Monday 22 October 2012

2012 Ontario Doubles Crokinole Championship Preview


This Saturday October 27, 2012, Brucefield will be the host of this year’s Ontario Doubles Crokinole Championships (ODCC). One of the best NCA tour stops in the year will once again hold the best doubles talent around. The two-time defending Ontario Doubles Champs are the Toronto pairing of Brian Cook and Fred Slater. They've claimed the only two ODCC titles with wins over Jon Conrad and Barry Kiggins in 2010, and over Eric Miltenburg and Joe Arnup in 2011. CrokinoleDepot’s own Raymond and Jason Beierling have twice finished in the top 4.

The tournament title is of great importance as all winning prize money is donated to the top team to attend the following BC Provincial Crokinole Championships held in March. In 2011 Fred Slater used his bid to score a second place in the singles category of the 2011 BC tournament. In 2012 Brian Cook and Fred Slater attended the event and scored a doubles victory followed by a 1-2 finish in the singles division.

This year’s tournament may prove to be the best yet. Jon Conrad and Tony Snyder may not team up, but both return as World Doubles Champions. Fred Slater and Brian Cook return as the Ontario and British Columbia Doubles Champions, while Fred Slater also recently finished 2nd in the doubles category at the World Championships. 6-time World Champions, the Beierling Brothers will attempt to improve on two consecutive top 4 finishes at the Ontario Championships. They arrive at the tournament after a 7th place finish in doubles at the World Championships and a 4th and 5th place finish in the singles competition. Ron and Ray Haymes come in to the tournament as the 3rd best doubles team in the World. Clare Kuepfer will come in as one half of the PEI Provincial Doubles Championship team. And the Belleville club will arrive having put two teams into the top 4 of the World Championships in the last two years as Dave and Matt Brown finished 2nd in 2011 and Louis Gauthier and Chris Gorsline finished 4th is 2012. Eric Miltenburg and Joe Arnup will look to avenge their finals loss in 2012. And the best part about the ODCC is that there is always a couple of teams, that you would never have expected, who will make an impact.

Either way, get your game face on, and your strategy prepared for the 2012 Ontario Doubles Crokinole Championships.


For more info about the tournament and to register visit http://www.nationalcrokinoleassociation.com/tournaments.php

Friday 19 October 2012

Crokinole Rankings (2nd Edition)


Crokinole Rankings (2nd Edition)

So I've received feedback from some on the CrokinoleCentre Rankings, which were released a month ago. The feedback was from players prominently featured in the rankings, which is encouraging, because it shows that the best in the game are at least interested in them.

Much positive feedback has been received about the 2 year format, and it will be interesting to see how the rankings change over time.

One suggestion was to separate the singles and doubles categories of the rankings and release two different sets. The main reasoning for this was to eliminate the possibility that any one player could receive a large amount of points based on having a strong partner. My two main concerns with doing this are: 1. There are not enough doubles tournaments in the year for a solely doubles ranking to be accurate. and 2. Doubles is a unique part of crokinole that emphasizes different skills and strategies. I think that by eliminating doubles results, a true standing of a player cannot be realized. For example, singles focuses largely on 20's scoring, and open 20 shots. It's no surprise that those who score the most 20's are at the top of the rankings. And to go further, singles play is usually confined to play inside the 15 circle with most players "peeling" discs off, to force play back to the middle, whenever a disc ventures outside. The same cannot be said for doubles where multiple discs are on the board, and because partners sit opposite each other, every disc is in play, making ricochet shots extremely important.

With that said I've decided to release two sets of rankings. One to include both doubles and singles (my personal preference) and another to include only singles rankings. It will be interesting to see the differences between the two formats, and get a clearer idea of who the best singles players are.

So here are the full CrokinoleCentre rankings. 

