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I will also add here a proposal I may have floated originally when we were setting up the HGL.

As you might recall, I used to be involved (about 35+ seasons ago) in a large Australian PL competition called the Fishbowl. Like the HGL, it started off relatively humble with 16-20 teams and quickly began to grow as more and more teams heard about it and wanted to join.

As a result, we created an upper division and a lower division (the names of these escape me as I write this). The upper division comprised of the top 16 teams and the lower division comprised of the 16 lower teams. I don't recall how we defined which team went into the upper or lower division but I think it was based on salary.

We also had a component that required a team to win or finish in the final of the lower division (for example) to be able to 'promote' to the upper division where the 2 worst performing upper division teams relegated in much the same way we do in the league currently.

Now, I may be not entirely accurate in the number of teams [..] but you get the idea.

Perhaps we might consider something similar for the HGL? In terms of effort on your part as commissioner, it wouldn't be that much more work. More scheduling, however, and perhaps more importantly, will alleviate the PU token pressures that are surely on the horizon if we maintain the current setup.

We could even have a Deputy Commissioner responsible (in the same way you have been for the HGL thus far) for scheduling, maintaining and enforcing rules for the proposed 'lower' division.

These are just musings of course as you have floated the possibility of change and, as we can predict with some accuracy, change will be required at some point in the future if the HGL continues to expand.

I won't edit all parts of your message out that I'm not referring into here, but I'll just respond to some parts of your post.
I remember your Fishbowl experience, however I've forgotten most if not all of it's details.

It is possible that HGL reaches similar kind of interest when time flies by, but as for now, there are still limited number of HG teams, of which limited amount are interested in playin in HGL (both of those numbers we of course hope will increase in the future), so this is clearly not a problem within the same scope as it was with Fishbowl with approximately 36 teams playing in it.

As for considering similar kind of system for HGL, I'm currently not a fan of it. While it does have some positives, and while I haven't 100% ruled out two tier league system somewhere in the distant future, I don't see it being optimal at all at this point. Of course it is necessary to approach this cautiously, as we want to present HGL as inviting option and want to give potentially new HG teams a realistic time scope within which they could achieve a place in HGL (by playing or by accepting team by a Commissioners' decision as has been the case so far), so that their initial experience/feeling of HGL would be as positive as possible.

However, we do need to remain realistic on the amount of HGL related work (remember it is 100% manual league). If team number would grow, league related tasks would grow significantly, and even more so on 2 different level league tiers-setup.
And as long as token usage remains about lower than what can be acquired per season, I don't see that as a major problem.

As for now, dividing some tasks among 100% committed managers that share the same views (on everything, including forcing penalties strictly) could be okay, but I don't think I'd be a fan of giving for instance this "lower level league" total control to someone else. And if I wouldn't, then it would still mean I'd have to verify everything myself (yes, again more work). So as usual, I will consider all you've written and those will possibly alter my opinions (towards your views) in the future, but they didn't change my position/current views at least just yet.

Perhaps we might consider something similar for the HGL? In terms of effort on your part as commissioner, it wouldn't be that much more work. More scheduling, however, and perhaps more importantly, will alleviate the PU token pressures that are surely on the horizon if we maintain the current setup.

We could even have a Deputy Commissioner responsible (in the same way you have been for the HGL thus far) for scheduling, maintaining and enforcing rules for the proposed 'lower' division.

These are just musings of course as you have floated the possibility of change and, as we can predict with some accuracy, change will be required at some point in the future if the HGL continues to expand.

I'll just take a quick example about the amount of work, given that league would expand.

Matches played (please correct me if there's a mistake in calculations!) in HGL regular season, if there are:
- 16 teams: 120 matches (current setup)
- 18 teams: 153 matches
- 20 teams: 190 matches
- 22 teams: 231 matches.

So as you can see, there's tremendous amount of more matches, if amount of participating teams are added even ever so slightly. And in all-manual league, this work is done, well, manually.
Those who haven't done the scheduling process themselves (including creating posts, checking/verifying matches for correctness, sending posts and BBMails so that uncorrect situations will be corrected, keeping a list of required actions, etc.), probably can't appreciate the amount of work that is required before it's all correctly finished. so adding 4 teams to current setup would add over 58% more matches to the regular season, which is a big number.

And dividing teams into two different level leagues would have many other negatives which have been discussed in great length before, including what Hadár mentioned earlier (kind of in between the lines, while he didn't present it exactly this way, but he presented as playing 2 matches per week as a strong point of HGL), that it would drop the number of games played in HGL per week to 1 (and shorten the season), unless we'd then play twice against the same opponent during the season (which if my memory serves me, demars mentioned as a negative side effect of such league with low team amount as it's more boring to play twice as opposed to playing different opponent each week, which I totally do agree).

Anyway, about the possible expand (to 17/18 teams?) on Season 3, again I would prefer an even number of teams, and as we currently have "only" 17 teams that are willing to participate for Season 3, we could start to think of the options...

I will also add here a proposal I may have floated originally when we were setting up the HGL.

