While looking for an old post I ran across two fictionalized sagas from four years ago. That got me thinking, life is stranger than fiction. I have witnessed the following:
In the main match at the Fastest Gun Alive, I saw KK Kid shoot the winning shot of a match setting a new ladies world record. Because it was a world record time she was given three shots to back it up in three attempts. Since she could not back it up, the shot was by rule declared an anticipation and therefore the match was still tied 2-2. Then in the next shot she wins the match with a shot that was fast enough to back up the world record. Sorry was the response to KK Kid, no world record for you, even though you shot one and did back it up in the match. Rules are rules.
I saw Quick Cal set a new world record in a title match which he conceded was an anticipation even though any grade school math student would calculate that he started his draw at least 50 to 75 milliseconds after the light came on. I don't buy for a second that he was just following the cowboy way in conceding anticipation but believe it was not wise to test out the new rules he had just put in place to protect the integrity of the world record.
I saw a Territorial champion win the event even though the champion did not compete in 4 of the last 5 rounds of the event. The champion entered the last three with 3 x s and the other two had 2 x s and 1 x respectively. The champion won four bye shoot offs in a row and therefore did not have to compete in 4 of the last 5 rounds of the event.
I have seen many title events won by a shooter that had reached the elimination factor. 4 x is 4 x except when it isn't. We don't believe in resurrections unless we need to fill a spot. I can remember this happening frequently, most recently Quick Cal at the 2018 Southern.
There are relatively easy fixes to all of these aberrations, but to do so, we need to get over our "you can't do that" mentality or maybe it is "that is the way we always have done it."
Friday, April 12, 2019
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Well that worked Well!
Shady is an amazing fella.You plant an idea, a plan or a design with him and off he runs. I wrote a post about shooting with three lanes at a jackpot shoot and before the next day I get this:
I was going to try out Arizona bye with three lanes at the next Loess Hills Jackpot shoot but since the lanes are up and we always get a good crowd on Wednesday we decided to give it a whirl. We had 19 shooters and we shot 6 rounds of Arizona Five on three lanes, all three shooters at a time unless there were only two shooters. It took about 3 hours and the scoring and CFDA program worked well. When you set the match up you put in that you have 3 lanes and the program divides the shooters into sets of three. Lane assignments needed to be adjusted a bit but that was easy to do.
We shot Arizona Five so it is possible to get 1 W and 2 Xs, or 3 Xs, or 2 W and 1 X. Had it been three winning shots all rounds would have resulted in 1W and 2Xs. The scoring was easy and I think everyone understood the scoring. Just remember you score each shooter against each of the other shooters and a loss to either is a loss in the match.
We were testing the scoring, CFDA program, and whether there were any unforeseen problems. Ordinarily you would only use Arizona bye when there was a odd number of shooters, but as used today it allowed us to use three lanes to their full capacity.
Be careful of conclusions: Shady had the lanes set up yesterday and I came over to practice. Old West stopped by and so we shot 6 rounds of three winning shots Arizona bye. In 6 rounds I never won shot let alone a match. In the first 2 rounds today I could not find the target, so I went 8 rounds and won just one shot. It would be easy to conclude that the format is not my cup of tea and to say I hate it, but in reality it was just poor shooting or luck of the draw (yesterday). The ship, or more accurately the system, righted itself and I finished the event third out of nineteen.
Loess Hills Jackpot Shoot: I am planning a Loess Hills Jackpot Shoot for May 19 and what we really need to do is test the Arizona bye in a bracket environment where it is designed to shine. Not only will it save rounds but it will sort better than the CFDA bye. What I need is 18 shooters with $10 apiece to do a little two bracket shoot. So as not to be accused of doing a classification shoot, we will divide the 18 into two brackets using their last fastest time as shown on the last fastest time report that they have shot, nine in each bracket. We then shoot a 3x three winning shots last man standing bracket shoot using two lanes with the three lanes being only used for the odd shooter set. For time considerations shooting 18 shooters on two lanes will be comparable to shooting 54 shooters on a 6 lane range.
Pot, Pot, whose got the Pot: In these small jackpots normally the division is $50, $30, and $20 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Since we are trying out new things what we will do is we will have a 1x Magnificent 6 shoot off of the top three shooters in each bracket. The seeding will be Master Gunfighter 1, Gunfighter 1, Master Gunfighter 2, Gunfighter 2, Master Gunfighter 3, Gunfighter 3. One-third of the field will be in the shoot-off.
Gunfighter Rating: I will do gunfighter ratings on all of the shooters since this helps evaluate how the format is sorting. It is interesting to see how just in the two shoots so far, some gunslingers have made impressive improvement in their gunfighter rating.
Proud PaPa: My youngest was a division 1 athlete but motherhood and life had somewhat weighted her down. She has now taken up roller derby and the fire is back. You will never know how good you can be if you don't try. As I texted her, be quick, slow is not in our genes. I am looking for 18 gunslingers to venture into new places and it will only cost you $10 and a morning of your time. Try the Arizona bye, you may like it. Never ever slow down!
