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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 we had playing in each division and those that were promoted and relegated, 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.

Thanks for your responses, Wagner.

As for the 1 v 2 league proposal...

I like the 1 league ladder we have used up until the present. And while it would be great to continue it, I see a couple of obvious problems with this.

This is a long discussion, to which I'm not sure I have enough time currently. But I'll give some reply for now.
This post of mine in fact wasn't 1 vs. 2 different league level-leagues proposal, not at all. I was referring to 2 same level groups within a same league tier. However, many problems/challenges can be considered similar in 2 different level leagues, so for the purpose of this post, I'll use those interchangeably.
No solution will ever be perfect, but I don't see too many problems with current setup to change it.

Firstly, the ladder will continue to grow (if history has shown us anything as more and more teams join the HGL) and we ensure every team who wants to play, can.

Secondly, and perhaps as a result of this, a larger ladder/league will require more games. This in turn will require a lot more PU tokens from players. Now, although some of you have large caches of PU tokens (still?), even those players will, if the league continues to grow, find it hard to keep up with that many tokens.

As you mentioned, we'll have to see how many teams would be interested in joining HGL, and how "participation rights" would be given to teams, if there would be limited amount of league positions available for given season. This has been discussed on also earlier, or at least I've given multiple solutions on how to possibly solve this. As a very short recap that might leave some earlier presented options out, we could for instance have "a play-in league or play-in playoffs for participation right to next HGL season" during the current HGL Regular Season or Playoffs. This, of course, only would work until certain extent, if teams wouldn't be stepping out of HGL voluntarily (as has been the case so far, as many teams have left HGL and replacing teams have filled the 16 teams roster - this might or might not be the case also in the future).

As for the number of games per team if team amount is increased, this is a clear problem/challenge.
That's also a reason why it might be preferable to keep this number of teams at a certain maximum level, and have a short play-in series/playoff instead (for participation rights to next season) if many new teams would apply for position in HGL.
On the other hand, we'd have to deal with decisions such as should any of the current HGL teams be forced to enter such play-in series, with a risk of losing their place in HGL should they not play well enough in it - as you know, initially I haven't been a fan of that idea (and I'd prefer to secure a place for teams that want to keep on playing if they keep on following the HGL rules and protocols).

However, while problems of growth are positive problems, I also wish to remind that there is no obligation for HGL to grow/accept new teams more than it sees optimal (in terms of main league, I'm not referring to possible play-in type of league/playoff series), and if decision on significant growth is being made, all aspects (including possibly expanding teams allowed to Playoffs, etc.) need to be considered prior to that.

For both of the reasons stated above, perhaps we all need to start discussing and considering a change to the league/ladder so that:

1. We include as many teams as possible in the HGL; and
2. We ensure that the number of games per season don't out-pace the number of PU tokens teams colelct in the same period of time.

Just some thoughts...

Maximum amount of teams in HGL within current setup is debatable, but I guess it's somewhere between 16-18(-20?) teams(?).
Token usage is one thing to consider, but as long as we don't expand beyond those numbers, it could be possible to adapt requirement if given team is low on tokens.

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.