Row!

[meph]

I am fairly new to the competitive circuit and want to know where, if at all, I can find a clear listing of the priority ROW system?!?! I've looked on USFA and it's not there, the ROW rules post on their 99 rules still just talk about point in line, arm extended! Please help! I think I would do better if I fully understood what the ROW they are calling is!

Meph

[JEC]

Escrime-TV real video

Even if you don't know French, this is the best I seen on the web to explain ROW in foil to a beginner.

[magma]

this is really a beautiful video, thanks, i'm trying to save it now.

[Stryder]

Magma-

First extension, last beat. That's right of way in a nutshell.

(I just wanted to test out my new avatar)

If you want to read www.geocities.com/fencinglessons/5.html
I think that is the ROW page.

[magma]

thank you stryder, i am hoping that all is forgiven, i overreacted to something you sent along time ago. it's nice to see you back on fencing.net, though you must have been lurking around in some thread or another.......
your avatar is delightful, i have also been searching for something a little more zingy, I realize they're difficult to find, and I lose patience on the net, when searching around for them, to upload, download, paste, blah and etc.

the right of way, i find it very easy to understand and i've pretty good at seeing the row during a fight but, people still argue, i have a fast eye, i see alot, does not mean that the rest of me is as fast. it may be from years of typing, i type at 80 words per minute. i find row a pain in the neck, but that media thing is terrific. one of the questions that lingers in my mind about the old row is the parry of the attack followed by the riposte, but the director doesn't see it because it's 'too small'; however, in training we are training for the small movements to keep our opponent from seeing it [hence the development of the fast eye syndrome], now,
i have trained with a person who has decided that seeing it doesn't matter, the director must now HEAR it; yes, hear it. So, if I parry riposte, real fast and the director doesn't see it, then he better darn well hear it. why? because the person that i trained with does very well in competition with this long term tactic. she consistently does well in large competitions because of it. ......
epee removes all of the anguish associated with the loss of a point due to 'i didn't consider that an attack' 'you arm was slightly bent at the elbow [hence the huge extensions you see in some women foilists], and also etc. epee removes all of this in one felled swoop.

[neevel]

Here's the text of a handout given to beginners' class members at my club:

Right of Way Explained

The right-of-way rules that govern scoring in foil and sabre are one of the more confusing aspects of fencing for beginners. Right-of-way was originally developed to encourage tactically sound fencing techniques that would be likely to get you out of a real swordfight alive. The basic principle is that, when you are threatened by an attack, you need to make sure that you will not be hit before attempting to make a hit on your opponent. A more practical way of stating this is:"If somebody is attacking you, just sticking your sword out and hoping they miss you and run on to your point is not a smart tactic."
When a fencer initiates an attack, that attack is said to have right-of-way. If the defender simply counterattacks but does not stop the attack, then the attacker will score the touch, even if both fencers are hit. The attack is signified by extending the sword arm so that the opponent is threatened. Note that the attack is defined by when the arm starts extending, not by when it becomes fully straight (there are a few more traditional-minded fencers who maintain that the full extension should be the definition of the attack, but this view is contrary to current referee's guidelines). The point does not need to be aimed laser-straight at the target to be considered threatening the target.
After an attack is started, it has right-of-way until it either misses, or is parried by the defender. When a successful parry is made, right-of-way then passes to the defender, who can try to make a riposte (return hit) against the attacker. If the original attacker in turn parries the riposte, they can then make a counter-riposte with right-of-way. Right-of-way thus passes back and forth between the two fencers, like the ball passing between tennis players. A fencer can always try to hit when they don't have right-of-way, but they will only score if the other fencer does not hit at the same time.
Right-of-way can be lost if a fencer hesitates for too long. For example, suppose you parry an attack, then wait for a moment before riposting, and your opponent hits you again (remises) while you are waiting, and you riposte after that. The referee will likely call the action in favor of your opponent. How long of a hesitation is necessary to lose right-of-way is a matter of judgment for the referee. It is important to note that it is a delay in starting an action that can lose right of way. If you were to make a riposte that is slow in arriving but starts before your opponent's remise, you would still have right-of-way. Similarly, a slow-moving attack would still have right of way, even if your opponent's counterattack were to hit before the attack hits.
There is one action that has right-of-way over an attack, and that is a defensive line established before the attack. A fencer has a line when their weapon arm is extended fully, with the weapon pointed directly at the opponent. The line must be fully in place prior to the initiation of any offensive action by the opponent-- simply jerking your arm straight when your opponent begins an attack is not sufficient, even if you do manage to snap your elbow straight before the attack lands. In order to gain right of way when attacking a line, you must first deflect your opponent's blade by beating or pushing it away with your own blade.
Beating or taking your opponent's blade at the start of an attack will gain right-of-way, so long as there is no delay between the blade action and the extension of the sword arm.
In a situation where both fencers are hit and neither has right-of-way (for instance, when both fencers start attacks at the exact same time), neither fencer will score a touch.

As an addendum to the above:

A very common mistake by beginners is to attempt to "jut-and-lunge" every time anything that looks remotely like a hesitation or withdrawal of the attack occurs. In general, you want to be very leery of attempting to beat an offensive action to the punch-- successful stop-hits or attacks-into-preparation have to be deliberately set up. You need to think about it this way: a real sword point has much less stopping power than even a .22 pistol, and unless your shot placement is perfect you can't count with certainty on a .22 pistol stopping an oncoming assailant at close range with a knife. So do you really want to bet your life on the fact that you managed to snap your arm straight and and hit an opponent with considerable momentum a fraction of a second before they hit you?

