Woo-hoo! I just renewed my Q07! ... Watch out, P, here I come!

[tbryan]

People still get excited about a number system. In cycling there is a category system. When I was racing it was category 1 (Pro), 2, 3, 4.

Note that that's still a rating system with a small number of distinct categories. A competitor moves from one category to another. As I said above, I think that any such system makes competitors more excited about crossing the thresholds between the categories no matter how they're labelled. Especially when one can attach specific results to changes between categories ("I just need one more top ten finish.", "If I make the top 4 today, I move up to a D.")

I suspect that when Allen was talking about numbers, he really meant a point-based system. Something like ELO. For example, I suspect that fencers on the point list don't really care how many points they have. ("Yay! I finally have more than 500 points!") I imagine that they really care where their number of points place them on ranking. ("Hey! I'm finally into the top 25!") If you push that kind of point system down all the way to our current unrated fencers, there is no real category. Their rating changes after every single competition. Eventually, they may find that they are seeding higher at tournaments of equivalent strength, but it's not the kind of quantum change that you see with the current system. Thus, I suspect that there will be a lot less emotional energy attached to exactly what rating a competitor earns under such a system.

[Sciurus-Rex]

... but it's not the kind of quantum change that you see with the current system. Thus, I suspect that there will be a lot less emotional energy attached to exactly what rating a competitor earns under such a system.

Huhn. See, as much as I appreciate those "quantum" jumps from one letter to another, I disagree that there would be less emotional energy tied to a system with greater differentiation. Performance feedback is valuable at any level, sometimes moreso when you're struggling at the beginning.

I would have loooooved to have been able to tell my wife, back yonder in D-days, that I had something, anything, to show for a 250-mile tournament trip. Something other than NOT getting my D renewed. Something like a 400-point or even a 40-point gain in my USFA rating. "Yeah, I didn't make the top 32, but at least I gained ground..." THAT would have had even more emotional weight for me, if such a system had been in place.

Maybe it's like we're discussing the color of the sky: Some people are content to declare it "blue" and move on; they don't appreciate others' need for more definition of hue -- and even worse, feel it necessary to belittle and argue against that perspective. So the discussion is doomed from the beginning to end badly.

[grotto]

ok so recently (last weekend) I pulled it off. I've been fencing competitively at some level since the early 90's, and finally got my C07 up from an E06. I've been close dozens of times, beat the B or C that turned the event to a D1, lost the finals at a C1, just sucked at a A2, what have you. Whether I call it a brown belt, 1134, or optimus prime, the symbol is the same, I don't think we need more granularity, that's why we fence, to see who we can beat TODAY! I've had people come up to me and exclaim "Your only an E!!!?" and now I dare say some hotshot E,D, or U will say "heh he got his C, must have been an easy tournament, I just kicked his butt!") the point is we can chase numbers around or letters or belts, but all they are is just a way of "starting", "distributing the talent", and assessing the "general strength" of the event. Fencers will adapt to what ever rating system there is and will say the same thing "Heh, he's a 5000, what ever I just kicked his butt....."

[tbryan]

Huhn. See, as much as I appreciate those "quantum" jumps from one letter to another, I disagree that there would be less emotional energy tied to a system with greater differentiation. Performance feedback is valuable at any level, sometimes moreso when you're struggling at the beginning.

Oh, I don't doubt that competitors would look at their ratings and compare their ratings to those of other fencers. I don't doubt that fencers would take pleasure in seeing their ratings go up and feel concern when their ratings go down (after an unusually good day, while fencing with an injury, etc.). I agree that it would also give brand new fencers something to watch while they struggle through their first several tournaments.

I just don't think that any particular rating would carry so much emotional weight. Right now, many fencers work for quite some time just to move from unrated to rated. That means a lot to many fencers. Once they're rated, fencers have special reason to remember those days that they lost a bout 14-15 when winning would have meant renewing a rating or moving up to the next rating.

