How many of your hits are alphas

[blaster113]

I think a good goal to strive for is to shoot 90% +/- of the available match points.  If you're getting a lot less than that then you have to shoot slower and get those A's.  If shooting major a few C's and the occasional D won't hurt too bad overall.  Once the accuracy is where it needs to be start pushing the speed.  Lots of time can be made up on a field course with efficient movement, transitions, no make up shots (especially on steel), smooth reloads, to help get a better HF.  

I usually shoot 90+% of points at majors and place well enough, but my slow-as-shit movement and transitions hurt my stage times and HF.  

[gmantwo]

I have slowed down since I started shooting(ok, blasting) years ago. Age and wisdom. I also started shooting minor in everything. SS to Open, and my finishes, class wise, haven't suffered because of it. Going through a course slower, I'm shooting 90-93% A's and my times are putting me where I belong in class. Near the top of every match(in class) Recently finished 2nd in class at the Missouri State Championships, shooting an Open XDm 9mm minor, and loved it. 130 pf is FUN to shoot! Shot 93% A's at the Production and CO Nats, but missing a target and several NS's(5 on one target alone. Luckily it was a nice little cloverleaf where 2 broke the edge line to score), dropped me several places. Never shot a CO gun until the timer started me on the first stage. And a borrowed gun, lol

Looking at scores from major matches, you must shoot 90%+ A's to win your class at level 2 & up, and then only if your times are decent. That's kind of my point in shooting minor. If you shoot a high percentage of A's, and can do it faster, your score won't suffer enough to make me shoot major, ever again. I think we had 5 open shooters that went minor at Rolla, not sure how any one else finished up though

[kneelingatlas]

On 8/9/2016 at 6:11 PM, Mikeski said:

Ok so being as I am a data nerd at work I figured I'd have some fun and do some data collection of my match shooting this year. As I am developing this tracker with excel,access, and tableau, I have noticed that I am hitting about 59% of my hits are Alphas. Has anyone else done something similar to what I am doing? If so how far did you break down the data?

I did the same analysis four years ago and quickly realized it was not a good gauge of progress.  The implication is all non alphas are equally irrelevant, but they're not.  Mike's and no shoots are killers, you need to stop shooting them if you want to score well.

Like Jake says, "slow down and get more As" indicates a counterproductive mentality, you don't get more As by slowing down, you get more As by aiming at the A zone and shooting it.  Don't focus on shooting fast, focus on doing everything else fast: movement, reloads and draws, that's where most of your time is wasted.  Developing a good stage plan and executing it well is the best was to score well.

[Absocold]

At my first match I out-shot absolutely everyone. By a lot. Imagine my surprise when I finished in almost last place because I was a bit slower than everyone else.

 

So I'm in the other boat. After decades of being a precision shooter I have to teach myself that it's ok to shoot less than 100% as long as I move my butt at a high rate of speed. Searching for the center of the bullseye and the slow squeeze are hard habits to break.

[arkadi]

Match' 1st and 2nd place from top-20 IPSC shooters, shooting Open Major and Open Minor in 40-stage Level III, rock'n'roll style.

As far as I noticed, Production sweet-spot is around 11% non-A hits, occasional D, no PT, no MI.
2nd place in Production was 0.5% down from 1st - Johan's HF dominated more stages, but Rasmus won with consistency.

Edited October 15, 2016 by arkadi

[fastluck13]

Just shot 13 stages...

 

81% A

3% B

15% C

0.5% D

0.5% M

 

 

[kneelingatlas]

Here's how I look at my match performance: what's my percentage of the match winner, then multiply that by the classification of the winner, if the result is higher than my classification, I've had a good match.

Edited November 14, 2016 by kneelingatlas

[ShortBus]

On 11/13/2016 at 10:23 PM, kneelingatlas said:

Here's how I look at my match performance: what's my percentage of the match winner, then multiply that by the classification of the winner, if the result is higher than my classification, I've had a good match.

Can you post an example? Having a hard time following this in my simple mind. 

[kneelingatlas]

Here are the results from my last match: https://practiscore.com/results/new/28374?q_result=0&q_individual=0

JoJo, the match winner has a classification of 95%, my match score was 72% of his score, if I multiply those two numbers I get the score I could expect against a 100% GM: 68%.

