The Midwest Poolplayers Association (MPA) is a Minnesota Non-Profit Corporation established to promote the sport of amateur pool by sanctioning pool leagues and players, and providing large tournaments to its membership. In its inaugural 2010-2011 pool season, the MPA has gained the support of many leagues and players throughout the midwestern region, sanctioning players and leagues in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and South Central Canada.
Contact
John Stich
Phone: 507-210-7558
This is the fourth version of the MPA Pool web site and there have been a lot of changes. Primarily in the system software that had been getting out of date. Things are always changing in the data processing world and I needed to catch up.
So there may be some instability for a while so if you find something that doesn't work send me an email describing the problem, the same goes for something I may have taken out that was useful to you.
I am always open for suggestions, so don't be afraid to ask for something that you would find useful.
To participate in any MPA event you will need to be part of the MPA Pool database which you can do yourself.
To start the registration process just click on the "Join MPA" link on the menu bar.
Fill in the requested information in the three panels that will be presented to you. The first panel is your name, DOB and sex. Please fill in your name with real information, if you want to be called something other than your real name put that in the "Nick Name" field.
Note that the name you provide must be unique. So for example I am entering my self which already exists in our database. So when you click the next button the system will check the name and see if you are already in our database.
For this example I am already a member of the MPA and I do not need to complete this form. PLEASE do NOT enter yourself in the database multiple times. If your name is shown in the list your are done and can use the site to register for Tournaments online. If your name is NOT shown, try to make your name unique by adding a middle initial.
The second page is pretty self explanatory. Your cell phone number is needed if you want to be notified when your next match has been called during a tournament. A valid Email address is required if you want to be able to logon which is required to use tournament registration.
The third and final panel is for establishing an initial player rating. If you are not sure what rating to be use read the Handicap rules section below.
Click on submit to complete your registration. You will be sent a conformation email that you will need to read and complete before you can register online.
Welcome to the MPA!
Here is the criteria for the divisions, and maybe this will help:
As of this version of the system you will need to logon before you can register for events on-line. Everything else pretty much the same when playing in a tournament in terms of access to the brackets and registration lists.
If you have a logon on the previous version those credentials are still valid now. When on logon the first time the old credentials will be automatically converted to the new format. You shouldn't even notice when this happens.
If you don't have a logon there is a couple of things you can do. Send me an email and I can create a userid for you or resend the original registration email that allows you to create your own userid and password.s
The other possibility is to associate your Google or Facebook account with your MPA Account.
In any case you need to start with the log in link on the menu bar.
At this point your need to have an account of some type, either a MPA account, Google or Facebook. For this example we will associate our MPA account with our Facebook logon. So click on the facebook button (or google) and you should get something similar to the following screen, at this point you are talking to Google or Facebook and the screen shots may change.
Now you need your MPA Account information, your player number or Userid, which is your player number by default or the email address on your MPA account. Click the register button and you should be logged on.
The menu bar will change and you should see your name on the right side of the menu bar. Now you can logoff by clicking the log off link.
By clicking your name you can manage your logon information and User Name or change your password.
There is a change for using Online Registration. Now you will need to logon before you can register online. This will make the registration process even easier and allow me to track what is going on. If you do not have a Logon see Logging into the system to get setup.
Online registration starts from the MPA Pool home page. Each tournament that is being sponsored by the MPA is displayed on this sites home page.
If the event is offering online reservation then there will be links for each division that will accept online reservations BUT you will only see the link if you have logged onto the system!
Once I have logged unto the MPA site the registration links that are available for you will be highlighted and underlined. Note that I am a "A" player so the "B" and "C" links are not active. The links may not be active if there is a limit on the number of players in that division and the limit has been reached.
From this you can see the divisions the in both the Singles and Team events that offer online reservation for you.
You need to click on the division you wish to register for. If you click on the wrong division you will be able to change it on the registration screen but only to your rating or higher.
For example we will select the "A" division for singles 8 ball in this tournament:
Verify the displayed information. If this reservation is for you, then you can make changes to your address, phone and email address. NOTE that in this example a players club card field is displayed, if you have a players club card enter it here now or we will be bugging you the whole tournament to get one. This is not a required input but you will need one to play in this tournament.
Click on the Submit button to actually register.
This is what you will see if your registration was accepted.
If you wish to register for another event, such as nine ball, change the event to nine ball. NOTE that the division also changed to the lowest division you are eligible for.
NOTE that the Charge Summary indicates that you already have a charge for the 8 ball event and will have a charge for this 9 ball if you proceed, with the new total.
Click submit to enter the second event.
In many cases one person is signing up for themselves and other players. This can be done all at the same time. Enter the first couple letters of the first and a couple letters of the last name of the additional player or team captain.
Now we will select John Stich:
A couple of things to note. You can only change the players card number, all other fields are readonly. The charge display shows all other events you have registered for plus the player you are currently adding. This allows you to pay for all entries made by you. Rather than making multiple payments. If you are paying with a credit card these are the charges that will show up.
You have 3 payment options for most tournaments.
For MPA Tournaments we print both singles and Team score sheets. These sheets have everything you need to know about your up coming match. Including the Event, Division, Table, handicaps/Ratings of both you and your opponent and the race. these sheets need to be filled out and returned to the tournament desk at the end of your match.
When filling in your score sheet make sure to circle the winner at the top of the sheet, fill in the score and do NOT write over the bar code.
When starting your match FIRST make sure your name is on the score sheet, you are playing on the correct table and THEN flip for the break. Put the player's name who won the flip as the first player on the score sheet.
There is a lot more to the Team scoring then the singles. This basic score sheet can be printed for 3 to 5 players on a team and for 3-8 rounds for the match. The score sheet will be printed for the event format and may be different for the winner and losers side if you are playing less rounds on the losers side. The players handicap is also adjusted for the number of rounds being played.
The MPA standard format is a 5 man team playing 5 rounds, commonly called a 25 game round robin.
If you have more than 5 players (maybe 3 or 4 depending on the format of the tournament) then check the Use column for the players that will determine the team handicap. This is very important because you can substitute at the beginning of a round BUT you cannot lower your handicap with a substitution!
For example: if on "Team John" above, if you use 2 A and 3 C players for your handicap calculation that would be 105, which is fine, EXCEPT now you cannot use any of your AA players. For example: if you substitute a AA for a C player now your team handicap is 90, which is lower than your declared handicap at the beginning, and that is not allowed.
You also cannot substitute a player back in if that would cause that player to play someone they had already played.
The MPA has its own handicapping system for team competition. We have been using this format for the last 6 or 7 years with very good results. The only exception being the high end teams don't like it because they actually have to play good (which they can) to win any money. As long as the handicaps being used are fair this format allows all teams the possibility of getting in the money, and getting into the bigger money that is often reserved for the higher end master teams.
| MPA rating | Handicap | 4 Rounds | Total | 5 Rounds | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pro | 0 | 4 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Master | 1 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| AA | 2 | 4 | 8 | 5 | 10 |
| A | 3 | 4 | 12 | 5 | 15 |
| B | 4 | 4 | 16 | 5 | 20 |
| C | 5 | 4 | 20 | 5 | 25 |
| MPA rating | IOWA ACS rating | Handicap | 4 Rounds | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pro | Elite | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| Master | Mid Advanced | 1 | 4 | 4 |
| AA | Advanced | 2 | 4 | 8 |
| A | Intermediate | 3 | 4 | 12 |
| B | Open | 4 | 4 | 16 |
| C | Standard | 5 | 4 | 20 |
In general this is 1 point per rating level times the number of rounds being played.
The key part to the way our system works is how the brackets are actually drawn.
For this example lets say we have just shy of 128 teams, typical of a state level tournament.
That means that since we in general pay the top 25% of the field we try to break the flights so each is 1/4 of the field. That means that the winners of their flights are already in the money.
Once play gets into the finals bracket, in general 32 teams but it could be 16 depending on turnout, the teams start to play teams from their adjacent brackets so by the end of the tournament all levels are playing together. Good fun!
The typical user of this web site will be a pool player that is a member of the MPA, whose userid is their player number. There are other users, such as vendors and league operators that have created user accounts on this server but are not players. In either case the user accounts are maintain the same way. When you created your account, either via the sites login page, or via the registration link sent to you in a email. You needed to create both a password and a security question.
The security question allows the user, you, to change their password by knowing the answer to the security question. This is
great in that you don't have to bother the system guy, me, to reset your password.
So, click on the following link if you can not remember your password, and answer the security question and you will be EMailed
a temporary password that you can change. So if you didn't give us a valid EMail address when you signed up OR
you will never have an email address, contact us and we can set one up for you.
Recover my password.
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