As you might recall, I used to be involved (about 35+ seasons ago) in a large Australian PL competition called the Fishbowl. Like the HGL, it started off relatively humble with 16-20 teams and quickly began to grow as more and more teams heard about it and wanted to join.

As a result, we created an upper division and a lower division (the names of these escape me as I write this). The upper division comprised of the top 16 teams and the lower division comprised of the 16 lower teams. I don't recall how we defined which team went into the upper or lower division but I think it was based on salary.

We also had a component that required a team to win or finish in the final of the lower division (for example) to be able to 'promote' to the upper division where the 2 worst performing upper division teams relegated in much the same way we do in the league currently.
[...]

These are just musings of course as you have floated the possibility of change and, as we can predict with some accuracy, change will be required at some point in the future if the HGL continues to expand.

I appreciate sharing your views, MrJ, so please don't get tone of my earlier posts in a wrong way. Being direct and condensed in communication sometimes could leave a wrong impression.

Again, with the goal of not starting a thorough discussion about this matter, I'll just add/repeat, that these "issues" if going into two different level divisions have been discussed in lengthy manner earlier. It does include several downsides, such as making a division among "better" and "worse" teams, which is way more pronounced compared to if we play on one, same level league (like now).

And it doesn't even make way more even leagues, as there´d still better and worse teams in each different level divisions (of which I was writing about in my reply on Homegrown Teams II-thread a tad earlier, if my memory serves me).

Also, a new team selection would be more complicated in terms of fairness, as at least personally I don't like the idea at all, that new teams would jump/walk into the highest division directly (if there would be two different level leagues), which means they would have to go through at least one season in lower level "Division 1".

This would in some cases cause seasons with perfect winning record, taking away promotion chances from other potential lower league level promotion candidates (or if two or more good teams would enter lower level league in one season, might immediately diminish promotion possibilities of other, otherwise promotion capable lower level league teams). Needless to say, this might cause motivational problems with lower level league managers (who would have been looking to promote), which would need to be tackled somehow to enable also other than newly added teams to promote.

Also, all stats/records, both team and player, (if/when made available) wouldn't be comparable, as they haven't been achieved against equal opposition (as all teams wouldn't face all teams during the season).

As MrJ noted, it's good to take a look at some possibilities beforehand, and have some discussion about them. But as has been said, this matter has also been discussed in length before, and I didn't check out those messages now to gather all my points into this one - I just wrote semi-intuitively, based on what I remember from my old writings.

This post wasn't written to start a lengthy conversation about this matter again right now (again, it takes time to delve into these kind of topics).

I would also like to cordially add, that while of course I have the intention to make HGL as inviting as possible, it's not necessarily good to do that "regardless of price".
While HGL is an open league, I think it's good to keep in mind that being selected to play in HGL is a priviledge, and not a right. :)

While HGL is an open league, I think it's good to keep in mind that being selected to play in HGL is a priviledge, and not a right.

Why is it a privilege?

Since when do 'we' want to limit the growth of 'our' HGL?

Last edited by MrJ at 9/20/2025 6:28:53 AM

I ask this question because I thought we were trying to create a league for HG managers to challenge one another in a unique opportunity. I don't recall us (all of us who were part of the original genesis of a HGL) originally agreeing it should be a members-only competition. I thought we originally all were engaged in trying to make an inclusive HG league that would continue to grow into something big and special?

If you are suggesting (which is what I'm reading from your previous posts) that we should curtail the size of the league to something manageable because you don't want to relinguish any of your control over the HGL, then I think the HGL's future is at risk of surviving long-term.

While HGL is an open league, I think it's good to keep in mind that being selected to play in HGL is a priviledge, and not a right. :)

Why is it a privilege?

Since when do 'we' want to limit the growth of 'our' HGL?

There is no need for you to rev up or start a round of accusations (on your another post) due to a friendly reminder, that it's always good/wise to not take things for granted.

It's also good to remember, that sometimes it's a strange thing with human nature, that some people value things more if they have paid for it (as paying kind of forces them to justify the importance of something, as they have made a decision to pay for something and then it often makes them appreciate it more, and enforce the thinking that it must be important as I've made decision to pay for it), so something being free sometimes causes whatever-kind of attitudes. So far, as we know, we haven't had issues with that, of which I'm thankful of.
(And yes, while 100% obvious, I'm not suggesting there should be any price in participating to HGL as the main spirit/idea of establishing HGL is to make it open and free to all qualifyiing participants - yes, given current/possible league restrictions in terms of expanding during ongoing season at any given season, (such as current league size "restriction" of max.18ish to 20ish teams).

It was also to say that most often it's not optimal to rush things, as always everything affects everything and most often if you rush to reach any decisions, you'll end up seeing that it should´ve been given a better thought (to reach more optimal solution). In this case, there isn't 100% easy solution to fix all issues without causing any downsides, as we well know.

I have also presented a perfectly functionable models (or rather a prototype at this point) on how to decide how teams participation rights for next season of HGL could be decided so in that sense if you want, you could consider that "play-in league/play-in playoffs" as a lower level division, Division 1 (due to possible, but definitely not decided transformation period into two different league levels) as it would ultimately be a decisive "league" that decides participation rights to HGL (while technically as it would likely include only few teams, it wouldn't include that many games).

