[ma re]

Over the course of time, we have received many complaints from players, regarding the tipping calendar, or more precisely, the distribution of events to be played during the season. Current rules resulted in many more tournaments, especially larger and more important ones, being played in time zones which are in or around Europe, while the Americas and the Asia/Pacific region had far fewer such important evnets. Thus, tipping players from these regions had to adjust to various distant time zones throughout virtually the whole year. Not to mention that each Grand slam brings around 450 potential points, while a Premier event on average holds potential 250 points and International event around 200 points.

There are suggestions to change this, but a way on how to do it is not perfectly clear. So here I will propose several possible scenarios for 2012 tipping calendar, and I would like to hear everyone's opinions. All of these will be based on the unofficial WTA 2012 calendar.

The first idea is to stick with the same model, i.e., one tournament per week, always the one of the higher category, International events chosen by moderators. In that case, 2012 tipping calendar would look like this:

BRISBANE
SYDNEY
Australian Open
PARIS
DOHA
DUBAI
Acapulco or Kuala Lumpur
INDIAN WELLS
MIAMI
CHARLESTON
Copenhagen or Barcelona
STUTTGART
Estoril or Budapest
MADRID
ROME
BRUSSELS
French Open
Birmingham
EASTBOURNE
Wimbledon
STANFORD
CARLSBAD
Baku or Bad Gastein
LONDON OLYMPICS
MONTREAL
CINCINNATI
NEW HAVEN
US Open
Tashkent or Quebec City
Seoul or Guangzhou
TOKYO
BEIJING
Linz or Osaka
MOSCOW
SEC ISTANBUL
TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS, SOFIA

---

If we would allow two events on some weeks for the sake of more fair geographical distribution and allow skipping of some Premier events, 2012 tipping calendar would look like this:

BRISBANE and Auckland
SYDNEY and Hobart
Australian Open
Pattaya
DOHA and Bogota
Monterrey or Memphis
Acapulco and Kuala Lumpur
INDIAN WELLS
MIAMI
CHARLESTON
Barcelona or Copenhagen
Fes
Estoril or Budapest
MADRID
ROME
Strassbourg
French Open
Birmingham
's-Hertogenbosch
Wimbledon
STANFORD
CARLSBAD
Baku
LONDON OLYMPICS and Washington
MONTREAL
CINCINNATI
NEW HAVEN
US Open
Tashkent
Seoul and Guangzhou
TOKYO
BEIJING
Osaka
Luxembourg
SEC, ISTANBUL
TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS, SOFIA

This is the most fairly organized calendar I could come up with based on the currently available 2012 schedule.

---

If we would eliminate the choices between IS events and make it a rule that the next event is in the city closest to the one played the previous week...

BRISBANE
SYDNEY
Australian Open
Pataya
DOHA
DUBAI
Acapulco
INDIAN WELLS
MIAMI
CHARLESTON
Barcelona
STUTTGART
Budapest
MADRID
ROME
Strassbourg
French Open
Birmingham
EASTBOURNE
Wimbledon
Palermo
Bastad
Bad Gastein
LONDON OLYMPICS
MONTREAL
CINCINNATI
NEW HAVEN
US Open
Quebec City
Seoul
TOKYO
BEIJING
Osaka
MOSCOW
SEC, ISTANBUL
TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS, SOFIA

---

Any comments or suggestions are more than welcome!

[HawkAussie]

What about when there is 2 events on the same week we should do a minor comp where you still go in for points with the main event but the other event is just for fun and also will be up for not in ranking points

e.g. for example Brisbane/Auckland. If you would like to compete in Brisbane you can also go to Auckland tipping at the same time. But with that you need 2 forums right. No, because you could just make it so it is like this

(Semi Final Draw)
Brisbane (Offical points)
Andrea Petkovic v Marion Bartoli
Petra Kvitova v Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

Auckland (Friednly)
Greta Arn v Juila Goerges
Peng Shaui v Yanina Wickmayer

And if you enter the friendly comp and win then you get a wrong tip into a right tip. But thats my suggestion

[Ralph214]

I don't have problems in tipping for any timezone so I cannot relate to this. I am, however, again the removal of some premier tournaments.

