2012 Fechtschule America Wrap Up & Discussion

[Mike Edelson]

The judging, I think, was wierd.

In some cases, it was great. Incidental sword contact was ignored, etc. In other cases, it was downright awful. During one of my dussack fights, my opponent and I were literally laughing our asses off as we were fighting because the judges were getting EVERY call wrong. What I walked away with from all this was that if you dominate your opponent completely, you don't have to worry about judges. But if the fight is close, the judges determine the winner much more often than the fighters. It should not be so.

I think the judges just got tired towards the end of every tournament. It's a lot to ask of someone, to stand for three hours and watch the same stuff over and over again. I couldn't do it.

Aside from rotating judges, the key might be more experience. I was watching Axel judge, and that guy was spot on almost all the time.

Mr Analson - Mike its always fun having you around. You made me laugh more than anyone, and you are always a source great conversation. We still need to fence with longswords, and I owe you my 'A' game.

I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to @#$#@ amuse you?



(Mike Analson, eh? Touche, Matt Galas, touche. It's almost a shame we called a truce.)

[Ben Michels]

that the same amount of time was sometimes called a double and sometimes an afterblow.

I'm of the opinion that this can be true. The difference between a double and an afterblow, in my mind, is if the guy getting hit initiated his action before or after getting hit. If I get hit in the head while I'm just starting to take a swipe at your legs one handed, there's a good chance the timing on those two hits would be a afterblow to a lot of people. But it wasn't. It wasn't my intention to hit you back. It was my intention to just hit you and I got hit in the middle of that action. I'd call that a double. On the flip side, if I get hit on the shoulder and quickly initiate, right as or right after I get hit, a swipe down on a forearm in a split second, I'd call that an afterblow.

[A Froster]

This year also showed how much work needs to be done with the judging, and rule sets. I observed the 'afterblow rule' repeatedly gamed.....etc.

... I feel that the distinction between a double and an afterblow was not represented in the calls. It seemed to me (and I was closer than the judges), that the same amount of time was sometimes called a double and sometimes an afterblow.

Isnt a double kill and an afterblow really the same thing? In a double kill both fighters charge in and kill each other without regard to their own safety. In an afterblow, the person making a successful strike is careless enough to not cover him/herself and is hit by the person who was careless enough to get struck in the first place. For scoring purposes in a tournament, why aren't these both considered double kills? Yes there were people gaming the afterblow rule by taking unnecessary chances knowing there was a probability the opponent might not get the afterblow. With no penalty for repeated afterblow exchanges, you could play the odds. The afterblow IS A GOOD rule, because it makes the Abzug part of the fight just as important as the rest of the fight. You soon find out just how f***ing hard it is to enter the kreig; execute a successful strike and withdraw unscathed. We are so far away from having a pool of fighters who can do this. This is why it makes me laugh to see the USFCA trying to certify what it takes to be a HEMA coach. We have difficulty doing it after 15 years of intense study. They come bopping out of nowhere thinking they can just pull it out of their rear and Walah! "I dub you HEMA expert" Ha!

Back on subject however. The ways to make people stop gaming the afterblow rule are: 1) Start counting afterblow it for what it really is " a double kill and 2) figure out how to coach respect for the weapon into our student's minds. If we respected our training tools the same as we would a sharp weapon, double kills would be the exception rather than the rule.

[Keith P. Myers]

I took the "judging workshop" given by Scott Brown and Matt Galas, but didn't actually judge any of the tournaments because I competed in all of them except the Franco-Belgium. But here are some of my comments and observations:

1. Judging is a hard and thankless task! It would be very tiring to have to stay in one spot and keep up the level of attention required to follow the action closely for 2 hours or more.

2. On the Afterblow.....the idea was that when a judge called "point" the referee would allow one more tempo or beat before he called "halt". This would give time for the Afterblow. But this wasn't really happening. In a perfect world, a double would happen as the judge called "point", but the Afterblow wouldn't happen until after that and just before the referee called "halt". If the referee isn't allowing that additional "beat", then it can often be difficult to tell the difference between an Afterblow and a double.