Other items to consider:

- Relative timing the two fencers' actions is important, and your perception of the timing (colored by your knowledge of what you're trying to do) may be very different than what the referee peceives.

- A preparation once is not preparation forever. If your opponent makes a preparation, but you do not take advantage of it until after the attack has been re-established, then your action is not 'in-time'. The above mentioned issue of your perception of timing vs. the referees perception is also important-- in the time lag between when you recognize a preparation and when you physically start your reaction to it, the attack may have been reestablished.

- In regarding parrying, the parry must be seen as adequately deflecting the attack. A tiny parry that contacts the blade but does not appear to deflect it adequately will not be considered sufficient, and the call will be that the attack arrives (sometimes with the added descriptor "mal-parry"). A general principle is, the wider the distance, the smaller the parry needed to deflect the attack. At close distance, parries need to be wider to completely close the line. If your small parries aren't adequate, then make a bigger distance-break before executing the parry.

- Lastly, the fencing rulebook is no more sufficient to establish how r.o.w. will actually be called than the baseball rules are sufficient to establish how the strike zone is actually called, or the basketball rules to determine what will actually be called as a foul.

-Dave

[magma]

that was an excellent explanation, the mal parry, or insufficient parry is something that i had been trying to explain to a few people but they insisted that it was an outdated notion, as outdated as the stop hit/ or stop thrust. I agree with the stop hit idea as being a problem in foil, because time and time again [no pun], the director see the attack, and is standing there waiting for it to land, and then fencer y sticks their hand out, in great tempo, lands squarely on fencer x's chest, then fencer x lands a millisecond later and the director says: attack from my left, fencer x's point. It's as if the stop thrust doesn't exist. then the director 'patiently explains' that fencer x 'began' their attack first, so the director needs to be able to see not only the beginning of the attack, but the actions of the other fencer, which might not always be a parry riposte, sometimes the old stop thrust is all that's needed. but, if you lose enough points using this technique, then you have to say to yourself, I understand that this director does not like stop thrusts, i won't use them, i will use a parry riposte, but the parry still is trained small, we may not always use them small, but we're trained small parry, but it still has to be strong. the director should be able to hear the "Ding" of the parry, before the riposte. i think that's why, after so much foil for me, i really felt it was time for a change, but i'll still fence a little foil. Belive it or not: the region in which a person fences is also important. Your guys have to know what's cooking and bring the new stuff back to their salles. If "ding" wins, then teach "ding" if something else works then teach that.

[meph]

See and that's my problem! I 100% understand row as it is detailed in the USFA rules--and how I've fenced with it for years! However, when I started competing it was different. People had their blades facing BEHIND them, but they had forward motion. So I would stop thrust and they would hit like full seconds later and it is STILL called their point. Drives me nuts!!!!! So I'm having teh worst time trying to get it through my head that I need to attack more and not worry about stop-thrusts!

Meph

[Stryder]

magma- I don't remember offending you. I try to keep track of these things, too. What did I do?

Meph- Understanding row from reading it in the rule book is like understanding the Sistine chapel by reading a description of it. (There's this guy with his hand out and another guy is about to touch him...)

Fence more.
Fence faster.
Attacks that arrive have right of way in practice. End of discussion. If you can't stop them from hitting you, then you lose.
Attacks that land generally have right of way in competition too. When they don't, which is rare, the referee often screws it up and gives the point to the attacker anyway.
See the pattern?

Fortune favors the bold.

[meph]

Totally! that's what it boils down too, I agree!

For instance, people attacking with a bent arm, in the USFA rules it states specifically that such attacks are preparation, but in a tournament, it often is now called that way. "Forward motion" equals row! It's all way different then I'm used to!

Meph

[135711]

stryder, let's not dredge up old dirt, forget it, it's water under the bridge. you're okay, i'm okay, let's talk about right of way, should we get rid of it? keep it? or fence epee?

[Craig]

Originally posted by Stryder
magma- I don't remember offending you. I try to keep track of these things, too. What did I do?

Stryder - looks like magma = 135711 = mango = it's me mango

Craig

[neevel]

Meph-

Re-read the bit I mentioned about "preparation once not being preparation forever". What's going on with the bent-arm actions is typically this: The attacker initiates an action, and the defender begins retreating. The attacker presses the defender with the arm held up cocked to deliver the finish of the attack, waiting for the right moment. After a few retreats the defender attempts to make a stop-hit/AIP. In order to to this, the defender must first reverse direction, and so stops retreating. This is _precisely_ the cue that the attacker has been waiting for-- the attacker instantly begins bringing the arm down to deliver the finish of the attack, giving the defender no time to make the stop hit. Your extension may be only a fraction of a second late, but it's still late. It may not seem late to you, but your vantage point (directly in front of the attacker rather than viewing from the side), and the fact that your knowledge of what you want to do and want to see can color your perception, result in you being less able to correctly perceive what is actually going on than the referee.

Remember, the attack is when the arm _starts_ moving forward, by even a small degree. The fact that the point is aimed upwards at the start of that forward motion of the arm is irrelevant-- there is no "angle-of-attack" concept present. Once the arm is coming down, the attack has priority, and if you do not make it miss you it will count, even if your counterattack hits first, timewise. The stop-thrust exists, but you need to do it before the attacker's arm starts coming forward. You have to deliberately set this up by, for example, throwing in a false retreat to make the attacker take an extra step forward and thus close the distance to where you can make the stop hit in good time.

-Dave

[pkt]

JEC,

That's a great link.

PK