I was going to try out Arizona bye with three lanes at the next Loess Hills Jackpot shoot but since the lanes are up and we always get a good crowd on Wednesday we decided to give it a whirl. We had 19 shooters and we shot 6 rounds of Arizona Five on three lanes, all three shooters at a time unless there were only two shooters. It took about 3 hours and the scoring and CFDA program worked well. When you set the match up you put in that you have 3 lanes and the program divides the shooters into sets of three. Lane assignments needed to be adjusted a bit but that was easy to do.
We shot Arizona Five so it is possible to get 1 W and 2 Xs, or 3 Xs, or 2 W and 1 X. Had it been three winning shots all rounds would have resulted in 1W and 2Xs. The scoring was easy and I think everyone understood the scoring. Just remember you score each shooter against each of the other shooters and a loss to either is a loss in the match.
We were testing the scoring, CFDA program, and whether there were any unforeseen problems. Ordinarily you would only use Arizona bye when there was a odd number of shooters, but as used today it allowed us to use three lanes to their full capacity.
Be careful of conclusions: Shady had the lanes set up yesterday and I came over to practice. Old West stopped by and so we shot 6 rounds of three winning shots Arizona bye. In 6 rounds I never won shot let alone a match. In the first 2 rounds today I could not find the target, so I went 8 rounds and won just one shot. It would be easy to conclude that the format is not my cup of tea and to say I hate it, but in reality it was just poor shooting or luck of the draw (yesterday). The ship, or more accurately the system, righted itself and I finished the event third out of nineteen.
Loess Hills Jackpot Shoot: I am planning a Loess Hills Jackpot Shoot for May 19 and what we really need to do is test the Arizona bye in a bracket environment where it is designed to shine. Not only will it save rounds but it will sort better than the CFDA bye. What I need is 18 shooters with $10 apiece to do a little two bracket shoot. So as not to be accused of doing a classification shoot, we will divide the 18 into two brackets using their last fastest time as shown on the last fastest time report that they have shot, nine in each bracket. We then shoot a 3x three winning shots last man standing bracket shoot using two lanes with the three lanes being only used for the odd shooter set. For time considerations shooting 18 shooters on two lanes will be comparable to shooting 54 shooters on a 6 lane range.
Pot, Pot, whose got the Pot: In these small jackpots normally the division is $50, $30, and $20 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Since we are trying out new things what we will do is we will have a 1x Magnificent 6 shoot off of the top three shooters in each bracket. The seeding will be Master Gunfighter 1, Gunfighter 1, Master Gunfighter 2, Gunfighter 2, Master Gunfighter 3, Gunfighter 3. One-third of the field will be in the shoot-off.
Gunfighter Rating: I will do gunfighter ratings on all of the shooters since this helps evaluate how the format is sorting. It is interesting to see how just in the two shoots so far, some gunslingers have made impressive improvement in their gunfighter rating.
Proud PaPa: My youngest was a division 1 athlete but motherhood and life had somewhat weighted her down. She has now taken up roller derby and the fire is back. You will never know how good you can be if you don't try. As I texted her, be quick, slow is not in our genes. I am looking for 18 gunslingers to venture into new places and it will only cost you $10 and a morning of your time. Try the Arizona bye, you may like it. Never ever slow down!
Monday, April 8, 2019
Innovation and Charity
We did not have enough shooters to hold a Jackpot shoot yesterday at the Loess Hills Shoot but we shot any way. The shoot is held as a fund raiser for the charity and to test out new ideas. The pot is $100 so we need a minimum of 10 ten dollar entry fees to hold a jackpot shoot. We had only seven preregister yesterday. A donation of $10 is not too much to ask to support a traveling range but what do I know, maybe it is.
Innovation: Yesterday we tested out shooting Arizona Five two rounds at a time. We drew the first round and then had the program draw the first round a second time. By putting two rounds on each sheet we had in effect drawn the first 4 rounds. Each two shooters shot the first round of Arizona Five then traded lanes and shot the second round. (We have been shooting this for years on Shady mountain and I think that is why Shady Mtn shooters do so well in in competition) The score sheet will accommodate the first and second rounds since there are 14 blocks on the sheet. The first five blocks are for the times, 6th block is for W/X, 7th block is for fastest time in round one, 8th block is not used, just blackened out, that leaves 6 more blocks for round two, with the W/X block and fastest time for round 2 preprinted already. I knew the preprinted score sheet would work well, what I needed to test was the score entry feature of the CFDA program.
Testing the CFDA program I found that you could enter the scores in the normal fashion but when you attempted to enter round two scores the program would tell you could not do that until you drew round two. You could, of course, draw what the computer thought was round two and you would have round 5 and 6 drawn. However, the program will let you enter round two using the edit shooter score button. This is a much easier way to do it when shooting double Arizona Five. For example, Shady Mike was the first shooter on page 1, you just bring him up and enter both round one and round two scores. There is no delay to enter scores since round three and four already have been drawn and are being shot while you enter these scores.
We had three new shooters to train so after the first four rounds we took a break to train the new shooters. While doing that we entered rounds 3 and 4 using the edit feature. We then told the computer to draw round 2, which was used for rounds 5 and 6. The CFDA program really worked well for this type of shoot.
