Ratings outside the US.

[CvilleFencer]

Could one of our more worldly members please explain to me how the European rating system works? I have seen a few the members of this board that have letter rating in their profile but I do not no what they mean. One of the guys at my club was asking me and I tried to check on the FIE website but it is only in French. Any info would be appreciated!

[Boo Boo]

In the UK, we currently don't have a "ratings" system (I think we that we may have had one at some, but before I competed ;-)). We just have a national ranking system instead.

Competitions in the UK tend to be quite a bit smaller than in the US. Senior National Circuit events are open to all (and not limitted by rankings/ratings). For a large national senior competition, we would expect about 120 MF, 70 WF, 200 or so ME, 80 WE, 80 to 100 MS and 45 or 50 WS.

To get national ranking points, you have to finish in the last 64 top 75% of the competitors.

Boo

[veeco]

France has no ratings as well.

The only ratings that really exist are at the national level, just like the national points list here in the US. However everyone gets points at every national competition. National competitions do have a strength factor.

Your national points are not used in seeding in local or regional tournaments (anything that's not national basically)

[edew]

Given that our classifications system is used strictly for initial seeding purposes (and is not intended to be used for ANY OTHER EVALUATIVE PURPOSES), how do UK and French tournaments seed the initial round? What if a person never fences in national events and never earn points? How does such a person get seeded into another local or regional tournament?

I do think that the US is too obsessive with ratings and classifications. Everything is rated or classified: a woman is a 9 or a 9.5, guys are 3's or 4's. Each class and grade-level has letter grades plus point totals, GPAs, bonus grades, Nielsen ratings, poll numbers on GWB...it's all too obsessive. Perhaps US fencing might consider going with some other method of classifying fencers with no linear evaluative system. Make it different from among all the other sports that do such things.

[veeco]

Originally posted by edew
Given that our classifications system is used strictly for initial seeding purposes (and is not intended to be used for ANY OTHER EVALUATIVE PURPOSES), how do UK and French tournaments seed the initial round? What if a person never fences in national events and never earn points? How does such a person get seeded into another local or regional tournament?

Either by random, or at the discretion of the BC who usually knows the fencers and their relative strengths

[CvilleFencer]

Hey all, thanks for letting me know about this. I have wondered for a while how it would translate outside the us.

I do agree with Edew to a certain point in that I feel that way to much is placed on A's vs. C's and so forth, but I think that we need something with all the fencers in the states. If we did not have letter ranks and catagories can you imagine what a madhouse Nationals would be? We would be fighting it out for weeks!

Thanks again to all for the info!

[edew]

Originally posted by veeco
Either by random, or at the discretion of the BC who usually knows the fencers and their relative strengths

Hmm...random...that would at least make seeding faster. But it better be random. I'd hate to think that some unscrupulous Bout Committee person decide to put all the tough fencers into one pool and let some other person sneak in via an easy pool.

I think it's the mistrust (and rightly so) by fencers of tournament organizers that sets the classification system used by the US fencers. Who'd want to go to a tournament, not knowing that one could be placed in a pool with all the other top fencers while other pools are free of any top fencers?

[Boo Boo]

In the UK, poules are seeded by national ranking. Any people without national rankings go in as a 999. 999s are lower than anyone with a national ranking, I believe that 999s are ranked alphabetically. This is how things are done at A-grades, I believe. If a 999 has a world ranking, then I believe that may be taken into consideration when seeding British competitions.

Timothy Chang turned up to one of the larger national circuit events in the UK last September. I don't know if he might have had a world ranking or not, but I don't think that anything was taken into account whilst seeding him: I think he was seeded 999 - he was in a hideous poule... (one of my poor friends was in his poule).

Boo

[veeco]

Originally posted by edew
Hmm...random...that would at least make seeding faster. But it better be random. I'd hate to think that some unscrupulous Bout Committee person decide to put all the tough fencers into one pool and let some other person sneak in via an easy pool.

Yeah, that can happen. Mostly at lower rated tournaments and local tournaments. But they have some rules as to how the BC is composed and who should be on it, so it's not like there is only one person from the organizing club in the BC (as it is usually the case in the US). The BC is usually made up of several people (about 5) and the rules make it that there is usually enough balancing powers so that it's not so easy to favor someone. Furthermore, before the tournament starts the people making up the BC are announced and if you have a problem with one of them being there you should be able to act at this point, though I have never seen it happen.

But it favoritism does happen sometimes though...

[nahouw]

The fairest way that I have ever seen to seed a tournament is what they do on the Coupe du Nord Circuit.

There is a preliminary round of pools -- All competitors are seeded according to the following: 1) World Ranking 2) Coupe du Nord Ranking 3) National ranking. The preliminary pool round is run, and the results from this round is the seeding into the actual tournament.

[veeco]

Originally posted by nahouw
The fairest way that I have ever seen to seed a tournament is what they do on the Coupe du Nord Circuit.

There is a preliminary round of pools -- All competitors are seeded according to the following: 1) World Ranking 2) Coupe du Nord Ranking 3) National ranking. The preliminary pool round is run, and the results from this round is the seeding into the actual tournament.

So they have 2 rounds of pools? Or just the first round is used for the DE table?

I think that the fairest way is what you describe, with 2 rounds of pools, with only the second round of pools results counting for the DE table.

[nahouw]

yes, 2 rounds of pools -- the preliminary round is used to seed the official tournament, which is round of pools followed by DE.

[oiuyt]

While I was over in England last June I competed in a couple of events, one a local in the London area, the other a Coupe du Nord event. For the local I arrived early (badly overestimated the driving time from Cheltenham combined with the fact that I tend to arrive early anyway) and had time to kill with the local organizer and another early arrival well before anyone else had shown up. Originally the organizer didn't really know how to handle the situation and decided to seed me as Boo Boo is describing. As he went off to go do that the other early arrival (who had spent some time in the US and was well familiar with our rating system) happened to ask whether or not I had a US rating. You should have seen how fast she went off to go talk to the organizer when I mentioned my A. I'm not sure what formula they ended up using, but I believe they made something up that was intended to seed me near (but not at) the top of the tournament (not sure that it worked, I was still in the same pool as the top fencer).

So I have personal experience that shows that at least on some occasions the seeding rules in England get tweaked to try to balance overseas visitors.

-B :)

[Boo Boo]

Oiuyt, did you train at all in the Uk whilst you were over here? If so, which clubs did you go to?

Boo