Stage Design vs. Shooter Ability across the Divisions

[Braxton1]

I was looking at the results from a recently completed Major Match:

The overall winner was from Open Division (of course) and a very high-caliber shooter.

The Limited winner (a past World Champion in his own right) was only 82%.

The Production winner (not a World Champ, but a respectably consistent high contender) was at only 66% overall.

Does this disparity say something about the particular course designs at this match? (Shots were too hard without a dot? There was a lot of opportunities to shoot "on the move", which favors a dot and high-capacity? There wasn't enough room between shooting positions, so capacity became a BIG determinant?)

I ask this, because at our local matches, there are a limited number of people who have the realistic ability to win High Overall. One of them will usually shoot Open, one or two will usually shoot Limited or Single Stack, and a couple shoot Production. If everyone is "on their game", they'll be separated by less than 10%. A lot of the time, the Open guy or one of the Limited folks will win, but it isn't unheard of for one of the Production guys or Single Stack guys to win HOA.

I remember when the Divisions were first broken out in the early 90's. At that time, "conventional wisdom" was that a top performer should be able to shoot within 10% of his Open scores with a high-capacity Limited gun and just below that while shooting a minor-caliber Production gun or his Single Stack.

Thoughts?

[MWP]

We have solid GMs in our area in open, limited, production and revo. They all finished 82-85% at nationals.

Level 2 match, over 9 stages:

Open GM 100%

Limited GM 83.8%

Production GM 72.5%

Revolver GM 62.4%

These numbers are obviously only one example, but they are a good example of what similarly skilled GMs (in their divisions) did in one match.

[Sarge]

And those percentages can be misleading. They are match point percentages not really head to head comparisons. I think it gets a little convoluted when scoring uspsa

[MWP]

And those percentages can be misleading. They are match point percentages not really head to head comparisons. I think it gets a little convoluted when scoring uspsa

Exactly what Sarge said. It's still very stage dependent. Way to hard to realistically compare separate divisions.

[Supermoto]

If you make stages 8 shots, move 8 shots, then there is no benefit to open since the reload time is absorbed by movement.

If you make a stage were an open shooter in on the pipe the whole time, then you will see a greater spread in the scores

[Nimitz]

never understood or put much stock in the whole "HOA" thing ... to me, it's meaningless. We have separate divisions that compete separately for a reason. You are trying to put all the divisions on a level playing field which just don't work. Even though everyone may be all shooting at the same time they are all really separate matches ...

[Supermoto]

HOA is the only thing I care about, no matter what gun I shoot. I rarely look at the scores past the combined scores. taking a division is the same as taking a class win....doesn't mean much to me if someone else shot the match better than I did

[Sarge]

HOA is the only thing I care about, no matter what gun I shoot. I rarely look at the scores past the combined scores. taking a division is the same as taking a class win....doesn't mean much to me if someone else shot the match better than I did

But the thing is, if an open shooter only beats a production shooter by a few percentage points in HOA, the production shooter actually shot a much better match. There is a reason HOA does not truly exist in uspsa scoring. I think Nimitz said it best when he said every division is almost like a separate match.

[Supermoto]

HOA is the only thing I care about, no matter what gun I shoot. I rarely look at the scores past the combined scores. taking a division is the same as taking a class win....doesn't mean much to me if someone else shot the match better than I did

But the thing is, if an open shooter only beats a production shooter by a few percentage points in HOA, the production shooter actually shot a much better match. There is a reason HOA does not truly exist in uspsa scoring. I think Nimitz said it best when he said every division is almost like a separate match.

If the production shooter shot a better match then they would have been HOA

[MarkCO]

It says something, but we won't agree what it says even after 50 or 60 pages. There are too many factors to consider including the skill levels of the shooters, the stages, shooting at 100% of ability, etc.

There are courses, where I do compare my scores to the top Limited shooter in the match. With classifiers, I can look up a National average but on field courses, often comparing myself to the top Limited score gives me a better measure of my performance. Shooting USPSA Production, there are only 2 local shooters I chase. If one of them is not there, or one or both have a bad run and I win the match or stage in Production...does not mean I shot really well. For that reason, I look at my points shot and time to shoot the stages. I can add in the little chunks of time for extra re-loads due to 10 rounds vs. 21 and I know I have about a 5-6% lower HF on average just shooting targets.

I know my "par" percentage in comparison to the Limited shooters and I know my metrics. I can usually "do the math" and figure out what my HF should be compared to the local GMs in Limited. That can range from 60% to 85%. So if I figure I should be at 70% and my HF is 60% and the Limited GM shot the stage well, I know I gave away 10%.

All of that is really worthless to improvement unless you are using local match results to push the envelope and try things out. I shot 3 plans at the last match that were not plans I would normally have chosen. I made mistakes and the math on the HFs illustrated that. However, I was able to discern "why" I made the mistakes and now have a path to fix those. If I had just looked at my scores and been happy with my overall match placement, worthless to the goal of improving performance.

[38supPat]

I've always been against comparing divisions for this reason:

Does this disparity say something about the particular course designs at this match? (Shots were too hard without a dot? There was a lot of opportunities to shoot "on the move", which favors a dot and high-capacity? There wasn't enough room between shooting positions, so capacity became a BIG determinant?)

