Welcome to Unified Pool League™.

We’ve been thinking. For the past few years we’ve been thinking hard about how to make pool leagues better. We thought about the scoring. And the money. And about the process of getting to a national tournament in Vegas. Lastly, we thought about the whole system of franchise owners and charter holders who control so much of league play. We’ve been thinking that together we can do better.

What we came up with was a set of general guidelines that we would use in the construction of a brand new pool league:

• Get as many teams to Vegas as possible, while maintaining low team dues
• Make Vegas better, with $1,000 for last place teams, and enough money for travel
• Give teams a second chance with Sidepots and Team Playoff Qualifiers
• Create a Scoring System that's positively fair, with no built-in advantage for higher skilled players or teams, so that there are no skill level limits or team break-up problems
• Make league night a team-oriented experience, so that players of any skill level can contribute to the team's success
• Make the game more fun with interesting features
• Have user-friendly score sheets that don’t require constant marking
• Create greater opportunities for Ladies/Seniors teams, divisions, and Vegas trips
• Return as much of the weekly dues to players as possible, and use the internet and other technologies to keep our costs low
• Be highly ethical in everything, for an open, honest, fair and fun experience

The result of this thinking and these standards is what you see here. We invite you to take a moment to look around the site, and see for yourself the new features, value and fairness that we’ve built into Unified Pool League™. We think that you’ll discover a league worth switching to. After all, our primary goal was to construct a league that we ourselves would want to join.

If you like what you see, give us a try! Converting your whole division is really easy. Talk to your friends about it, share this site with them, and together we can get the ball rolling on a better pool league for everyone.

Latest Blog Posts

Cool Vegas Pool Table Lights — posted by admin was updated on 06/27/2011 09:58 AM by admin
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Tom Ross Benefit 9-Ball Tournament — posted by admin was updated on 06/09/2011 08:44 AM by admin
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Adding More Content Daily — posted by admin was updated on 05/13/2011 11:30 AM by admin
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Srsly--Another Pool League?

Yeah, we know what you're thinking--Why another pool league? The short, tl;dr answer is that the current crop of pool leagues leaves something to be desired.

Some of them offer okay payback of weekly dues, but no consistent way to win a trip to Vegas tournaments. Sure, you can pay your entry fees, travel to Vegas on your own dime, and cram a bunch of people into a hotel room to lower the cost. And then hope that you make it to the top quarter of the field, just to get something back. Or you can play in smaller regional or state tournaments that don't quite match the whole Vegas experience, either in payouts or fun.

Some others, mostly the franchises, offer Vegas trips. But the tradeoff is usually low payback of weekly dues, and shockingly horrible odds on making it to Vegas. How bad is bad? Well, if you're the average APA® team, playing in divisions of average size, and you play in the average number of divisions per year, you have a 1-in-27 chance of making it to Vegas this year (numbers based on 2010 tournament).

Put another way, with APA® you will average one Vegas trip every 27 years. In our opinion that's way too long. And we couldn't even find the corresponding information for TAP®. Let us know if you can clue us in, we'll post it.

Full Disclosure: Every franchise owner runs their own business, and odds will vary accordingly. Make sure to ask your League Operator what your precise odds are. They might be hesitant to tell you. Also, ask them about their payback percentages.

But it's not just about Vegas or the payback of weekly dues. It's also about basic fairness and fun. We were disappointed when we figured out that all the major handicap systems favored the higher-ranked players and more highly skilled teams. That's why we had to create our own, the V.A.S.T. System.

The proof is sitting right in front of you, in the form of your division standings. And even in the admissions of the leagues themselves:

g. Team Rating Limit. As with any handicapping system, higher skilled players still have an advantage over lower skilled players.

Source: USAPoolRules.pdf

There's a word that pool players use when something seems fair, but really isn't. That's called a hustle. And it's one of the main reasons that we created UPL.

We wanted a pool league that was truly fair. That, and a better Vegas. And high return of league dues. So that's what we built. It all fits together in a pool league that offers Fairness, Fun, Value and Vegas. (Get Unified)