Ideas for how to rescore figure skating? | Page 4 | Golden Skate

Ideas for how to rescore figure skating?

WeakAnkles

Record Breaker
Joined
Aug 1, 2011

The Mozart concerto is absolutely lovely.

As far as the scoring goes...well I tend to be more about ID than any other discipline, and I am right now watching them destroy all the positive changes they made to bring some credibility and integrity after the cheating scandals of the 1990s and 2000s. And the sport continues to decline in popularity in all parts of the world except for Asia and Russia.

The utter stupidity of the ISU never fails to [insert about 20 different words here] me.

Otherwise, what andromache said above. :agree:
 

TontoK

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I've made this suggestion before, and people were aghast:

I say a jump isn't really a jump if it isn't landed. A fall on a jump should receive no points. It heightens the risk/reward factor. Oh, and you still get a mandatory reduction for the fall. So go ahead and try that 3A and quad. Big reward if you land it, and big penalty if you don't.

For that matter, I don't know a description of a jump that concludes "land on two feet" or "turn out of it" or "step out at the end."

Skate clean, or get off the podium!

I love the fireworks, but I don't like the mess we're seeing. Penalize the heck out of the messes.
 

ramurphy2005

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I've made this suggestion before, and people were aghast:

I say a jump isn't really a jump if it isn't landed. A fall on a jump should receive no points. It heightens the risk/reward factor. Oh, and you still get a mandatory reduction for the fall. So go ahead and try that 3A and quad. Big reward if you land it, and big penalty if you don't.

For that matter, I don't know a description of a jump that concludes "land on two feet" or "turn out of it" or "step out at the end."

Skate clean, or get off the podium!

I love the fireworks, but I don't like the mess we're seeing. Penalize the heck out of the messes.

I agree with you on falls. I know I have some old posts where I've brought it up, too.

I wouldn't go quite that far on a jump error that isn't a fall, but probably having a set negative GOE for it. No positive bullets to balance the negative aspect of it out.
 

cohen-esque

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 27, 2014
^^Turning out of the landing (albeit in a deliberate and controlled way) was a pretty standard jump technique for a long time, especially before Gus Lussi came along in the 1950s, and I think has pretty much always been considered “clean” unless it’s between jumps in combination. Browning turned out of his quad, for instance.

Granted “clean” is not necessarily the same as “good.” I agree with you about falls, and it was formerly supposed to be the case under 6.0 that a two-footed jump shouldn’t count as performed. (But for points-incentivizing purposes under IJS, I would be alright with negative GOE penalties just being more severe. Maybe 15% instead of 10% or something.)

Maybe this was suggested somewhere else, but I think in regards to GOE scaling in general the ISU should consider keeping a percentage principle, while making it a different percentage based on the type of element. Like, jumps could be +/-10%; spins and steps could be +/-15% and choreo sequences could be +/-20%.
 

surimi

Onward and forward, Sota!
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Nov 12, 2013
My suggestion is simple. If you want skating to be generally viewed as more fair than it is now, then punish the visible mistakes harshly, and assign only minor deductions for hard-to-see stuff even experts cannot agree on (pre-rotation, UR etc). As long as there are judges who give wobbly / slow spins + GOE, and judges who give +3 and +2 to a jump with a hopout (Vasiljev's 3F3T SC combo... couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the protocol), the sport will never be viewed as fair, and rightly so.
 

ruga

Final Flight
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Oct 20, 2017
A harsher way to penalize falls is just simply making the deduction bigger - like -2 or -3. Another thing is underrotated/wrong edge jumps should not be getting that much of a negative GOE if they look normal overall. They already have lower BV. Maybe cap GOE at +1 +2, but it's unfair how sometimes an underrotated jump will take away more points than a fall. Also, lots of casual fans get confused when a skater with falls get more technical points than the one with not really visible mistakes
 

[email protected]

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Mar 26, 2014
I've made this suggestion before, and people were aghast:

I say a jump isn't really a jump if it isn't landed. A fall on a jump should receive no points. It heightens the risk/reward factor. Oh, and you still get a mandatory reduction for the fall. So go ahead and try that 3A and quad. Big reward if you land it, and big penalty if you don't.

For that matter, I don't know a description of a jump that concludes "land on two feet" or "turn out of it" or "step out at the end."


Skate clean, or get off the podium!

I love the fireworks, but I don't like the mess we're seeing. Penalize the heck out of the messes.

Trusova will be absolutely untouchable if this comes true. She will not need to learn a triple axel.
 

moonvine

All Hail Queen Gracie
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I guess how to restore it depends on your goal. Do you want to make it more fair to athletes? More popular among spectators outside of Japan and Russia? I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and popular US sports are things like football, baseball, basketball. There can be minor rule changes but a field goal is always worth 3 points. No ones going to come next year and say oh a field goal is wort 4 points now. Only very dedicated fans like us are going to even attempt to figure out scoring.
 