The only real negative to doing double Arizona Five this way is that you are shooting the same opponent in rounds one and two. Last year I tested rotating by moving each shooter one lane to the left, while this work well for the shooters, I concluded it was not worth the effort to use special paper and train scorekeepers.
Format Matters: Again yesterday the hit ratio and gunfighter ratings of the shooters were poor. Only Shady Mike managed a respectable rating of 1.21 and his hit ratio was below what we normally see for him. I think this is just a reflection of the fact that Arizona Five is a tougher format than 3 winning shots, BUT it prepares you for the stress of competition.
The sort was adequate. QC Carver won the event because when it came to the shoot off he had the best gunfighter rating in the shoot offs, although he was third overall in gunfighter rating.
Next up: I would like to do the next Loess Hills Jackpot on May 19. I set it for Sunday so that it does not conflict with the Camp shoot on May 18. I talked to Rodeo and I am impressed with his speed index concept. I highly recommend giving it a try but I have some trepidation about shooting blockers. They don't seem to help CFDA shooters, but the speed index seems to have merit.
On May19th I am looking for 18 shooters to test out the Arizona bye. Cal does not believe me but the Arizona bye would sort better and save about 50% on the number of rounds needed in last man standing after you get down to 7 shooters. Last man standing events seem to drag on and on because one shooter is not competing in each round and the aberration of the event winner not competing in 4 of the last 5 rounds did happen in a title event. Any way I need to twist Shady's arm to get three targets set up then we will shoot 6 sets of three shooters each to test the Arizona bye.
"Thresholds are frightening places: We stand between what we know and what we don't know. Thresholds offer an invitation to leave the familiar behind and step into the new, the unexpected."
Author unknown.
The manna has ceased, now will the milk and honey sustain us? Alleluia Ruah
Innovation: Yesterday we tested out shooting Arizona Five two rounds at a time. We drew the first round and then had the program draw the first round a second time. By putting two rounds on each sheet we had in effect drawn the first 4 rounds. Each two shooters shot the first round of Arizona Five then traded lanes and shot the second round. (We have been shooting this for years on Shady mountain and I think that is why Shady Mtn shooters do so well in in competition) The score sheet will accommodate the first and second rounds since there are 14 blocks on the sheet. The first five blocks are for the times, 6th block is for W/X, 7th block is for fastest time in round one, 8th block is not used, just blackened out, that leaves 6 more blocks for round two, with the W/X block and fastest time for round 2 preprinted already. I knew the preprinted score sheet would work well, what I needed to test was the score entry feature of the CFDA program.
Testing the CFDA program I found that you could enter the scores in the normal fashion but when you attempted to enter round two scores the program would tell you could not do that until you drew round two. You could, of course, draw what the computer thought was round two and you would have round 5 and 6 drawn. However, the program will let you enter round two using the edit shooter score button. This is a much easier way to do it when shooting double Arizona Five. For example, Shady Mike was the first shooter on page 1, you just bring him up and enter both round one and round two scores. There is no delay to enter scores since round three and four already have been drawn and are being shot while you enter these scores.
We had three new shooters to train so after the first four rounds we took a break to train the new shooters. While doing that we entered rounds 3 and 4 using the edit feature. We then told the computer to draw round 2, which was used for rounds 5 and 6. The CFDA program really worked well for this type of shoot.
The only real negative to doing double Arizona Five this way is that you are shooting the same opponent in rounds one and two. Last year I tested rotating by moving each shooter one lane to the left, while this work well for the shooters, I concluded it was not worth the effort to use special paper and train scorekeepers.
Format Matters: Again yesterday the hit ratio and gunfighter ratings of the shooters were poor. Only Shady Mike managed a respectable rating of 1.21 and his hit ratio was below what we normally see for him. I think this is just a reflection of the fact that Arizona Five is a tougher format than 3 winning shots, BUT it prepares you for the stress of competition.
The sort was adequate. QC Carver won the event because when it came to the shoot off he had the best gunfighter rating in the shoot offs, although he was third overall in gunfighter rating.
Next up: I would like to do the next Loess Hills Jackpot on May 19. I set it for Sunday so that it does not conflict with the Camp shoot on May 18. I talked to Rodeo and I am impressed with his speed index concept. I highly recommend giving it a try but I have some trepidation about shooting blockers. They don't seem to help CFDA shooters, but the speed index seems to have merit.
On May19th I am looking for 18 shooters to test out the Arizona bye. Cal does not believe me but the Arizona bye would sort better and save about 50% on the number of rounds needed in last man standing after you get down to 7 shooters. Last man standing events seem to drag on and on because one shooter is not competing in each round and the aberration of the event winner not competing in 4 of the last 5 rounds did happen in a title event. Any way I need to twist Shady's arm to get three targets set up then we will shoot 6 sets of three shooters each to test the Arizona bye.
"Thresholds are frightening places: We stand between what we know and what we don't know. Thresholds offer an invitation to leave the familiar behind and step into the new, the unexpected."
Author unknown.
The manna has ceased, now will the milk and honey sustain us? Alleluia Ruah
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