Testing of "newer" timing and other items of interest in the SEMI report.

[rudd]

My apologies if this has been posted already. I was reading though the SEMI 2010 meeting minutes. A couple of interesting items such as insulated pommel no longer required in foil, same rules for foil and sabre mask wire and then this one.

"c. Italian Fencing Federation Proposals.
Proposal 1: Characteristics of Scoring Apparatus, time for foil, new time of 500 ms
(± 25 ms tolerance) to ignore all signals for subsequent hits.
Proposal 2: Characteristics of Scoring Apparatus, time for foil, new contact time of 8
ms (± 1 ms tolerance).
Proposal 3 Characteristics of Scoring Apparatus, time for sabre, new time of 250 ms
(± 10 ms tolerance) to ignore all signals for sub sequent hits.
From a technical point of view, all the solutions presented are available and can be
done, changing in the apparatus an internal chip, not expensive – only few Euro. So
the SEMI Commission cannot give an opinion, but works with other Commissions
actually involved: first of them ate Refereeing and Coaches Commissions. Tests will
be done for foil and sabre in Bupadest, next week, 18th and 19th September, with
Magyar fencers; a new electronic apparatus made by Italian Firm Favero can manage
two different timings. Marcello Baiocco, Membre d’Honneur and Past President of
the SEMI FIE Commission will be present, invited by Comex. The results of this test
will be transmitted to SEMI Commission."

Did anything ever come of this?

[oiuyt]

All of the preliminary proposals (I believe there were some non-Italian proposals as well) for changing timing were withdrawn and will not appear before the FIE Congress for a vote next month.

It's not uncommon for proposals to be withdrawn before a vote. Until the meeting happens in December I wouldn't count on any given proposal being approved or even voted upon.

-B

[rudd]

Hi Oiuyt. Thanks for explanation.

[Inquartata]

Now, if the proposals had come from the Russian federation...maybe a different story.

[esgrima]

That's just great. NOT!!!! I mean seriously, what do they wanna do with this sport (saber), kill it? Saber refs will have to be re-programmed so that they understand (again after a 5 year brain fart) that 2 lights, no blade contact, no foot down stuff, doesn't necessarily mean the guy going forward gets the point. 250ms is way too much and if refs aren't willing to change their criteria concerning AIP out of the box, then we're gonna have some serious controversies arise.

[Sean Butler]

I don't know, esgrima... My experience is that even now at the US NAC level and from what I have seen of the World Cup level, the calls for AIP are pretty tight and don't really require any changing of their criteria. I am sure there are refs here and there who don't properly call preparation vs. attack, but the good ones seem to get it just fine.

I would love to be able to rely on my reasonably well-timed parry riposte (i.e. less than 1/4 of a second) to set off a lamp on the box. As it stands now the only ripostes which work reliably are either a.) those for which the opponent was out of distance anyway, or b.) ones which are merely a beat parry. As much as I like the tightness of modern saber as it is, I do feel that a loosening of the lock-out time would give us back certain actions which just feel right and yet lose to sloppy remises.

I do have to admit though that I don't really consider it a high priority to widen the lockout time.

[warlordkenobi]

Does this have anything to do with these videos that were posted on the FIE's youtube channel?

http://www.youtube.com/FIEvideo#p/u/26/zXGGbcCzmi8
http://www.youtube.com/FIEvideo#p/u/25/9z07TFJ21sU
http://www.youtube.com/FIEvideo#p/u/24/Zpdoa8XlRa0
http://www.youtube.com/FIEvideo#p/u/23/_LoGCpAndOU

[esgrima]

I don't know, esgrima... My experience is that even now at the US NAC level and from what I have seen of the World Cup level, the calls for AIP are pretty tight and don't really require any changing of their criteria. I am sure there are refs here and there who don't properly call preparation vs. attack, but the good ones seem to get it just fine.

I would love to be able to rely on my reasonably well-timed parry riposte (i.e. less than 1/4 of a second) to set off a lamp on the box. As it stands now the only ripostes which work reliably are either a.) those for which the opponent was out of distance anyway, or b.) ones which are merely a beat parry. As much as I like the tightness of modern saber as it is, I do feel that a loosening of the lock-out time would give us back certain actions which just feel right and yet lose to sloppy remises.

I do have to admit though that I don't really consider it a high priority to widen the lockout time.

I should point out that I'm only talking about AIP outside of the center of the strip, when one fencer is advancing and the other retreating. The advancing fencer can do basically whatever and simply stab the other in the gut when he feels that the retreating fencer is going to launch an attack. The refs used to call that AIP and give the touch to the reatreater but since the timing change it's become this: 2 lights, touch for the advancing fencer regardless of his faulty arm position. This is a bad interpretation but we have accepted it to be the norm. If we change the time to 250ms (more than double what we have now 120ms), we might have to re-think this interpretation.

[Sean Butler]

It's certainly hard to debate calls like that when seeing them described in text. Maybe you can post a link to a video and a time in it which gives an example of what you mean.