In the first calendar, there is a potential to have 10 asian tournaments while the 2nd can have up to 11 so there is barely any difference Maybe we can just preselect Kuala Lumpur, Baku, Tashkent, and Osaka so the we can have the most number of asian tournaments.

[*Jean*]

We could have the two tournaments of a particular week being run on one thread. We pick matches from both Brisbane and Auckland in a thread created in the Brisbane subforum.

Or, if it is too many matches to be picked, open a poll a few weeks before for us to vote at which tournament we'd rather play.

[ma re]

I think almost all of you are missing the point of this tread. It's not so much about should we play two events in the same week, but rather should we change the current calendar model, and if so, how?

- WTAtennis2011; I'm not sure what would we get by implementing your suggestion. More tournaments that would be played but not count for points? We can do that by not changing the current model too, for example by adding ITF events for fun, but as I said, I'm not sure how would that make the geographical distribution of events more fair.

- Ralph214; You are right that option #1 has 10 Asian tournaments but look again at option #2 (hint: it's a bit more than 11)

- *Jean*; You have well spotted a potential problem in combining events in the same thread - too many matches. Separating it in two threads and employing two managers would make it easier. And as to the idea of a poll...well that brings us back to the current model of picking between events (that we have for IS tournaments). Not to mention that, if choosing between tournaments of different categories, we'd most likely always pick the bigger one.

But by all means, keep the ideas, comments and suggestions coming. There's more than enough time to settle everything for 2012.

[Håkon]

I am also against not tipping on Premiers. Tipping on Asian 100-200 ranked players in Pattaya when Clijsters is playing Kvitová in the Paris final is...confusing.

I can agree that we should probably choose non-European events if they collide with a European (though the time zone difference to Baku is so small as to be practically irrelevant here) but that's not going to matter too often.

[*Jean*]

Funny how the 'problem' of time zones has never happened in all the other games? The WTA Tour is travelling everywhere enough in my honest opinion.
As a Central European, I have to adjust when the Tour is in Australia and during the whole summer when the tour is in America, and at the end of the season when the Tour is in Asia.
I agree to say that there is a majority of tournaments played in Europe, but not by such a big margin.

[ma re]

OK, here's an idea that might be a bit more complicated for our general manager KeisukeHonda (cause he'd need to come up with a new formula for calculating the rankings automatically), but I believe in his brilliance so here it is

The idea is to make a list of Mandatory tipping tournaments; they would include 4 Grand slams, 6 large Premier events (2 from each region) and 4 International events (2 from Americas and 2 from Asia/Pacific) plus a player's best result on one other tournament regardless of category, for a total of 15. So we would still have results from 15 tournaments forming the rankings, but 14 of those would be from Mandatory events. All the other tounaments would be played as well, the same as so far, but with the difference that with some of those you'd be certain they will count towards the rankings.

With this rule, mandatory events could be spread like this:

Australian Open
-Indan Wells
-Miami
-Madrid
-Rome
French Open
Wimbledon
--Washington
--Dallas
US Open
--Seoul
-Tokyo
-Beijing
--Osaka

In this case, Washington and Dallas would each be played along with another stronger tournament (Olympics and New Haven), Seoul would get an immediate advantage over Guangzhou (it tends to have a stronger field), as well as Osaka over Linz (cause it's Asian). Everything else would be like it is now (always the biggest tournament played, manager chooses an international event), there would be no skipping events, no skipping weeks and we'd have two events played simultaneously on just two occasions.

Thoughts?

[Håkon]

Hmm...14 mandatories out of 15 counting tournaments seem like way too much. Essentially the rest of the season doesn't matter for the rankings.

That's just an immediate thought...

