Southern, National and Mitigation

Many times how you finish at a titled event has more to do with who you draw than how well you are shooting.  Not only is it important who you are shooting but it is also important who the other shooters are shooting. In the last round of the main match of the Southern there were 11 shooters left, four lost leaving the field of the magnificent seven.  For me, the most important draw was the match of Buzzard Cooper against Old West. Had Buzzard won that match there would have been 8 shooters left and we would have had to shoot another round.  In that round there would have been three losers so the field would have been five leading to resurrection shoot off between 3 shooters.

In the final match of the Magnificent Seven the winning shot was a .367. Speed is glamorous, but if you watched the entire match you will know that not a single shot was won by speed.  You might think that the Southern was won by accuracy but that is not the case. The losing shooter by and large is a much more accurate shooter than the Southern Champion.  The final match was won by the shooter who was mentally tougher in that match.  The Southern Champion entered the Magnificent Seven with three xs so he too benefited from the Buzzard/Old West match.
Who knows if he would have survived the next round and subsequent resurrection. 

The National was won by that five time World Champion. I do believe there was a resurrection in this event but do not remember the details.  It is interesting to note that the mag 7 of the Southern and the mag 7 of the National were substantially different although the field of both shoots were the same.  That might be due to the shooting of the gunslingers or might be due to the luck of the draw.

I was having breakfast on the second day of a titled event and a seasoned shooter was asked how did he do.  He said "I am out!" and then said, "What chance did I have?"  and then he named 4 of the toughest gunslingers there. He was right he had no chance even though he is in the top 20% of shooters in the CFDA.  That is the unfairness that can occur with the luck of the draw.  Can this unfairness be mitigated? The answer is yes and it is really quite easy to do.  Higher x count mitigates this unfairness.  The more xs you get the more chance you have to recover from a tough draw.   But a resurrection feature also does a great job mitigating this unfairness.  I can name at least a half dozen titled matches won by a resurrected shooters. Happens often.  We shoot all these side matches that really simply occupy eliminated shooters when we could be shooting a true resurrection which would be mitigating the luck of the draw unfairness.  That seasoned shooter could be shooting his way back to fifth rather than being occupied by a meaningless 2nd chance shoot.   

Scoring 19.5 will function just fine adding shooters into a resurrection as they are eliminated from the main match.  Want to do this, shoot the main match down to five or fewer shooters.  Fill the vacancies from the resurrection, two or three, whatever is needed from the resurrection.  The complaint will be what about that 6th or 7th place shooter.  So what, he or she might be shooting in the present resurrection like what might have happened had Buzzard won.  The next complaint will be it is not fair for the 6th or 7th place shooter to come into the  resurrection clean when the resurrection shooters may have won 9 or 10 matches to get get there.  But it is eminently fair.  It is far harder to win 9 or 10 matches in the main match against those 4 tougher shooters than it is to come through the "eliminated" match.  The bottom line is all shooters get the same number of xs and all shoot to championship day in matches that matter.

This is just a little change, but one that would make a big difference mitigating unfairness of the luck of the draw. 

Since I am on my soap box I will add that in categories I shot in final match but only competed in two of the last five matches. Love those byes, train for them, bring me another shooter.