The attack in saber

So, by the letter of the rules in saber, my reading is that to have the
attack in saber, you must have:

1) Arm extending
2) Blade threatening target
3) Angle of blade with arm >= 135 degrees

(of course, having the attack is still dependent on what the opponent is
doing; I'm saying this list is necessary, but not sufficient).

In practice, it seems you also get the attack if you start moving
forward before the other person does provided you satisfy 1-3.

My question regards (3). Despite assertions by a high-ranking fencing
official that "a referee is not a protractor," this rule seems to
require them to be. How often have people seen a person denied the
attack because of their blade angle? What else can you tell me about how
this rule is applied in practice?

--Harold Buck


"I used to rock and roll all night,
and party every day.
Then it was every other day. . . ."
-Homer J. Simpson

I can't ever recall seeing that one iterated, though it seems to be
applied informally, that is, it's implicit in calls of preparation or
what we used to call "carrying the sabre", and in calling an attack
over when the blade is sufficiently horizontal ( often it isn't so
called when the blade is closer to vertical, even though the same
other conditions apply, ie front foot coming down, etc ).

Of course, every referee seems to have an idiosyncratic understanding
of what constitutes sufficiently horizontal, as you might expect...