TontoK

Hot Tonto
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Here's another question.

Somewhere during the messy performances at Skate Canada, I think I recall a skater had two spins invalidated. Zero points.

At 4CC last year, Hubbell/Donohue had a lift invalidated. Zero points.

No complaints, that was in accordance to the rules.

But, how can we look at those situations, which really involved no major disruptions to the programs, and, in fact, required some after-the-fact explanation of the rules to justify... how do we say those elements were completely worthless... and yet at Skate Canada, I recall two instances - one on a jump, one on a throw - where the skater ended up sliding on the backside across the ice and slamming into the boards.

But those elements got points, not full credit of course, but more than the examples I illustrated before.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
I've made this suggestion before, and people were aghast:

I say a jump isn't really a jump if it isn't landed. A fall on a jump should receive no points. It heightens the risk/reward factor. ...

With regard to risk/reward, the current rules go something like this.

At Skate Canada Alexandra Trusova fell on her opening quad Salchow. If it had been successful she would have got, say, 11.64 points (I am giving her +2 GOE). Falling, she got 3.85, taking the deduction into account.

If she had played it safe and done a triple Salchow instead, she would have got, let's say 5.16 points (+2 GOE), with close to 100% certainty (virtually no risk).

Should she take the chance and go for the quad?

Suppose she has a 17% chance of landing the quad and an 83% chance of falling. If she goes for it her "average" score over many attempts is

.17x11.64 + .83x3.85 = 5.17 points -- essentially the same as the sure thing triple.

Conclusion: If you can land your quad at least 17% of the time, you should go for it.

In other words, there is very little risk over a whole season of competition.

But even if the rules were changed to give 0 credit for a fall and a -1 point penalty in addition, it would still pay to attempt the quad provided you have a success rate of 41%.

(In this example, Trusova probably has an 80% success rate or more, which works out to 10 points per attempt on the average, even if she falls occasionally. She should always go for it, and throw in a quad flip and a quad loop, too.)
 
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TontoK

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While post.

Thank you! I always admire how you can take a concept and put a little weight to it.

So, if a skater can land a quad 1 out of 5 times, it makes perfect sense to give it a go... under the scoring current scoring system.

I find that fascinating. Under my proposal, they at least have to land it 2 in 5 times, which is still less that I would have guessed.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
So if no one skates clean, the podium would be empty?

That would actually be kind of cool. Like in prestigious piano-playing contests, sometimes nobody plays up to the standards of the event and the judges decide not to award the trophy that year.

(Tchaikovsky is rolling over in his grave trying to cover his ears. We can't give the Tchaikovsky Prize for that :) )
 
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katymay

Medalist
Joined
Mar 7, 2006
Split figure skating into two divisions: 1) athletic figure skating in which the PCS score is removed (because really, what is the point?) and 2) artistic figure skating in which the spins are given scores equal to a finite amount of jumps, PCS scores remain etc. In artistic figure skating, return the spiral, ina bauer and so on.
 

flanker

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Feb 10, 2018
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Split figure skating into two divisions: 1) athletic figure skating in which the PCS score is removed (because really, what is the point?) and 2) artistic figure skating in which the spins are given scores equal to a finite amount of jumps, PCS scores remain etc. In artistic figure skating, return the spiral, ina bauer and so on.

As somebody said, there is ice dance already.
 

cohen-esque

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 27, 2014
As somebody said, there is ice dance already.
Except that of course ID has a distinct lack of jumps and spirals and significantly fewer spins, if you’ve ever actually watched it, or read the post you quoted.

What a ridiculous comment.
 

temadd

Final Flight
Joined
Nov 19, 2015
IMO the scoring system is not the problem. It's the way that the judges misuse it. Most judges are too biased, lazy or gutless to score what they see in that very moment.
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Interesting.

Can you design what the computer interface would look like and how it would change as each new element is executed?

Would judges have the ability to tick off all the bullet points in real time and/or to take notes on paper and input them after the program, depending on their own preference or on how soon the skater moves on to the next element or on how quickly the tech panel calls the element and the data operator inputs it into the computer?
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and popular US sports are things like football, baseball, basketball. There can be minor rule changes but a field goal is always worth 3 points. ...

Still, the governing bodies do make small rules changes each year. For instance, Major League Baseball periodically reviews whether there are enough crowd-pleasing home runs or if fans would rather see a pitcher's duel. Then they adjust the instructions to the referees about how wide to call the strike zone the next year.
 
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