[esgrima]

It's certainly hard to debate calls like that when seeing them described in text. Maybe you can post a link to a video and a time in it which gives an example of what you mean.

http://www.youtube.com/user/CyrusofC.../9/Y79D0p12wDs

fischl's 3rd and 11th touches in the above video

http://www.youtube.com/user/CyrusofC.../4/LLVSrzDUMZM

here basically all of FOR's touches going forward out of center are IMO an abuse of the conventions of ROW. I'd hate to imagine how this would be with 250ms

[Craig]

Does this have anything to do with these videos that were posted on the FIE's youtube channel?

http://www.youtube.com/FIEvideo#p/u/26/zXGGbcCzmi8
http://www.youtube.com/FIEvideo#p/u/25/9z07TFJ21sU
http://www.youtube.com/FIEvideo#p/u/24/Zpdoa8XlRa0
http://www.youtube.com/FIEvideo#p/u/23/_LoGCpAndOU

Took me a few minutes to figure out the box setups. On the ones where it is 8,15, the upper graphics represent the machine at 8ms and the box in the lower right represents the 15ms.

[edew]

http://www.youtube.com/user/CyrusofC.../9/Y79D0p12wDs

fischl's 3rd and 11th touches in the above video

http://www.youtube.com/user/CyrusofC.../4/LLVSrzDUMZM

here basically all of FOR's touches going forward out of center are IMO an abuse of the conventions of ROW. I'd hate to imagine how this would be with 250ms

Fischl's 3rd touch was done with a second-intention parry-riposte. The 11th was his attempt to search maybe he found the blade, I didn't think so. In neither case was it the simple advance-advance-finish that you're decrying. I personally feel that the advancing fencer gets to hold the arm back. The extension only has to occur prior to the completion of the last advance prior to the lunge. If you don't like being the retreating fencer, be the advancing fencer and take advantage of the way the referee calls it.

[edew]

And in the second video with Adam Austin and Michael Wiest, the first touch was attack in prep (given to FOTL), subsequent ones were clearly attacks by FOTR because the FOTL wasn't attacking! Can't be AIP if you're not doing the "A" part of the AIP. Retreating and making pokey-pokey is not attacking. In one instance, FOTL made a pokey-pokey that fell short, FOTR made the attack and FOTL remised. In many cases, FOTL is making false actions, hoping to draw FOTR to make the attack. When FOTR actually makes the attack, it invariably landed. FOTL's primary goal is to not get hit when retreating. He didn't succeed in doing that.

I agreed with every call that Derek made except the one that resulted in 9-11. There was a slight "harrummpf" from the background when that call was made. If anything, there were several parry ripostes by FOTL (Adam) that didn't go off. A change to 250ms would have given him the light and the point.

If you're claiming that Derek Cotton made consistently bad "abuse of RoW convention" calls, I'm inclined to not agree with you.

[edew]

Took me a few minutes to figure out the box setups. On the ones where it is 8,15, the upper graphics represent the machine at 8ms and the box in the lower right represents the 15ms.

Ok, I guess that makes sense because the scoring machine in the lower corner didn't always light up and I didn't know what it represented. And I thought the 8,15 was using the European convention of using comma to our period for the decimal point. (8.15ms seems unnecessarily precise, I guess, in retrospect.)

[AndrewH]

http://www.youtube.com/user/CyrusofC.../9/Y79D0p12wDs

fischl's 3rd and 11th touches in the above video

3rd touch was a parry riposte. On the 11th, Douville misses his initial AIP and reaches again.

No matter how much preparation the attacking fencer is in, standing on your toes reaching in will never get you an AIP call. It doesn't show that you're taking the ROW and attacking, just that you're fishing around with your blade and hoping to get a light.

[esgrima]

If you're claiming that Derek Cotton made consistently bad "abuse of RoW convention" calls, I'm inclined to not agree with you.

No, that's not what I'm saying. The ref is calling it how it's ''supposed'' to be called. I agree with you on the touch to make it 9-11. Attack from left.

[Sean Butler]

http://www.youtube.com/user/CyrusofC.../9/Y79D0p12wDs

fischl's 3rd and 11th touches in the above video

http://www.youtube.com/user/CyrusofC.../4/LLVSrzDUMZM

here basically all of FOR's touches going forward out of center are IMO an abuse of the conventions of ROW. I'd hate to imagine how this would be with 250ms

I am no top-level ref or anything, but to me the calls in the first video were reasonable, and in the second video I completely agreed with 90% of the ref's calls. The other 10% were reasonable even though I might call them differently. I certainly didn't see the FOR abusing ROW nor the ref giving him ROW when he shouldn't have had it. In fact many times in that second bout the fencer moving forward lost ROW because of erroneous arm motion or attacks launched out of proper distance, etc.

[esgrima]

I am no top-level ref or anything, but to me the calls in the first video were reasonable, and in the second video I completely agreed with 90% of the ref's calls. The other 10% were reasonable even though I might call them differently. I certainly didn't see the FOR abusing ROW nor the ref giving him ROW when he shouldn't have had it. In fact many times in that second bout the fencer moving forward lost ROW because of erroneous arm motion or attacks launched out of proper distance, etc.

I'm gonna have to keep searching youtube to find a better example of what I'm talking about. Before 2005 we saw AIP (Saber) called out of the center of the strip more often and nowadays I don't think we see it so much if at all. That's basically the point of my post. If the time goes up to 250ms then the refs might have to re-think the way they call AIP (out of center) to avoid situations like the ones foil had in the past with the so called marching attacks.

[Alexander Kai]

Could someone please tell me what the current times are? So I have a vague idea of what changes are being made please?

Thanks.

[SJCFU#2]

Could someone please tell me what the current times are?

Current times are listed in Appendix B to the Material rules.