HULA musings (don't worry, GenHE fans...we are moving Tuesday)

[gonores]

It’s nice to watch HULA take shape. I think we have a real good base for a learning tool here, but it’s time to start making some judgment calls on this. I would really appreciate any and all comments on these topics or any other HULA topics.

Allow me to clarify something before I get any farther. I was very hands-off when it came to problems with TPC. I told everyone to go to support, and I think that might have put some players off from coming to me about other HULA problems. I read every single HULA post, and I read every single PM, and I reply to every PM that needs a reply. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, raise beefs, etc.

1. I am leaning heavily toward moving HULA-related stuff to John’s forum. This appears to be the only fair way to resolve this situation. Take a look around the General Forum….not a lot of good threads have gone up this month (except for the DR posts, which, however, are also getting lower responses). Mason and 2+2 in general shouldn’t need to put up with it, be it in the GHE or the HU/SH forum. Unless there are objections, we will start posting on John’s site in Week 3 (starting Tuesday).

2. OK. It’s honesty time. HOW FREAKIN HARD IS IT TO GET THESE MATCHES SCHEDULED? The thing that worried me most about this league is starting to happen. Technically, Week 3 should start today, but only about half the total matches for Week 2 have been played. There are some of people here who are really active and are clearly doing their part to make HULA tick, but there are a lot of players that just aren’t putting any effort in to this….and I mean ANY. It’s not that hard, people. PM your opponent, set a time, play a match. What can I/we do to make this any easier for you? If it comes down to me having to babysit players and PMing them on my own to make sure we get all our matches in, I will not run the league next season.

Here is my proposal for Week 2. Somewhere in the pile of preseason HULA posts, I am pretty sure I said the burden of scheduling lies on the lower-ranked opponent (and if I didn’t, I will now). I am doing this because I am stereotyping the lower picks as newer to the forum, less frequent visitors, and all-in-all less reliable than top picks. The implicit argument is that more often than not, it’s going to be the lower-ranked player’s fault that the match did not take off more often than not. Week 3 will start at Midnight Central time on Tuesday. At that time, all unreported matches (this means that I know nothing about the match or who is at fault) will go to the higher-ranked player. Do me a favor, go to Simon’s site, and make sure that your score has been reported.

If it so happens that you are the lower-ranked player and you can’t get a hold of your opponent, please either contact me or post it here. Oh yeah, and make sure to PM your opponent again and again, with read receipts.

3. This whole substitute thing driving me crazy too. We’ve had to look for subs in a few cases over the past two weeks, and it sucks. None of them have replied to PMs. Even if we do make it happen, we have to go through the entire headache of getting them on to TPC (and explaining that they don’t need to pay to get on the tables). I, along with the other commishes, are going to rack our brains to come up with a solution for this, but anyone else is welcome to comment on it.

I may come up with some other stuff, but as I am writing this, I have noted that ToT (BTW, thank you for piping up about your concerns…HULA would be a way more bumpy ride without you) is firing questions in the Week 2 thread, and I am not sure how long it will take me to get the rest of my thoughts on paper, so I am posting this right now.

Thanks,

Doug