Perhaps the total emotional energy spent thinking about ratings may stay the same. We are, after all, competitors. Competing and progressing is part of the game. I'm just claiming that the emotional energy is very focused in a system with quantum steps. In a point system, you can take pleasure in small changes in your rating, and you can be happy about big jumps in your rating (if you can sustain them through later results). But the point system doesn't really have built in "steps" to it.

I would have loooooved to have been able to tell my wife, back yonder in D-days, that I had something, anything, to show for a 250-mile tournament trip. Something other than NOT getting my D renewed.

Right, and that was my point. In a point system, your emotional attachment to your rating is really spread across every tournament you attend. In a system with quantum steps, your energy is focused on renewing and/or moving up. If you didn't renew your rating, you feel that you had "nothing to show." I didn't say "emotional weight" as in happiness or pleasure. I mean to include disappointment and frustration. Ever meet a fencer who cannot seem to move up from an E to a D after feeling like he's really trying? Even if his results are generally improving (in a point system, his rating would be slowly moving up), he doesn't experience any improvement in his rating until he finally earns that D. Then there's elation at the accoplishment and relief at finally earning the D. He worked hard to move from an E to a D, so now he's very attached to that D.

Now think about the same situation in a point system. The day where he placed high enough to earn a D in the old system is a stronger than usual result for the fencer. He probably gets a larger boost in his point rating. But that isn't combined with the previous build up of emotional frustration about just missing the D at several events and feeling like he'll always be an E. Instead, as he gradually improves, his rating gradually improves.

If I'm not making sense yet, then I'm afraid that I might simply be unable to explain my response to your question.

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

All that emotional stuff goes to hell when you realize that your results in a tournament do not always correlate to your skill as a fencer.

I'm an A. I fence like a C. I'm an A because I'm good at coaxing myself into having "On" days. There is a fencer in the area who is technically and tactically much better than I am, but he's had his B forever, because he's really bad at having good days. In this case, ratings mean very little.

Its for this and similar reasons that I believe fencers need to distance themselves from their ratings, and get real down on the quality of their fencing. An ELO type system would help create the emotional distance neccasary between ratings and ego's.

[Sciurus-Rex]

... If I'm not making sense yet, then I'm afraid that I might simply be unable to explain my response to your question.

I think I understand. I just don't think we agree.

[Allen Evans]

Fencers will adapt to what ever rating system there is and will say the same thing "Heh, he's a 5000, what ever I just kicked his butt....."

Said to me by a teammate before I fenced my first "A" rated fencer at a NAC in the late 80's:

"They may be an A, but are they an A today?"

Allen

[FoilyDeath]

oWhether I call it a brown belt, 1134, or optimus prime, the symbol is the same, I don't think we need more granularity, that's why we fence, to see who we can beat TODAY!

Hey, I don't know about you, but I would fence like a BEAST to get Optimus Prime rating!
I AM OPTIMUS PRIME! DIE EVIL DECEPTICONS!

[keith]

You confuse me with your fancy footwork and point control, sir. How are we to reconcile "substantial motivator and marker of achievement" with "fun but bad for you?"

oh my, we do seem to have stumbled upon a totally novel metaphysical conundrum; is it possible that something which we perceive as good is in fact bad for us?

Such problems are only ever solved by strong drink.

[eac]

1. There are people in chess whose lives are invested in saying "I'm a 2200 player." (Ratings are usually rounded to the nearest hundred to make them sound more impressive.) There isn't really a difference between the Elo system and letter system in how much people will strut about their ratings.

2. This is not my motivation, either. You can ascribe it to me if you want, but I sincerely believe that fencing as a whole would benefit from the introduction of an Elo system, and I've written a lot about why I think that.