My current Open classification is 65% so my performance was slightly above what I should expect if I shoot to my ability.

It's a way to adjust your score to account for the level of competition you faced at the match.  Here's another example from an easier match:

http://oceansidepistol.com/scores/show_scores.php?match=ipsc/2016-04-28.txt

Leo, the Open winner, has a classification of 78% and my score was 95% of his so according to my method my match performance was a 74%.

According to my memory of both matches, I would say this is an accurate assessment of how well I shot.

Edited November 28, 2016 by kneelingatlas

[Jake Di Vita]

By the time I unload and show clear I have a really good idea of how I performed on the stage. Be hard on yourself even for tiny tenth of a second mistakes. Get video and analyze the hell out of it. One thing I also like to do is write down every mistake I make on every stage of a match. After doing that for a month or two you'll start to see patterns of your problem areas. This becomes more important as you get better because you'll eventually get to the point where you're winning stages in spite of making mistakes. When this happens you'll need a different method of judging your performance that isn't based on your match score.

I get where you're coming from with the percentage thing, but I think judging performance based on any derivation of classification is less than ideal.

[johnbu]

Interesting idea.

My last "good" match the overall winner shot 87.19% of the possible points , I shot 69.74%...multiplying together 60.74.  I'm a C class. Oh, the classifier stage I shot 43%.  classifiers freak me out.

On 11/27/2016 at 6:30 PM, kneelingatlas said:

Here are the results from my last match: https://practiscore.com/results/new/28374?q_result=0&q_individual=0

JoJo, the match winner has a classification of 95%, my match score was 72% of his score, if I multiply those two numbers I get the score I could expect against a 100% GM: 68%.

My current Open classification is 65% so my performance was slightly above what I should expect if I shoot to my ability.

It's a way to adjust your score to account for the level of competition you faced at the match.  Here's another example from an easier match:

http://oceansidepistol.com/scores/show_scores.php?match=ipsc/2016-04-28.txt

Leo, the Open winner, has a classification of 78% and my score was 95% of his so according to my method my match performance was a 74%.

According to my memory of both matches, I would say this is an accurate assessment of how well I shot.

 

 

 

 

 

[kevin c]

I like Jake's advice.

I managed to place second Production in our club match this weekend. I beat a Master who was twenty seconds faster than I was through the match (I probably am 25 years older than he is) because he shot 68 % A's versus my 77% A's, plus more misses for him. First place beat me on speed, making up for a lower A count (another young guy).

I need to shave a tenth here and there everywhere, and shoot more points at the same time. I do that, I'll be the old fart that kicks butt. ;^D

[Janskis]

According to shoot n score it, i get around 75-80% A's. I am an Open div B shooter and have a single full season behind me

[bullsi45]

i wood say about 95 percent are a . 

[thepunishur]

So far this year I average 65.8% Alphas. I need to pick the speed up a bit...

[bsand]

69.8% alphas
26.5% charlies
3% Delta
1.2% mikes (1 Mike was on classifier, HF went down to high D from mid C thanks to that)
at my last match which was first match with Carry optics. I am currently unclassified, but hoping to get a high c or low b by summer.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[rowdyb]

I don't know. I only look and see if I shot any M or NS or even D. If I shot none of those, then I'm happy.

 

HF is a combination of time and points. A hits make up most the of points, so if I just look at my hits in a match I'm leaving part of the equation out. Hits without time information and times without hits are meaningless. I don't think it's good to look at them in exclusion to the other. Just shooting A's is pretty easy if you have average shooting skill, like others in post above have alluded to, it's doing it at speed that's tricky.

 

Since we talked about match review, as soon as I can while my memory is still fresh I pull up Pscore and look at my score versus the division winner. Then I ask myself these things about ever stage:

• could I have shot this any faster? how much? write this number down.
• what were my hits? could they have been any better without slowing down from what i did? if so, write the change in number of points shot.
• am i really being honest in my answers? do i have video or other's observations to back it up?

