than one horse per team, maximum of three horses total.
- Players can only enter one horse total.
I want to strike a good balance between not disadvantaging smaller clubs, and not giving an unfair advantage to players with several breed projects.

To be entered on a team, horses must be somehow recognised as being eligible for that team. For the official breed clubs, horses just have to be registered with them. Since player groups don't have registries the group owner just has to state that a particular horse would be eligible for registration if they did have a registry. (They can either explicitly state a nominated horse is eligible, or they can state registration requirements for horses, so if it's obvious a nominated horse meets those requirements it'll be considered registered, without needing explicit approval from the club owner.) The horse's owner also has to be a member of the club/group they're entering their horse in.

Judging

The contest itself will be run over the course of a month. It will be a showing competition, so the aim will be for horses to gain as many points as possible in that time. Each team will be awarded a score equal to the average points gained for all horses in that team. This way popular clubs with many entries don't get an unfair advantage over the smaller clubs.

Horses' points will be recorded at both the start and end of the month and only the difference will be considered, so those who start out with lots of points won't get an unfair advantage.

Prizes

Prizes will be awarded to the team with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd highest score. Prize money given to each team will be split so 50% goes to the club, and the remaining 50% is divided up between the horses on that team with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd highest score. There will be additional prizes for the horses with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd highest point gains overall. Prizes will be divided up as follows:

1st place club: 35% of prize pool (17.5% to club, 8.75% to 1st place horse, 5.25% to 2nd place horse, 3.5% to 3rd place horse)
2nd place club: 25% of prize pool (12.5% to club, 6.25% to 1st place horse, 3.75% to 2nd place horse, 2.5% to 3rd place horse)
3rd place club: 20% of prize pool (10% to club, 5% to 1st place horse, 3% to 2nd place horse, 2% to 3rd place horse)
Overall 1st highest score horse: 10% of prize pool
Overall 2nd highest score horse: 6% of prize pool
Overall 3rd highest score horse: 4% of prize pool

If the entry fee for clubs is $100,000 each, and let's say we ended up with 5 clubs registering as teams, then we'd end up with a total prize pool of $500,000. If however, all 20 official breed clubs entered, the prize pool would be $2mill. Obviously the bigger the contest, the better this will be.

What do people think about these sort of numbers? Should the entry fee be higher or lower? Should the contest take player donations as well or instead of an entry fee to boost the prize pool?


Feedback

What are everyone's thoughts on this? I'm keen to hear all sorts of suggestions on this, no matter how big or small. Are there things I should change? Expand on? Keep as is? What's good? What's bad? What may cause problems? Discuss.

Also, thanks to Danzy007, who came up with the idea for inter-club competitions. I just expanded on it.


Interested Clubs
Gypsy Vanner Club
Akhal-Teke Club
Quarter Horse Club
Thoroughbred Club

Last edited on 2017-06-18 at 22:04:19 by UlyssesBlue

Ok with the teams just so i understand this one properly... 

Players can only enter one horse for one team with a cap of entering 3 teams (so three horses, each horse for a different team)
eg. 1 Tb for the TB club, one Appy for the Appaloosa club and 1 other horse for another club that isn't an official breed club but still a club in EQ (jus as an example)

^ did I understand that one correctly?

Also, age limits on horses. Horses entered will they be 3+ years old on entry?

The points... did you mean show points or did you mean stats point increase?

I think $100,000 is fair as a prize pool. as a side note...

Any non-breed (player clubs) that wish to join but DO NOT have the $100,000 to enter, PM me and I'll help cover and money shortages. 

I'm happy to help out just because I want to see heap of people involved in this one and I don't want people to miss out in the chance to represent their favourite non-breed club because the club didn't have the funds. I was thinking of everyone when I came up with this competition idea

@UlsseysBlue 
are we going to accept donations of extra EVD/EVC/ items to add to the prize pool if we get enough interest for this one?

@Danzy007

Ooh! I absolutely love this!
I am glad we can kick some clubs back up and running with something like this. I am in some clubs that seem dead right now, so this might help.

<sup>I'm up for donating EVD, art or other things as prizes.

I think you should include a donation option incase other players like me want to donate towards the prize. I'm not the best at showing etc as I don't always have time for horses; but I can help with the competition if need be.

Maybe messaging each president of each club with a link to the forum post would help boost interest for sign ups!</sup>

The people that have applied to be the club presidents for next month have been sent a link to this forum for IF they become club president next month. (Which is likely since there are no other campaigners and they all have at least one vote) 

I've even PMed/ DMed a few of the nonbreed club owners to see if they are interested. 

