Quote:
Originally Posted by Umbrella
You guys talked me into it, and I signed up. My questions are very noobish. My two starting players are pretty bad. One is a 14 year old, ranked 1004th, the other is a 21 year old ranked 2106th.
1. Since these guys are so bad, is it better to just do a lot of practice? And does it matter which practice tournament you enter?
2. If the answer to #1 is to practice, when to enter tournaments? When form gets close to 15?
3. I understand junior tournaments are for 18-, but what are amateur? Are these for the truly awful players, like mine?
edit to add
4. I entered my young guy in a tournament, which showed only two other players. However, he ended up having to go through qualifying. Where did all the other players come from?
5. For the entries on tournaments, what are the numbers before and after the slash?
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I'll start and others can supplement.
1. You will get most benefit from practice as a young player, in part because they are guaranteed matches (subject to fatigue) for an entire week. That said, your ranking doesn't improve unless you play tournaments. So, I think the common strategy is to play tournaments when your form is between 16.5 and 25 and then let it sink back down to 15-16 through practice, then play tournaments again. Depending on endurance this may be one tournament every three to four weeks.
Brian has some stuff on selecting practice sessions. You can click on the link of the practice session and see who has registered for the session to date. The best practice session would put your player in a group where he is with similarly ranked players but he's near the bottom of the group. You get a slight experience boost for losing matches and for playing longer matches. The ideal scenario then for practice is coming up just short in very competitive matches.
2. I answered much of this above. Others may have more thoughts.
3. I've only played amateurs with one player. I think the more common path is to play the juniors and then move into the lower rated futures tournaments, which you'll be competitive in if you've trained regularly until the junior is 18.
4. The computer owned players join at the last minute to fill out the bracket.
5. The first number is singles players in the main bracket and the second is doubles teams in the main bracket. This doesn't include the qualifying rounds.