[ma re]

You have a point there Sam, it would be better to leave a few more spots for the unspecified mandatory events. If we would leave just 3 Premiers as mandatory (Miami, Madrid and Beijing would be logical - they are of higher grade and/or larger fields than the other three), that would make it 4 Slams, 3 Premiers, 4 Internationals and 4 other tournaments comprising a ranking. That way the season could look something like this (I've replaced Dallas with Acapulco as Mandatory international to spread events more evenly throughout the year):

BRISBANE
SYDNEY
Australian Open
PARIS
DOHA
DUBAI
Acapulco
INDIAN WELLS
MIAMI
CHARLESTON
Copenhagen/Barcelona
STUTTGART
Estoril/Budapest
MADRID
ROME
BRUSSELS
French Open
Birmingham
EASTBOURNE
Wimbledon
STANFORD
CARLSBAD
Baku/Bad Gastein
LONDON OLYMPICS and Washington
MONTREAL
CINCINNATI
NEW HAVEN
US Open
Tashkent/Quebec City
Seoul
TOKYO
BEIJING
Osaka
MOSCOW
---
SEC ISTANBUL
TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS, SOFIA

[HawkAussie]

What about some doubles in tipping for 2012

[ma re]

Originally Posted by WTAtennis2011

What about some doubles in tipping for 2012

I'm perfectly fine with the idea, but it would be best to create a separate thread for a discussion of it.

[Håkon]

Originally Posted by ma re

You have a point there Sam, it would be better to leave a few more spots for the unspecified mandatory events. If we would leave just 3 Premiers as mandatory (Miami, Madrid and Beijing would be logical - they are of higher grade and/or larger fields than the other three), that would make it 4 Slams, 3 Premiers, 4 Internationals and 4 other tournaments comprising a ranking. That way the season could look something like this (I've replaced Dallas with Acapulco as Mandatory international to spread events more evenly throughout the year):

Hmm...I'm still not too convinced, I'm sorry This is better, but I still think it's weird and unnecessary to reward the top 8 in fairly randomly picked Internationals so much. The 40-60 extra points there can be a huge difference - usually during a year the top 10-12 people have about the same number of QF/SF bonus points, but at different tournaments. So by picking out some the ranking will be more luck than skill.

I'd like some of those who are complaining about the time zones to come up with a solution So far we've only had Europeans and Ralph (who doesn't seem to mind). Also, as we're allowed to tip each round now and don't have to wait for the daily OOP, that should help...

[ma re]

Originally Posted by SamR03A

Hmm...I'm still not too convinced, I'm sorry This is better, but I still think it's weird and unnecessary to reward the top 8 in fairly randomly picked Internationals so much. The 40-60 extra points there can be a huge difference - usually during a year the top 10-12 people have about the same number of QF/SF bonus points, but at different tournaments. So by picking out some the ranking will be more luck than skill.

I'd like some of those who are complaining about the time zones to come up with a solution So far we've only had Europeans and Ralph (who doesn't seem to mind). Also, as we're allowed to tip each round now and don't have to wait for the daily OOP, that should help...

Well, there is some truth in what I highlighted, while as for what I've underlined, you probably don't know that I've proposed an increase in bonus point spots from 8 to 12, cause there are now many more players than in the previous seasons playing tipping (but that's another story).

[coolfish1103]

I don't think time zones are problems.

If time zones are problems, one can choose to play whichever tournament they want in a given week to try to avoid the time zone or simply skip that tournament.

For example,
1. Hold tournaments in both Doha and Bogota,
2. Players choose to participate in 1 of the 2 tournaments,
3. Players are not allowed to play both tournaments

Mandatory Tipping Tournaments in this case are really unnecessary because one would only receive more points if they play on tournaments with more draws. Therefore, if a player choose not to play the higher ranked tournaments, it hurts them (so do we need to add mandatory zeros after all?). The only tournaments there that we see will benefit from this are the International Series.