From what i know the Akhal-Teke club president (for next month, maybe) has already expressed interest in joining this one just to liven up the Teke club. 

Who or where would the clubs send the $$$ to join? Who would be the player/players to decide who had the highest points? The QH club is interested in joining!!!

Should we ask a moderator to collect and compile the money since it will be an inter-club contest?

That way the money is in non biased hands for the duration of the contest. 

Has someone got a better idea? 

In my opinion I think the final results should be calculated by all of the participating clubs club presidents just so we have a more fair result and more accurate result just in case one of the numbers is not calculated properly by one person. 

Also will official breed clubs be asked to use foundations just to make the final point count easier to calculate and easy for competitors to keep track of the progress that they are making?

The exception for this of course would be the non breed members clubs who would probably demand a horse of certain colour or paint markings be used by their members. 

I think using foundations would also be easier than using non-foundation horses.

I would be able to contribute either some EVD or EVC for side prizes for things like biggest stat gain, most 1st placings etc.

As the Thoroughbred Club President, I would definitely be interested in signing the club up for this!  I would also be okay with helping to tally things up at the start and end too since it would be good to have a few eyes on that in case of mistakes.  Doing Foundation horses might make point tallying easier, but if previous points are recorded as horses are submitted it could work for any of them.  As a player, I would be able to contribute some EVC to the prize pool, I would just need to wait until the 30th to do so as that's pay day.

@blue
I only just noticed your question about the horses that people might want to enter that is not in any clubs or does not yet fit any club standards. 

I think having a "last resort team" / "under dog" team for any one who wants to enter is a great idea. 

I'm willing to organise this one if you like. I will probably ask that foundations are used because I'm terrible at math and typo on a calculator like a true master of fumble. But I might not. I think I will leave it open for people to enter any horse like kimtar's June contest for the better that is currently running.

To answer some questions/suggestions:

I don't think we should insist on foundations. Using foundies would not make it less complicated as they would still need to be checked before the contest to ensure none had started early and therefore got an unfair head start. It would be just as easy to record all horses both before and after, and only consider point gains. I think I can write a program to do this to make it easier, not to mention more accurate. ;) Also, foundies may actually discourage some people from entering as a foundation horse may not be suitable for their breeding programs, in which case they'll have no use for the horse once the contest is over, and this may discourage them from putting in the effort, or entering at all.

For donations, I would rather stick to just EVD, as it's easier to divide up than EVC, art or items. I'm open to suggestions though if people know a good way to get this to work.

--------------------------------------------------

I wanted to hold off on collecting any entry fees or donations until we had confirmation this was going ahead, but we now have four clubs expressing interest and I think that's enough for this to run, so we can start organising things like taking entries and entry fees.

I'm happy to do the bulk of the organising, and record points of horses before and after the contest. I am usually online about cron time (4am EV time) so I am well placed to record points accurately before everyone starts caring for their horses for the day. I highly encourage anyone who's interested to make their own records to cross check mine to ensure no errors. I'll put together a google spreadsheet that I'll make publicly viewable as well.

I have a spare account that I'm not using at the moment, so we could use that to hold funds. The lack of activity on that account will make it easier to keep track of donations/etc as they won't get lost amongst daily activity. I'll be happy to post a screenshot of my bank records to confirm details of donations for the purposes of transparency.

So what I'll do for now is create a new thread to take entries and get people to post their horses there. When they enter a horse they'll nominate one or more clubs for that horse to represent, in order of preference. If that club has signed up by the time entries close, and the horse is eligible, the horse will join that team. If not, the horse will go to the second preference, and so forth. If it exhausts all options, the horse will instead join the non-club Team of Last Resort. This team won't pay any sort of entry fee (and ideally won't exist at all). If it gets a placing in the contest then the prize money intended for the club will instead be divided evenly between all members of that team.

If your favourite club has not signed up for this contest and you'd like them to, and there's no-one campaigning for president, consider running yourself so that you can enter them.

Any details I'm forgetting? If that's everything I'll put together the thread for taking entries.

Last edited on 2017-06-18 at 22:56:07 by UlyssesBlue

Is the sign up thread going on the Contests and Giveaways board?

^ Yes. Just writing it up now.

Ooh, something neat I just found: on horse's pages they already have the amount of points gained in the current month, so I won't actually need to record the starting points, just their final points. This makes things much easier. :D