This 'sticking together' problem is very common all around the world. In my opinion the best solution is indeed mixing, but don't mix players with vastly different skills together. I once had the idea in my club of polling and ranking the players into five tiers and mixing them based on that. So you never cross more than two tiers unless necessary (i.e Tier 1 will only play with tier 1,2,3). It never came to fruition because I wasn't the club leader and a ranking system will definitely offend some people. I would like to see this implemented somewhere though to see if it can be successful or not.
Honestly, you just need to move clubs. Mixing beginners and competitive players for the whole evening is the act of someone who is not thinking. It has the benefit of not offending the beginners through game selection, but if they will get offended by game selection they will also get offended at simply having to play against really good players (as you have found out). There should either be seperate nights, or seperate courts. Some mixing can be really good - you don't want the groups to become too rigid. But you have to have some system. Classic problem of deciding too much structure is bad, so switches to no structure at all. Madness. Good luck - a useful frame for your personal chat with the chairman may be "I am hoping you can help me out. I think the current system needs tweaking so that some games are organised with all participants of the same standard together for part of the time, and a good mix at other times to create competitive games across different standards. At the moment, players are complaining when you try to play your best because they feel the disparity in skill is too great. Can he think of a solution? You obviously don't want to upset them by playing your best, but can't be forced not to play your best either. To avoid upsetting them, your only logical solution is to move clubs, unless the current system can be tweaked. You have talked to friends and think a peg board system may work, choosing from the first available 8 players, with the option of removing your peg to the end of the board instead of choosing if you wanted to further mix the players. What does he think?" @SSSSNT I have considered the same idea before, and think it should work as long as there is a fair and transparent method of assessing players e.g. a list of skill requirements per level. It should not be performance based e.g. "you always beat them means you are better than them" as people can have a bad day etc etc. The fact a ranking may offend people (will offend some for sure) is not a valid excuse not to do it, as I am sure you already agree. Such a shame that people can't see past these simple situations.
I'm currently playing at a club that has this system, but i think it is a bit of a unicorn in terms of managing to do it. Players are ranked A/B+/B/C+/C, and each rank has a dedicated club night on each weekday (C/C+ share a night due to lower numbers). On Fridays, there is an open all grades session, pegboard style, and on Sundays there is an open all grades session with arranged matches. During the off season (summer), grades are allowed to go to their own sessions, or play in sessions of a grade higher, and players may always play in a session of a lower grade if the session manager is ok with it (no objection from other players based on ability or session being busy). It is a system that only works because there's a huge membership count and a good number of courts. As @MSeeley notes, the ranking is based on objective criteria, rather than a percentile based ranking, though that has its own difficulties where the distribution of players bottlenecks around the B/B+ grade as that's the peak of the bell curve, and A/C grades are relatively empty.
I didn't reply, because I remembered this. I thought this decision was made and the season is almost over. There's probably one game left on March 16/17. Did that change? Do you want to be a member of both clubs, but play in a team for the new one? In the other thread, you also mentioned that beginners visiting your club don't stay and sign up for a membership, maybe that's on your chairman's mind? We're not a huge club, but we have separated times/halls for hobby and team players. Nobody is mad when a hobby player shows up at the (non training) tram players night, but that doesn't happen too often, because of the different attitude towards the sport. This way, everybody knows what kind of environment he's getting in. For the team players, it's still between lower end of Bezirksklasse (NRW, sorry to all who don't know anything about these, I know ucantseeme knows) up to very strong Landesliga players who could easily play Verbandsliga. Still there's no trouble mixing, because everyone is kinda competitive, but n nobody is too serious about it (in not competitive matches). So let's talk about something that might help. St. Tönis (Regionalliga -> Kreisliga) forces players to mix up as well. I don't know too many details about how they mix and how they deal with players who only show up afterwards, but that's why I linked the turnier.de site if you want to contact someone. I know that they force everybody to play with and against everybody. They don't do it for the entire time, but only for the first hour (I think). It might be once a week or every time, but it's a limited time. Even their strongest players supports this system. For a ranking, a start would be your Vereinsrangliste. Of course, it doesn't only show the strength of a player, but also if he's serious/competitive or not (not necessarily, but I've seen that more than once). It depends on how your club sets of up, but if you don't know where else to start, it might be a good idea. If you really change clubs in a few weeks, don't let it suck you down too much. edit: feel free to pm me