3. As a judge, you really have to sound off! The noise from the crowd was such that the referee sometimes didn't hear when a point was called.

4. Lee is right in that as the skill level goes up, its going to be harder to judge the more complex exchanges. He is also right in that experience is a huge factor. Scott, Axel and Matt Galas could all follow multiple steps of the exchange and tell you exactly what happened and who scored while I was still trying to figure out who landed the last blow! The problem here is that people want to compete! How do you get a pool of good experienced judges trained up when they have to give up competing in the tournament in order to be a judge? Its tough. If someone isn't a fighter they can catch criticism as a judge for that. But if someone is a fighter, then they don't want to judge!

5. Jonathan and I went to lunch with Scott and Matt and were in on a discussion about rule sets and how to encourage clean, historical, and more advanced technique. Its a challenge! The After-blow rule and rule of 3 doubles and you're out were supposed to encourage cleaner technique. Unfortunately that wasn't always the case. I was very frustrated with myself in the Dussack because I doubled out in all 3 of my matches!

6. Any rule set can be "gamed." We saw some gaming of the After-blow rule. Matt commented that in one of the European tournaments more points were scored for a head shot than for a body shot. So people were charging in to get the head shot and taking it to the body without even trying to defend.

7. Sport Fencing went to electronic scoring to try and solve some of these same problems. Unfortunately that just created more problems. So I don't think there is an easy answer. Certainly more experienced judges will help.

[Steven Reich]

After watching and judging this tournament, I am of the opinion that the rules were good and I accept the fact that the rules will be gamed. The rules will always be gamed, no matter what they are. I used to think that we need to keep "fixing" the rules until we find something better, but now I am of the opinion that the better fighters and teachers need to instill the correct attitude into their peers and students.

As far as the after-blow and the double-kill, I see these as two subtle and very different situations. While we would sometimes see two fighters initiate an attack simultaneously and thus land at exactly the same time, more often what you would see was one fighter begin his strike and the other fighter, in response to the motion begin his attack. Thus, the strikes wouldn't land exactly at the same time, but the motion for the second strike would have been begun before the first had landed. This is different from the after-blow which could be thought of as a riposte made by the second fighter even though his defense failed--thus, the after-blow needs to have been started after the first attack hits. There is a subtle but very real difference between the two and I like the way it works because the rules teach you two good things: 1. see to your defense first and foremost, and 2. when you attack, do so in a way that is safe during and immediately after the attack lands.

I really think that the problems will greatly decrease as the judges become more experienced and the HEMA community settles on and internalizes some of the standard rule definitions (e.g. what the after-blow is).

People should also realize that these events are judged by humans rather than electronic apparatus, which means that judges are more likely to see and score attacks which are clear, discernible actions. There were some fencers in the tournaments who were much better at this than others; there were others fencers who were very difficult to judge because their techniques were wild and imprecise (some of these latter fencers also had edge-alignment problems). I guess in a way, this is also "gaming" the rules, but I think that being able to deliver good, clear attacks in a tournament is actually a skill that benefits your technique.

Steve

[Ben Michels]

Words

^^^ What he said.

[Jean Chandler]

The judging, I think, was wierd.

In some cases, it was great. Incidental sword contact was ignored, etc. In other cases, it was downright awful. During one of my dussack fights, my opponent and I were literally laughing our asses off as we were fighting because the judges were getting EVERY call wrong.

I was one of the judges in your matches here, (quite unwillingly, i was press-ganged) Lenny told me how bad it was in some of your matches. I'm sorry! I think it boils down to experience, of which I personally had almost none, and I think there will always be some random element in the judging which as you said, you can eliminate by dominating your opponent. But training the judges is really important. I think there should be an award for the best judging, every fighter can chip in $5 and the best judge is determined by comparison of the stats (the judge who is most often in sync with the others is usually right I think) and by vote of the fighters. That would encourage beeter judging. Steve for example was a very good judge, he would have gotten my vote, and Axel as well.

All in all thouh in this event, I think the people who fought better won their matches. Some probably on the borderline could have gone either way of course, but that is how I saw it in general.

