Before Online Scoring?...

[Stafford]

What did scoring look like before online results were available? Just wondering if you only saw your score for your division. Or was there an Overall score also posted?

 

If I only saw where I finished in my division, it would have a different feel than seeing that score posted with all shooters. If I finished 4th out of 12 in Production and only saw that score, it would have a different effect than seeing that I finished 36th out of 73 overall. 

[Schutzenmeister]

How far back in history do you want to go?  LOL!

 

2 or 3 decades ago, ALL shooters shot against everyone.  That was before they   officially created "Open" and "Limited".  Someone figured out that placements could flip a little depending on whether open and limited were scored together or separately.  So, from about 20 years ago on, all official results had to be scored by division ... which is where we are today.  Yet, the more we score them separately, the more folks want to see the results all put together again.

 

Back to the Future ... (Part IV?)

[Sandbagger123]

i shot a bit before practiscore  came into regular use.  you got how many sheets of paper for the amount of stages and filled them out.  sucked when they got wet in the rain.  then they had to be inputted by some sap in the stats shack that rarely got to shoot.  some times it could be days or weeks before results came out .   had to also avoid the dinosours  that would fly around and steal the papers every once in a while .

 

once results  was sent out via email to shooters ,  it usually  was just one  row with all result .  you had to figure out on your own who won what division.   you guys that only shot with practiscore and instant results don't know how good you have it 

 

 

[herky]

1 hour ago, Sandbagger123 said:

once results  was sent out via email to shooters

Before email, there was the mail.  Sometimes weeks before you got the results.  By then, I had forgotten the match, let alone each stage.  For scoring, the good times are now.

[nasty618]

4 hours ago, Stafford said:

If I only saw where I finished in my division, it would have a different feel than seeing that score posted with all shooters. If I finished 4th out of 12 in Production and only saw that score, it would have a different effect 

 

Why on earth would it matter how you finished against other divisions? I can see how a new shooter would be clueless and only look at overall results, but I keep seeing high level guys comparing their scores and times... meanwhile they're shooting Prod, Lim/maj and CO.  The different stage strategies, different aiming techniques, different requirements... Not to mention the minor vs major scoring... I don't get it.

[Stafford]

I get that the other divisions are playing a different game. But it’s human nature to look at the overall. I see it on videos where the shooters will post where they finished, both in their division and overall. 

[SGT_Schultz]

Just now, Stafford said:

I get that the other divisions are playing a different game. But it’s human nature to look at the overall. I see it on videos where the shooters will post where they finished, both in their division and overall. 

 

What do you do with that information (your overall match placement)?

[Stafford]

39 minutes ago, SGT_Schultz said:

 

What do you do with that information (your overall match placement)?

 

LOL. Most likely to justify buying a different firearm or accessory in order to try a different division.

[konkapot]

You can still use it as a measurement of performance; if, for example, there's not a lot of talent in a particular division at a club match, you can still check your performance relative to another "known" quantity.

 

If I "won" singlestack when there's no other singlestack shooters, I can see that I shot 85% against Bob. Although Bob shoots limited, I typically shoot 80% against him. So, shooting 85% against Bob tells me I did, in fact, have a good match. 

[SGT_Schultz]

19 minutes ago, konkapot said:

You can still use it as a measurement of performance; if, for example, there's not a lot of talent in a particular division at a club match, you can still check your performance relative to another "known" quantity.

 

If I "won" singlestack when there's no other singlestack shooters, I can see that I shot 85% against Bob. Although Bob shoots limited, I typically shoot 80% against him. So, shooting 85% against Bob tells me I did, in fact, have a good match. 

 

That's more than a little different (and I suspect not what most do) than mindlessly looking at what number is next to your name in the overall results.

[SGT_Schultz]

1 hour ago, Stafford said:

 

LOL. Most likely to justify buying a different firearm or accessory in order to try a different division.

 

Then stop looking at it.  It's pretty simple.

 

Intrinsic motivation lasts a whole lot longer than external motivators.

[RJH]

45 minutes ago, konkapot said:

You can still use it as a measurement of performance; if, for example, there's not a lot of talent in a particular division at a club match, you can still check your performance relative to another "known" quantity.

 

If I "won" singlestack when there's no other singlestack shooters, I can see that I shot 85% against Bob. Although Bob shoots limited, I typically shoot 80% against him. So, shooting 85% against Bob tells me I did, in fact, have a good match. 

This is exactly what I do.

[euxx]

5 hours ago, Sandbagger123 said:

i shot a bit before practiscore  came into regular use.  you got how many sheets of paper for the amount of stages and filled them out.  sucked when they got wet in the rain.  then they had to be inputted by some sap in the stats shack that rarely got to shoot.  some times it could be days or weeks before results came out .   had to also avoid the dinosours  that would fly around and steal the papers every once in a while .