When shooting any match you are only competing against YOUR division. Before scores were seperated we kept hearing "dot friendly" or "open friendly" and the stages got easier and easier until the other divisions could run with open. Open guns are unlimited, they SHOULD be winning by a decent margin given similar skill level. Each division has its specific limitations that affect how they do on a stage. If we are going to dumb down stages to eliminate the difference between divisions then we might as well get rid of divisions

[22 shooter]

I heard Brian Enos say once that he thought an open gun was an advantage of about 20%. 10% for the comp and 20% for the scope.

[38supPat]

It depends. If you have a stage where all targets are full targets inside 10m there's going to be negligible difference. Push some of those targets out 5m or throw hard cover or no shoots on them and it starts to change in a big hurry.

[2MoreChains]

It depends. If you have a stage where all targets are full targets inside 10m there's going to be negligible difference. Push some of those targets out 5m or throw hard cover or no shoots on them and it starts to change in a big hurry.

I would agree with that.

Then depending on how far apart the locations/views are, the difference between hi-cap and lo-cap divisions can vary. Have a stage with a lot of distance between arrays in which you can reload on the move and you can reduce the hi-cap advantage. But shrink the shooting area down significantly with only a step or two between positions and the hi-cap is going to dominate.

[38supPat]

Here in Canada all divisions are limited to 10 rounds so aside from the magwells there's not much difference.

[R.Elliott]

Here in Canada all divisions are limited to 10 rounds so aside from the magwells there's not much difference.

Open guns LOOK cooler though, so there's that.

[38supPat]

Here in Canada all divisions are limited to 10 rounds so aside from the magwells there's not much difference.

Open guns LOOK cooler though, so there's that.

Well obviously!

[cferree]

Several years back, I shot a local match squadded with Dave Sevigny. It was the off season for him, and he was shooting an Open shorty. I asked him how he thought Open and Limited compared (time and points). He said the unless there were some atypically long shots or difficult partials, the times would be the same, but the Limited gun would shoot slightly lower points. I thought there would be more of a difference, so I started comparing shooters of equal ability (mostly M's and A's) that shot different Divisions. I wasted my time. He was right.

[38supPat]

The Limited guys could shoot the same points but then they'd have slightly slower times...

[theblacknight]

At a lot of local matches division scores are usually pointless to look at unless you've got 100+ shooters and a deep talent pool.

A wide spread in performance between divisions may indicate stage planning was more varied and less shoot by the numbers/follow the leader, which are stages I usually enjoy.

[2MoreChains]

Here in Canada all divisions are limited to 10 rounds so aside from the magwells there's not much difference.

Here in Idaho we don't have to worry about that...

[Braxton1]

I wasn't suggesting that we "dumb" anything down. I was just wondering if there was something to be learned about course design from this observation.

I agree that matches are scored separately for a reason and understand that reason, but like SuperMoto, I look at High Overall because it shows where equipment helps or hinders. I was fascinated with the World Shoot results, where Eric Grauffel would've won Standard Division, even though he was shooting a 15-round Minor-caliber gun.

To give a little background, I come from the era where USPSA still adhered to the IPSC Principles, the third of which was "Firearm types are not separated, all compete together without handicap.". When Col. Cooper and his buddies founded IPSC, it was meant to not only test which techniques worked best for defensive pistol shooting, but which equipment as well. I know that the sport has grown to a point where that is no longer workable, but I still think about it occasionally.

Edited October 30, 2014 by Braxton1

[CHA-LEE]

Since I am a Limited shooter I usually compare my overall result to the Open shooters. From what I have observed is that on average a solid Master class Open shooter should produce about the same overall match performance of a solid Grand Master Limited shooter. So from a classification perspective, If a B class Limited shooter switched to Open, they should be able to produce an overall result that is on par with an A class Limited shooters solid result. Another way to look at it is from an overall match result percentage perspective. The solid GM Open shooters should be ahead of the solid GM Limited shooters by about 10%.

If you use the 2014 USPSA Handgun Nationals as a data point you can see a clear segregation of overall finish in about 10% increments that goes as listed below. These differentiating 10% chunks can probably vary +/- 2% from match to match given the different skilled shooters attending and the different shooting challenges faced that are biased in the favor of one division or basically erase limitations between divisions.

Open - 100%

Limited - 90%

Production, L10, SS - 80%

You can look at it this way. If you have a local club match where there is a GM in Open, and a GM in Production ends up HOA to the Open GM being a close 2nd overall, the Open GM is about 20% off of the match performance pace of where they should be. But this is a very generalized type of comparison as you never know how "Solid" a GM is overall in their skills or if they had a solid match performance. There are grandbagger GM's out there that regularly get beat down by B or A class shooters. There are also ultra GM's that make "Solid" GM's look like chumps in the overall results. A good example of that would be Nils showing up to a club match and killing the rest of the Limited GM's by 10% - 15%. These kind of guys are the ones that blow these kind of statistics out of the water.

Edited October 30, 2014 by CHA-LEE

[PatJones]

I'm often the only revo shooter at a local match so comparing my scores to the high overall shooter is the best way I have to quantify my performances over time.

[Shadyscott999]

Really depends on the number of stage as well. At a club match there is only 5-6 stages for an Open guy to establish his lead over a similarly skilled Limited shooter. At a major, there are more stages for the little bit to add up