It is good idea to try to gather many teams to share this HG journey in form of participating to HGL, while simultaneously we need to remember that - like you mentioned - it can't expand as it is without any limits (as number of matches per regular season would rise dramatically). This is also why I presented my clear view (by giving example from my "regular BB league") on why dividing teams to two same league level groups has large downsides, just as dividing teams to two different level leagues has.

However, this wouldn't suggest that it is an automatic right to be able to participate to HGL by the similar type of meaning as having human rights (or something like that). Quality is always more important thing than a quantity.
As HGL will remain a manual league till the unforseeable future (unless BB devs would want to make it as an official part of BB, which I kind of suspect they wouldn't as communication towards users have been almost non-existent to my knowledge), the quality of commitment from managers (or a lack of thereof) can sink the league (or at least cause trouble to Commissioner and cause penalties) if there would be managers that don't want to comply with the league practices/rules. And no, the proper solution is not to throw the rules to the bin. HGL should never be "a wild jungle with according laws".

But this is a complex issue all in all, due to which it will be necessary to sink the thinking cap deeper onto the head. Luckily though, immediate decision isn't required to solve anything, as there are currently no more than 17-18 participating teams to Season 3.

After careful consideration, I am withdrawing from the HGL.

I wish all HGL teams well this season and into the future.

I hope the HGL continues to thrive.

MrJ

It's time to decide colors of medals which teams will receive on HGL Season 2, and Playoff-post (here: (327517.7)) has once again been updated.

4 remaining teams (as an obvious reminder, also teams that lost their semifinals yesterday!), please proceed in organizing Final and Bronze matches as soon as possible!


Sunday September 28th matches below, home team name bolded (as there's still problems with bolded text in Playoff-post):

Final:
VPO vs. HAD

Bronze match:
HB vs. RAJ

After careful consideration, I am withdrawing from the HGL.

I wish all HGL teams well this season and into the future.

I hope the HGL continues to thrive.

MrJ

Unfortunate news, but it's your call, so what can I do but wish you best of luck with your HG project and add, that you're welcome to HGL at later seasons, should it suit your plans.

***EDIT:
Now that I read part of my message again, "being selected to play in HGL" or "current league restrictions" might leave also a bit of a wrong impression while technically being correct and neutral. (However, it often mixes up things if you take things out of context, and things/replies are necessary to be considered as a whole).
So I think I do get what you mean by being open league (which HGL as it's heart is), but I guess I used "selected" also because so far that has been the case (as we/I have selected teams according to their 'applications'/announce of interest, and based on their commitment on following league rules), so they have practically 'walked into the league' which to me shouts 'an open league'.
And I used "current league restrictions" as there are currently sensible maximum amount of teams that is 'a soft ceiling' (due to radical increase in match numbers, as I presented in earlier post; and in most radical cases, token usage demands as well could in practice be restricting league sizes).
I do remind, that there aren't more willing candidates currently that we could accept for instance for Season 3 so there's actually not any problem currently. And I do underline word current on both this and older post. I also recognize, as mentioned before, that it's good to think of these scenarios beforehand and have some discussion on them now and then.
END OF AN EDIT***


Based on this information I edited "Updateable listing of HGL teams/managers that have confirmed their willingness to participate for Season 2 of HGL"-post (here: (327516.86).

In that post I keep on following teams that have given confirmation on their current (and some teams also next seasons) participation, and also keep a list of teams who have let me know they will/might participate in HGL sometimes in the future (but haven't decided yet on which season that will/might happen).

So from that post we can conclude, that now that MrJ decided to step out of HGL Season 3,
we will most likely have 16 participants also on HGL Season 3.

This would mean that we could re-use the schedule from Season 1 and Season 2, as there's no change in total number of teams.


@ all managers, please note:

HGL Season 3 preparations (including match organizing process, into which all HGL teams will participate!) will start somewhat soon, so please be prepared for it. Exact time is not yet set in stone, but it will be close to when quarter-finals and semifinals are played in your "regular BB-league" (and that´ll be quite soon, as there's only 2 matches left in BB regular season like you all have noticed).

Please let me know as soon as possible, if you can't use as many tokens for Season 3 Regular Season match organizing process as you've used on Season 1 and Season 2 match organizing processes, so I can try to change some of the Pickup match challenge responsibilities (to reduce token usage demands of some teams) if really needed.

Example: your team has had the obligation to send 12 match challenges (which requires usage of 12 tokens if done correctly for the first time) on previous HGL Seasons. Unless I hear from you, I assume it's ok for your team to keep on using similar amount of tokens on Season 3 as well.

In other words:
If I won't get information from a manager, by a post on either of these two Official HGL Threads or by BBMail to me, I will assume that it's ok for him to use about as many tokens on Season 3 Regular Season match organizing process, as they have been using before.


Last edited by Wagner at 9/22/2025 7:27:01 AM