Hi,
by virtual table I meant that you only consider games between tied teams and make small table with few games between them.
I am not sure if its fair.
We have a lot of games and maybe every +/- should count etc.
ED proposal seems fine.
ED likes offensive points, Wagner likes defensive points, I am rather def type but both are ok.
I checked that official rules promote offensive points like ED said so maybve we can stick to that.......
Thanks for your explanation Paul George.. That's something that I'm not very familiar with, but virtual table seems like an interesting (and possibly good) way to handle such situation.
Using only virtual table in comparison would go with the same spirit as "having won our Regular Season meeting get the better position", while simply referring to +/- is more generalized way of ranking teams.
That's not to say it would be worse way, though, as it does have it's strong points as you pointed out.
As for fairness, no system ever satisfies all needs/wishes... And I get/understand what you mean by that. It is within the core spirit of HGL that everyone should meet everyone during regular season (and within your sensible reasoning, all that should probably count).
On the other hand, it is exactly these teams that are being compared (with even record), and their performance against each other is what is being scrutinized here in a virtual table example, so in that sense it could be thought of being even more fair (and it is in the line with the current rule that you first try to rate teams based on game results between their closest combatants with the same record, instead of rating them by all games +/-), as it is taking a look at point differential of those exact games that these (3) teams have been playing against each other.
It's also easier/quicker to count points within a virtual table only, but that's only a minor thing/point: more important is to reach optimal decision.
Having said that, it might be the easiest (and still fair) way to utilize Regular Season +/- point differential (PD) as a first comparison method in a 3-way tie, and also after that apply different comparison layers if needed.
Examples/options:Example 1. If +/- tied between 3 teams during whole Regular Season, which is extremely unlikely, then we'd proceed to either more scored or less allowed points-comparison. (In this example of course, this so called virtual table would not be utilized at all.)
If no tie in +/- (
and teams would've won each other so that ranking order couldn't be directly determined, in other words one of those 3 teams hasn't lost to those other two teams), then teams would be put into a ranking order based on whole Regular Season +/- scoring differential ("RS +/- PD").
Note though that if 3 teams would be tied (in regular season win-loss record) and "only" 2 out of 3 of those teams would be tied in RS +/- PD, then one option could be that we could reduce the number of comparable teams to 2 by dropping worst team in +/- of whole RS to lowest of those 3 positions, and apply a normal comparison method (winning RS match of the season between these teams) to rest of compared 2 teams, and that would solve the problem.
Example 2.Other option would be to utilize virtual table in the case of "3 way tie in whole RS +/- situation" (should +/- point differential of RS to be used as a most important comparison method in 3-way tied record-situations, instead of virtual table in first place), in which +/- scoring differential of those matches only (2 matches per team) would be the determining factor (and then either PA or PS).
I'm also saying these to underline the point, that no selection is ever perfect/will satisfy everyone 100%. :) Luckily, this isn't one of the absolutely critical decisions anyway, but it's something that's best to be agreed beforehand to avoid "on the fly"-decisions.
Last edited by Wagner at 11/25/2025 11:37:00 AM