[remistress]

<raises hand>

Why don't we do both???!? It's a bit like getting a letter grade. You might have a C, but if I have a 78% and you have a 71%, there is an obvious difference in skill. In other words take the ELO idea, but keep ratings so instead of an A07 you could be an AO7 2200. This could be helpful to those few whom are underrated and haven't had good turnout, or a bad day, or whatever. For instance a C07 2200, would not be fun to run into on the strip unknowingly. Also, fencing an A with 1720, one could go into that bout saying, "Sure there an A, but they're an A-"

[eac]

There are peripheral purposes, like skill landmarks, of rating systems, but the major point is tournament seeding (Maybe, once people get used to the system and realize that it's exactly the right way to rank people, it could get used for team selection, but certainly not right off the bat.).
So, tournament seeding means you rank people. Either you rank them by letter, or you rank them by Elo rating. You can't really do both. You could do one and then the other, but if you have already calculated an Elo rating, I think everybody would agree (particularly after having experienced it for a while) that ranking by an Elo rating would be a vastly more accurate seeding than ranking by letter, even if you rank by letter and break ties by Elo.

[remistress]

I completely agree; Elo would be the best way to get more evenly distributed pools. However, you could still keep the rating system for the sheer emotional attatchment of reaching a certain tier. Personally, as an E I really don't care if we go straight Elo...system seems to make sense. However, I do think letter ratings do give some information: This individual made it to the right tournament on the right day. Now the how of that question is the interesting question to me. Sometimes it's knowing where all the rated fencers are going to show up, sometimes it's about knowing "no I need to go to THIS event the locals just don't have enough people to move up", sometimes it's knowing WHEN you're going to fence well, and sometimes (which seems sometimes like a lot of the time) it's sheer luck. Therefore a letter gives you *sometimes* a quick discrete way of looking at people's decision-making ability at least as far as which tournaments to attend. My two cents: seed by ELO, keep ratings as identifiers.

[Durando]

Said to me by a teammate before I fenced my first "A" rated fencer at a NAC in the late 80's:

"They may be an A, but are they an A today?"

Allen

Or, as a wary, old épéeist might put it, "I hope that guy doesn't realize he's way beyond a C."

[Inquartata]

Yes, of course you are right. Saying "I'm a B07", for example, connotes a level of acheivement and a timeframe in which it occurred. "I'm a 1908" doesn't quite achieve the same effect.

Yes, but I don't think that's the right comparison. IMO the salient factor is not letter vs. number but rather the position of the letter or number.

So under Sciurus-Rex's example, letter ratings of P through T do not have the same cachet as A through E. Why? Because A-E are higher ordinally than P-T; they are at the top of a scale, rather than in the mediocre middle.

With numbers you'd have exactly the same effect, I think, if you compared the numbers 1 through 5, as in Academe's example, to numbers lower down the scale ordinally, like your 1908. 1-5 are at the top of the numeric scale, rather than in the mediocre middle.

Whichever scale we use, the high end of the scale is going to seem more attractive for rating purposes. I think it's just a natural human psychological bias.

I'm an A. I fence like a C. I'm an A because I'm good at coaxing myself into having "On" days.

Or perhaps because you're an epeeist.

And for once I'm not trying to be jocularly insulting. There does seem to be a much looser range of performance ( for want of a better phrase ) in epee. Luck and quirks of personal style seem to play a much greater role in advancement than in either foil or sabre, and the interplay of personal styles might just be a major determinant of whether you are an A or a C at any given moment...

1. There are people in chess whose lives are invested in saying "I'm a 2200 player."

Yes, but you know, in chess there are also titles, eg Master, Grandmaster, International Master, and so on. These probably serve the same ego-supportive purposes as our A and B do. The difference is that we have only a single scale which is both title and seeding device; chess has two scales, one for each purpose.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

I'm an A. I fence like a C. I'm an A because I'm good at coaxing myself into having "On" days.

That´s strange. FRED lists you as an B2006, if I have not been misinformed by previous f.net posts.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[oiuyt]

Hi!

That´s strange. FRED lists you as an B2006, if I have not been misinformed by previous f.net posts.

He earned the A at JO's. National tournaments aren't in FRED. If he hasn't competed since February then it's reasonable that his FRED classification wouldn't be updated.

FRED-listed classifications aren't official, blah, blah, blah. They tend to be accurate, but it's still quite possible for temporary lag to develop here and there.

-B

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

You're most likely viewing a result I had when I was a B06.

Hi!




That´s strange. FRED lists you as an B2006, if I have not been misinformed by previous f.net posts.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson