We’re doing the same thing for our league here. Absolutely the way to go.

It would sure make tournament organizing easier. You could post a schedule ahead of time and everyone would know at exactly what o’clock they were playing their games that round.

On the other hand, it would make those mismatched games all the more humiliating. I’ve been beaten 5-0 in a coupla minutes. I’d hate to see the score after an enforced 10 minute game. 20-0? yech.

@Doug One difference is that all these sports you mention play matches that last longer than 10 minutes. Many people find ten minutes insufficient for deciding an “important” game. You can have ten shitty minutes and then play really well the next ten minutes, and vice-versa. And it’s rare to be fully tired after ten minutes in our sport. There are also sports like tennis, volleyball, etc, where you have to score X number of points.

@Lucky: competitive play should not include heavily mismatched games. It’s humiliating for some, boring for everyone.

I’ve been in favor of just having timed games with no “kill score” for quite a while. Getting that 5th goal scored on you is really painful, especially in a 4-4 game that has two minutes of time left. Play until the time runs out!

Thanks for posting the question Doug, it’s an important discussion to have. hardcourtbikepolo.com is starting to feel all 2007 again. Where’s Ben?

I think this is an interesting debate, one in which I’d like to hear more about what the advantages of timed games are, something I haven’t read anywhere here or elsewhere. I hear the words “better”, and “legitimate”, or “absolutely necessary” with no supporting arguments or attention to the implications on the game itself. Sorry, but Roller Derby has nothing to do with bike polo.

This issue is very important for bike polo as it changes the entire nature and focus of the game. In timed games a team can sit on a lead and slow the game down, trapping and obstructing for a one-goal win, sticking two people in net while boring the crowd and themselves to tears. In games to five both teams must press for the entire length of the game to score five goals, there is no passive sitting on a lead.

In timed matches players will game the clock, using it instead of the ends of their mallets to decide a match. Without offensive rules like icing in hockey or the shot clock in basketball to force players to move the ball up court, games will degrade into boring one-goal affairs, with european-style goalies protecting small leads while dumping the ball down the court to waste time off the clock.

Timed games end promising come-backs via the clock instead of a goal, prolong a slim lead, and end in dis-satisfying ties. Is that when you flip the coin Adam?

In games to five both teams are required to stay offensive and the play remains lively for the entire length of the game, from the opening joust to the winning goal. It is common to see teams rally from three and four goal deficits, something that would become far more rare in timed games, smarter (and more boring) to sit on that lead.

Each and every game to five carries the potential of becoming a beer-point game with a thrilling sudden-death game winning goal that is the most exciting thing in sport. Players like games to five, it allows them to decide the course of the game, not the clock. At tournaments everyone is pissed when time runs out, but no one complains when the fifth goal goes in.

Games to five all have at least five goals in them, sometimes nine. Timed games may only have one. Games to five generally last from between 10 to 15 minutes, perfectly reasonable for tournament play.

I’m all for 12 to 15 minute timed games at competitions until the final eight, but after that point I want to see beer-point final matches that reward goal-scoring prowess, not the ability to sit on a two-goal lead for ten minutes.

If organisers can’t keep a tournament on schedule, is changing the very structure (and focus) of the game the best answer we can come up with? More courts, better scheduling, and better facilities for players (bike racks, better info boards, entries and exits, viewing areas…) would solve scheduling issues better than changing the nature of the sport would.

Too many sports to mention do not have time limits and benefit greatly from the drama that is provided by playing out the score instead of playing out the clock. Bike polo has many of its own conventions and I think games to five is like nine innings or double match point or 3 downs, all part of the unique nature of the sport. Let the players decide the games, not the clock.

Good luck disallowing a goal on a shot in the finals as time runs out. Ben, please shoot that shot.

if you think a team is going to successfully sit on a 2 goal lead for 10 minutes, you’re crazy. timed games are not going to all end 1:0, i can guarantee you that, too. the amount that this minor format change actually changes the character of the games which are played will be very small, and if it turns out otherwise, i’ll eat those words. but it won’t. 3-on-3 is way too wide open a format to successfully sit on a lead for any appreciable amount of time. i’d like to see someone try it, they’ll learn the hard way how ineffective it is to play defense without offense in this game. time in the day is obviously a factor, as we have a lot of matches to play and finite time to play them in. you say that games to 5 ‘generally’ last 10 to 15 minutes, piet, but what about the 30 minute final -we- played together at NSPI 2008 which ended 3:4? do you think our opponents were sitting on that lead and playing the clock in that game? absolutely not. it simply doesn’t happen in real life. teams want to score, they will try to score. and like i said already, sitting on a lead simply won’t work unless the team you’re playing is genuinely bad, and in that case you should try to run up the score, particularly if goal differential is a tie-breaking factor in the tournament. another thing which bears mentioning under those conditions is that it’s only fair for every team to have an equal amount of time in which to amass a good positive goal differential and keep yourselves on top of the tie-breaker. if 5:0 is the largest possible score by which you can possibly win, the idea of using goal differential as a tie-breaker gets short circuited. it could be the case that two teams end up tied on points, but one team has a better goal differential and moves to the next round simply because they hammered a bad team worse than the other team hammered that same bad team. to me this is valid, you have to play your best regardless of who you’re playing against. every goal counts, against every team. don’t short-circuit this mechanism by limiting the possible differential.

ties may be disappointing, but they’re a fact that you have to live with in the non-K.O. rounds. with 3 points being given for a win and just 1 for a tie, if a team can battle back and tie a team that jumps ahead on them, it’s a full 3 point swing (earning 1 while taking 2 away from the opponent), and that often has huge effects on how a group shakes out. if we had unlimited time for every game, this would not be a concern, but that is not realistic. in K.O. round games, there is an OT session so you’re sure to be spared the dissatisfaction of a tie. the alternative is to play the final in the dark because it took 2 good teams 40 minutes to battle until one scored five goals. maybe a great match, but again, we simply don’t have infinite time to work with.

It was 4:3 after 30 minutes precisely because of the time limit– both teams played the clock in that game. Other teams would have battled for the fifth goal in a goals-to-five scenario, but both teams sat on the ball, hoping use the clock to their advantage.

Teams sit on one-goal leads in timed games all the time, it’s how we got so far in Ottawa.

The 5:0 maximum score does not discriminate against goal scoring, all teams are in the same situation and have the same opportunity to score goals. Maybe this is when you pull out your famous coin Adam.

I want to hear why a timed game is better, outside of from purely a scheduling standpoint. I want to hear that it’s better polo, not just a bunch of hacks running down a clock.

lame.

ultimate frisbee. great game. no refs doug, i now you’d like that.

@doug. I love Hardcourt because it is not like other sports. Another way of “not limiting the possible differential” is to record the time it takes a team to win by five. The team with less time wins the tie. This post is more about what is good for tournament organizers rather than what is right for the sport.

@Pieter. Thanks for starting this discussion where it belongs, on the ca.