Due to a slightly awkward 11 teams entering this year's Handicap Cup, the tournament will run over 5 weeks, starting on the week commencing 8th April.

The tournament will be played at two venues (depending on draw) - The Abbey Centre and Morpeth. Due to the number of teams playing their matches at The Abbey Centre, a decision has been made to play all tournament matches with an Abbey based team drawn at home on Wednesday evenings, regardless of whether the team's usual home night is a Thursday. Any match where a Morpeth team is drawn at home will be played on a Monday evening as is their usual home night. This essentially means that tournament matches will either be played on a Monday night at Morpeth, or a Wednesday night at The Abbey Centre.

All matches will be played at the venue of the drawn home team with the exception of the Handicap Cup and Handicap Plate finals, which will be played at The Abbey Centre irrespective of the teams facing each other and who is drawn as the nominal home team. 

Onto the part you've all been waiting for... the matchups! This was done by a piece of code I wrote so even more random than me pulling out of a hat. All subsequent rounds will be drawn by the same piece of code. (If anyone really wants to inspect it to check impartiality, then please let me know!) So without further ado, the Handicap Cup Round 1 draw is as follows, with the home team as the first team written: 

With all the home teams drawn for Round 1 being Abbey based teams, this means all 6 teams in those three ties will play at The Abbey Centre on Wednesday 10th April. So start picking your teams!

In order to attempt to maximise time for team selection and give some certainty for the Handicap Cup Quarter Final, I've also drawn the matches for week two. Obviously some teams won't know their opponent, but they will at least know the date and location. So, the Handicap Cup Quarter Final draw is as follows, with the home team as the first team written:

Finally, the handicap system this year will be kept as simple as possible, and will also be different to the system which some of you will be familiar with that is used in Central London's Warne Cup. This is purely because it's a system I know and have used to handicap events before, we're more than happy to change this in future seasons if there's appetite too, but I don't think there's harm in differentiating our handicap event from our cross city rivals!

So, our handicap system will feature two teams of 3 players, playing nine best of 3 sets, first to 21 point matches over the course of an evening. At the start of the match, every player will receive a handicap that is associated with them for that evening which will have been calibrated specifically for the opposition that night (i.e. you could play one week and have a handicap of 6, but then in the following round have a handicap of 13). This handicap number is what each player will start each of their matches that night on. 

The next thing to note is that you can receive a negative handicap where you would need to win more than 21 points to win the set. We'll try to avoid this where possible, but sometimes it is unavoidable. In an instance where someone has a negative handicap, it is easiest for them to start each game on 0 as usual and then when they reach their negative point value, they go back to 0. For example, if someone were to have a handicap of -4, they would start each game on 0 and when they (hopefully) got to 4 points, they would then go back to 0.

So, as a final example, if you had a handicap one evening of +7 and your opponent had a handicap of -2, you would start that match at 7-0 and when your opponent reaches 2, they will return to 0 to try to now overhaul you before you reach 21.

Outside of the number of points each player starts on, all other rules will remain the same as in a regular game of 21 point table tennis - i.e. five serves each, change server on a number of points played divisible by 5, deuce at 20-20 etc. The only further exception to the regular rules is because it is possible for a player to start a set on a score greater than 10, the change of ends in the 3rd set will take place when the person on a lower handicap gets to 10 points (in that sense it is possible for there to be no change of ends in the 3rd set if the higher handicapped player runs away with it).

The winner of the match is the first team to reach 5 individual player wins (as usual). Obviously given the nature of the knockout competition, it's possible for a team to get to 5-0 up and have secured the win and in this instance, you may stop your match there if both teams agree to leave early, though I'd obviously encourage you to play on both for enjoyment and to help the handicapping of future rounds! In the event of one team wanting to stop and the other wanting to continue, the match is played to completion. 

I have included a fake scorecard example attached to this email which I'd encourage you all to take a look at and send back any questions if you're uncertain. I also plan to head down to The Abbey Centre on the 10th April to answer any questions live on the night so you can wait until then if need be.

Finally, it is my intention to send the handicaps for a relevant match on the day of the match to each captain involved. So, for the captains of Bishop's Fingers, Good Karma, Comets A, Beauty & The Beasts and Morpeths A and B, you will receive your team's handicaps and your opponent's handicaps around midday on Wednesday 10th April. 

The logic behind this is to limit the opportunity for people to intentionally exploit incorrect handicapping. We can't truly expect to get all handicaps right and we can't fully stop people exploiting this unless we go to every match and hand them out to the players who arrive, but we can at least limit that possibility in this way.