 

You got it right about "some sap"... This pile of scoresheets is just from one match (ruler tape is metric)

 

 

5 hours ago, Sandbagger123 said:

once results  was sent out via email to shooters ,  it usually  was just one  row with all result .  you had to figure out on your own who won what division.   you guys that only shot with practiscore and instant results don't know how good you have it 

 

Before emails it looked like this. Mailed to you months after the match.

 

This one is from 1987. Coincidentally, I grabbed the first book from the pile and mote The Man himself at the top. @benos

 

 

 

 

[PatJones]

3 hours ago, nasty618 said:

 

Why on earth would it matter how you finished against other divisions? I can see how a new shooter would be clueless and only look at overall results, but I keep seeing high level guys comparing their scores and times... meanwhile they're shooting Prod, Lim/maj and CO.  The different stage strategies, different aiming techniques, different requirements... Not to mention the minor vs major scoring... I don't get it.

I shoot Revolver and Stinky Stack. I'm typically the highest classified competitor in these divisions at a club match so I'm chasing the GMs in the other divisions.

[nasty618]

10 hours ago, PatJones said:

I'm chasing the GMs in the other divisions

 

11 hours ago, konkapot said:

you can still check your performance relative to another "known" quantity

 

One cant help but look at the overall results.  I totally understand.   

 

The cost of Cs/Ds for hi-cap major guns is so different, their aiming zones on open targets are much larger and as a result their speed is much higher... Not to mention their stage plans and strategy, cost of penalties, etc.  I guess my question then would be: how do you check your performance against them if you're shooting a lo-cap/minor division?  Other than for the sake of "feeling good", what specific info do I look at and what actionable items do I get out of comparing myself to those divisions?  Is that really a representation of a good level of skill if I stack up close to some local GM or M overall? Or beat them on one single stage? 

 

Edited November 3, 2020 by nasty618

[rowdyb]

I started in the internet era but before the widespread adoption of Practiscore and electronic devices. So everything was paper. Registration, squading, scoring, rule books, scores themselves.

 

Every squad had a clipboard (so many clipboards at matches), every shooter had a score sheet of their club's own design. (So if you traveled you often had a different scoring interface, or procedure for scoring squads) Do you write down hash marks or numerals? Like // for two or 2 for two. And then every score keeper would do it different. Or then there would be a correction. Or a reshoot. Or a name you couldn't read. Or all of the above.

 

Hell, even setting your squad's shooting order could be bungled if you said sort by last name and someone didn't have a handle on their alphabet.

 

Then each club had their own website or listserve. And often their own Excel program beyond how they input stuff into ezwinscore. Match ended at say 1pm on a Saturday. Then the person had to go home, clean up, rest, deal with their family issues and then set aside HOURS to do the scores. Then they had to be put on the webpage and or emailed to everyone. If the person was a superstar you saw them within 24 hours. Usually a week was about normal.

 

So every club had a different time frame. Every club had a different manner of doing things. Every club had a different way of distributing the information. Display of the information was different. I remember getting results a month after having shot a match, and feeling furious about it. I remember having to double check the math, were all my A, B, C miss and so on added up for every stage. If you thought about shooting a match in a new locale you had to do a bit of internet searching to learn what you wanted to learn. (So even finding out of town matches could be laborious)

 

People still cheated on the score sheet. People still made data entry mistakes. I remember having definite opinions about where I would and wouldn't shoot based off of how a club handled their paper stuff.

 

Cell phone cameras/smart phones didn't really become what we think of them today until about 2008. GoPros were around in 2007. Instagram became popular in around 2012. So like many activities there is kind of a blurred together bunch of years between the 'analog' version of match registration, scoring and so forth and the 'digital' version we now inhabit.

[rowdyb]

Re looking at the overall sometimes it might be all you have. Say you're a M in Prod and all the rest of the Prod guys at your club are B shooters who usually finish 15% behind you. Then looking at your 100% in Prod match after match doesn't do much for you. So you start looking at overall, because it gives you more relative and comparative data. Or say you're the only SS guy. You gotta look at the overall. Despite the divisions being very different.

 

And whether it is explicit or not we do think divisions should finish in different orders in the overall, shooter skill excluded. Finishing order, we think, should be from top to bottom Open, PCC, Limited, CO, Prod, SS, L10, Revo. (TTTTThhhhoooouuughhhhhhh if we built a shooting robot would the gun it shot matter? Would vision usage of sights matter to a robot if it still had to optically sight? If it could unerringly reload would doing 3 reloads matter versus 1? Wayyyyy off topic but an interesting thought idea for maybe another post)

 

Overall gives the best "bench racing" discussions about the match. And it also ties into the historical roots when it was just one division and all scoring was just overall.