Rank
Name
Points
1
Brian Cook
305.5
2
Jon Conrad
298.5
3
Fred Slater
296.5
4
Ray Beierling
285.5
5
Jason Beierling
281.5
6
Eric Miltenburg
270.5
7
Nathan Walsh
264.5
8
Joe Arnup
262.5
9
Clare Kuepfer
248.5
10
Louis Gauthier
244.5
11
Ron Haymes
240
12
Paul Brubacher
239
13
Matt Brown
235
14
Howard Martin
232.5
15
Justin Slater
230
16
Rex Johnston
226.5
17
Greg Matthison
220.5
18
Dave Brown
219.5
19
Jason Carter
192.5
20
Nathan Jongsma
189.5
21
Kent Robinson
167
22
Brian Miltenburg
167
23
Chris Gorsline
165.5
24
Rob Mader
160.5
25
Bob Mader
150
26
Ray Haymes
148
27
John Harvey
146
28
Marlin Lichti
146
29
Bill Freeman
133
30
Rich Mader
130.5

As you can see Brian Cook remains on top for the 2nd straight tournament, Nathan Walsh moves up from 8th to 7th, Louis Gauthier cracking the top 10 and Matt Brown moving up well to 13th. Obviously not a whole lot of movement but that is to be expected with a ranking system that takes place over 2 years. With the official release of the WCC points there are quite a few new faces on the list who now hold their rightful positions in the rankings, which I was unable to capture with the first ranking release.

And here is a similar, but different, only singles ranking. 

Rank
Singles Only
Points
1
Brian Cook
305.5
2
Jon Conrad
284
3
Jason Beierling
278.5
4
Ray Beierling
277.5
5
Eric Miltenburg
266.5
6
Fred Slater
263.5
7
Joe Arnup
235.5
8
Nathan Walsh
232.5
9
Clare Kuepfer
228.5
10
Louis Gauthier
222
11
Paul Brubacher
215.5
12
Howard Martin
204
13
Greg Matthison
168.5
14
Brian Miltenburg
167
15
Dave Brown
154.5
16
Justin Slater
154
17
Nathan Jongsma
147.5
18
Jason Carter
143.5
19
Matt Brown
137
20
Kent Robinson
135
21
Ron Haymes
127
22
Rob Mader
126.5
23
Chris Gorsline
117.5
24
John Harvey
104
25
Marlin Lichti
98
26
Rex Johnston
95
27
Dennis Ernest
94.5
28
Wayne Gingerich
87.5
29
Bob Mader
85.5
30
Ray Haymes
75.5

As we can see the top 3 changes as it's Cook, Conrad and Jason Beierling. It's an interesting shuffle as Fred Slater falls 3 spots, Jason Beierling pops ahead of Ray Beierling and Eric Miltenburg rounds out the top 5. Joe Arnup slides back ahead of Nathan Walsh, but the rest stay pretty much the same. Overtime the singles rankings should be much more open to change as less tournaments give way for a greater chance of players shifting positions.

A fault in the this system though is that including the top 4 singles results is almost gives way for too much variance. Take Ray Beierling for example. The 2011 World Champ, 2011 London Champ, and 2012 runner up in Belleville and London, as well as 4th in 2012 World Championships should put him in at least the top 3. But here he is 4th. But if the results were restricted to the top 3 singles he would be placed higher. However, I like the idea of 4 singles results to add to consistency, even if it does lower the score of some players at the moment. It especially hurts those who don't make 4 singles events in a year but still make 4 NCA events. But that's why there is one ranking to combine doubles and singles, and this one for only singles.

Meanwhile on the NCA Tour, the rankings are beginning to take shape. Jon Conrad holds a commanding lead but the outcome of these early fall tournaments will show how much competition he will face for the overall title this season. 

The next big tournament is the Ontario Doubles Crokinole Championship held by CrokinoleDepot. One of the best tour stops in the year will once again hold the best doubles talent around for a date set on October 27th in Brucefield. Look to signup on the NCA site: nationalcrokinoleassociation.com.