But Scott was right to make us judge, since it shows us how hard it is and forces us to get a little experience. I agree with everything Steve Reich said, the relatively bad judging right now is just one of our growing pains, like not having good enough affordable fencing gloves. It will improve, and I don't think we should try to game the rules to fix it. you can't perfect the rules. In fact I'm a firm believer that we should use different rule sets each time.

J

[ashultz]

I think every group that wants to go to tournaments should also be practicing the judging side at home, for a couple of reasons:

1) all our judging needs more practice.

2) it gets people to be a little more understanding that judging is hard

3) it helps competitors understand what is hard to judge and what is easy. Great as thrusts and especially slices are they are much much harder to judge than cuts, and you have to know that if you really want to do well in tournaments.

I don't think it matters too much what local rules you judge under as long as they have some vague idea of doubles and afterblows some of the time - mostly you are training the eye to see what actually happened and then you can toss an interpretation on top of that.

And also training the eye to not see what it didn't see - when you first judge and hear a hit, you will in your mind "see" it. But you didn't see it, you really have no idea whether it was a good hit or a flex over a guard into a loud elbow cop.

I don't want to make like I'm an awesome judge yet, but we do practice judging periodically and think about these things.

[Dan Sellars]

The judging, I think, was wierd.

In some cases, it was great. Incidental sword contact was ignored, etc. In other cases, it was downright awful. During one of my dussack fights, my opponent and I were literally laughing our asses off as we were fighting because the judges were getting EVERY call wrong.

I was one of the judges in your matches here, (quite unwillingly, i was press-ganged) Lenny told me how bad it was in some of your matches. I'm sorry! I think it boils down to experience, of which I personally had almost none, and I think there will always be some random element in the judging which as you said, you can eliminate by dominating your opponent. But training the judges is really important. I think there should be an award for the best judging, every fighter can chip in $5 and the best judge is determined by comparison of the stats (the judge who is most often in sync with the others is usually right I think) and by vote of the fighters. That would encourage beeter judging. Steve for example was a very good judge, he would have gotten my vote, and Axel as well.

All in all thouh in this event, I think the people who fought better won their matches. Some probably on the borderline could have gone either way of course, but that is how I saw it in general.

But Scott was right to make us judge, since it shows us how hard it is and forces us to get a little experience. I agree with everything Steve Reich said, the relatively bad judging right now is just one of our growing pains, like not having good enough affordable fencing gloves. It will improve, and I don't think we should try to game the rules to fix it. you can't perfect the rules. In fact I'm a firm believer that we should use different rule sets each time.

J

I don't do (I want to but it is a bit over whelming where to start) this but I am starting to think that every freeplay bout should have a person judging. Not to make it competitive but to give experience to the person judging.

I think this is regardless of whether you are in the 'tournament scene' or not as I am sure it will have a lot of knock on positive effects for the 'judge', being able to read a fight and actions, keep concentrating on what is happening, understand how other people fence and why one thing worked and an other did not.

The problem is how to work towards this? It is good if you can make a class, like given at FA, but it would be nice to be able to get some pest practice guidance for the rest of us. Maybe some examples or a HA hosted article? There is a video on youtube of Bill Grandy and Guy Windsor fencing (WMAW a couple of years ago google it), Bill then annotated the action on the video and I find it very instructional.

It would be really good to see more of this. It is a lot of work I know, but surely it is of benefit to the people organising the tournaments? A lot of effort is put into organising it but if you don't have experienced judges it is not as good as it could be.

[Steven Reich]

I don't do (I want to but it is a bit over whelming where to start) this but I am starting to think that every freeplay bout should have a person judging. Not to make it competitive but to give experience to the person judging.

I think that this is a good idea (well, maybe not *every* bout, but many). In addition to giving people experience in actively watching (i.e. judging) a bout, it also gives the fighters an opportunity to give feedback ("I had a thrust to his sword-hand, but you didn't see it" -or- "That strike was actually flat and you shouldn't have counted it") and the judges to give feedback to the fighters ("Your cut was flat, watch your edge alignment" -or- "You didn't actually hit his hand, your blade hit his guard").

Seems like we should probably split this stuff off into a tournament/judging thread.

Steve