Then I go through and recalculate my stage hf's, see how many points i'd gained/lost and compare that to the winner. To get an idea of my "best performance" ideal. (like the "what if" function on the practiscore pro app on your phone) Sometimes the answer is "no" and I don't make any changes. Sometimes the changes are very slight. Should I have a trainwreck then I make large changes.

 

This tells me how I did on those stages, that day, against that person. It also gives me a pretty good idea of where I'd been had I been mistake free in the match shooting very close to my potential. ( I only compare against the division winner. No one else matters to me). In going over it, I get a fair idea of what I did wrong. Then like Jake, I write that down in my range practice notebook. So when I get to live fire or dry fire the next time I have a to-do list for my practice.

 

For me, getting better match finishes now is about reduction of errors. So all my focus is on fixing that!!

 

You have to be brutally honest in your self assessment.

Edited March 17, 2017 by rowdyb

[NicoR]

IMHO:

- Under 90% is bad
- 90-95% is fine
- 95% is perfect
- Over 95% is slow

I'm usually between 90 and 95%.

[sstephns]

From SC State, my A % was 65%. 169/259 shots. Top 5 in limited were 217, 183, 209, 169, 185.

 

My time was 208, top five were 172, 165, 160, 166, and 175.

 

That alone tells me if I can speed up through technique, and keep the same A% I'll be in fine shape. If I can speed up and pick up more A's, I'll be in better shape.

[rowdyb]

Area 1 recently I shot 89% of the points with 100 penalty points included. Without I shot 93% of the points.

 

I shot 401 A. 6/59 B/C hits. 1 delta. 5 misses. 2 no shoots. So of 474 scored hits with 401 of them being A that is 84.59% of my hits being A. I'd have needed to shot 25 more A hits to make 90% of A hits for the match.

 

A little low to what I'd like but consistent to most of my major match performances. I really would like to shoot 90% A sometime and am working on the focus to allow me to do it.

[MikeBurgess]

You also need to take into account the target presentations when looking at things like this. If all the targets are full open you should shoot more A's than if every target is half covered by a no shoot, so there is no magic number for how many A's you should be getting, unless all you matches and stages look the same.

 

 

[Jake Di Vita]

1 hour ago, MikeBurgess said:

You also need to take into account the target presentations when looking at things like this. If all the targets are full open you should shoot more A's than if every target is half covered by a no shoot, so there is no magic number for how many A's you should be getting, unless all you matches and stages look the same.

 

This is all certainly true. That being said, I've shot a lot of matches in my life and I haven't seen very many where it was acceptable to shoot fewer than 90% of the points. This appears to be more true as the class you're competing in gets higher. Division is also a consideration. You can get away with a lot of stuff in the iron sight divisions that you can't get away with shooting Open.

 

While there may be outliers where it's acceptable to shoot fewer than 90%, most of the time 90-95% of points is a pretty reasonable approximation.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Jake Di Vita

[ACree]

All of them..... right before I pull the trigger. As stated above, time is such a huge factor that a guy shooting all A's can easily be beat by a faster shooter with some C's. 

[Tonka]

On ‎8‎/‎9‎/‎2016 at 6:11 PM, Mikeski said:

Ok so being as I am a data nerd at work I figured I'd have some fun and do some data collection of my match shooting this year. As I am developing this tracker with excel,access, and tableau, I have noticed that I am hitting about 59% of my hits are Alphas. Has anyone else done something similar to what I am doing? If so how far did you break down the data?

years ago some wise shooter that I knew said that if your not shooting at least 80-85% alpha your not shooting enough of  them.  He also stated that if your shooting more than 85% you may be shooting to slow.  There are a lot of variables here just some food for thought

 

[Knguyen1904]

I probably shoot 75- ish alphas and and maybe 20% Charlie’s sometimes  better. I think it’s just best to let your sights settle however much you need to and Try and hit all A’s. This is a skill that you can hone in  on in dry fire if your really trying to cut your time down. All the skills you need to shoot Alphas faster can be learned in dryfire. I like to use par times to kind of gauge where I’m at. But use them more as a measuring stick rather then trying to race them. If you isolate each skill. Draw , grip , transitions , reloads and a little movement you’ll naturally be seeing your sights faster during almost any scenario a match can throw at ya. Oh yea and make sure you’re gripping that gun HARD in live fire as well as dryfire.