[euxx]

1 hour ago, nasty618 said:

The cost of Cs/Ds for hi-cap major guns is so different, their aiming zones on open targets are much larger and as a result their speed is much higher... Not to mention their stage plans and strategy, cost of penalties, etc.  I guess my question then would be: how do you check your performance against them if you're shooting a lo-cap/minor division?  Other than for the sake of "feeling good", what specific info do I look at and what actionable items do I get out of comparing myself to those divisions?  Is that really a representation of a good level of skill if I stack up close to some local GM or M overall? Or beat them on one single stage? 

 

It really depends on the stages. In some cases even Open shooters have to aim.

 

Here is an example of the same stage from the Factory and Race Nationals. The top guns still had to shoot As and time difference between Open and Production is not that huge. Totally worth chasing.

 

   

 

 

Edited November 3, 2020 by euxx

[belus]

I started in the internet era, but before electronic scoring.

It was paper sheets for each stage and clip boards. You'd turn in your score sheets at the end of the match and wait for the stats person to run the numbers and e-mail you or post the results to the website. Sometimes it was same-day service, but often you wouldn't see until the next day. There definitely wasn't an option of checking your standing mid-match.

The results were just a big text file printout with different sections for division or stage breakdowns.

This is the oldest archived score I could find of a match I've shot: http://uspsa2.org/match_results/RMAP/20100117/

It looks like the score display got a little more sophisticated in the next year: http://www.uspsa2.org/match_results/match_disp.php?match=20110528&club=HPP

[euxx]

13 minutes ago, belus said:

This is the oldest archived score I could find of a match I've shot: http://uspsa2.org/match_results/RMAP/20100117/

It looks like the score display got a little more sophisticated in the next year: http://www.uspsa2.org/match_results/match_disp.php?match=20110528&club=HPP

 

BTW, this is USPSA Area 2 web site, not the USPSA HQ one.

[ChuckS]

13 minutes ago, belus said:

I started in the internet era, but before electronic scoring.

It was paper sheets for each stage and clip boards. You'd turn in your score sheets at the end of the match and wait for the stats person to run the numbers and e-mail you or post the results to the website. Sometimes it was same-day service, but often you wouldn't see until the next day. There definitely wasn't an option of checking your standing mid-match.

The results were just a big text file printout with different sections for division or stage breakdowns.

This is the oldest archived score I could find of a match I've shot: http://uspsa2.org/match_results/RMAP/20100117/

It looks like the score display got a little more sophisticated in the next year: http://www.uspsa2.org/match_results/match_disp.php?match=20110528&club=HPP

Jerry Mallard was the webmeister for Area 2. He did a great job. The long pole was the entering of the score sheets. The handwriting was horrible. That was a job I only did a couple times. Sometimes we felt lucky if we knew the last match results before the next match!

[belus]

Just now, euxx said:

BTW, this is USPSA Area 2 web site, not the USPSA HQ one.

These scores used to be hosted by Rio Salado too, but it looks like they've rebuilt their website and I can no longer find an archive. I didn't know Area 2 hosted legacy scores until I used a very narrow Google search.

I used to live in AZ so I knew where to look for my old scores.

[Sandbagger123]

15 hours ago, euxx said:

 

You got it right about "some sap"... This pile of scoresheets is just from one match (ruler tape is metric)

 

 

 

Before emails it looked like this. Mailed to you months after the match.

 

This one is from 1987. Coincidentally, I grabbed the first book from the pile and mote The Man himself at the top. @benos

 

 

 

 

Back when practiscore was in its infancy,  there was a lot of debate if the cost of tablets etc to go electronic was worth it.  when we figured out the cost of paper and time involved ,we  then knew that going electronic would save a lot of time and money in the long run.    i can not imagine going back to paper .   now the new tech debate is the AMG timers to increase accuracy in scoring 

Edited November 3, 2020 by Sandbagger123

[nasty618]

4 hours ago, euxx said:

The top guns still had to shoot As and time difference between Open and Production is not that huge.

 

Definitely.  On hard risky shots major guns still have to aim, you posted a perfect example of that...  Plus the mandatory reload dampens things down for everyone.  I am talking more along the lines of medium and long courses with open targets rather than classifier type stages. 

[euxx]

14 minutes ago, nasty618 said:

Definitely.  On hard risky shots major guns still have to aim, you posted a perfect example of that...  Plus the mandatory reload dampens things down for everyone.  I am talking more along the lines of medium and long courses with open targets rather than classifier type stages. 

 

Even then...

 

Here is another example from the nationals. 25 rounds. No reload for Open, probably at most 1 reload for Limited and CO and 2 reloads for Production.

 

Though stages had different start positions. It seems like Open had some time advantage because of the start. Note that Production gun won over CO and got a closer time to Limited. I think he would win if they both had the same start position.