Combined Magnificent 3x Two Winning Shots Shoot-off

 At Sky Wolf Ranch we had a chance to test a Combined Magnificent 3x Two Winning Shots shoot-off.  Despite what you will hear, it really work well and might have great potential for us. 

Confusion:  Because it was a spur of the moment deal, I did not adequately explain the shoot-off format to the shooters.  They were confused by it and they will tell you that it did not work or was horrible.  That is my fault.  If they understood it and got use to it, they would love it because it gives every shooter the opportunity to win the event and to compete against more shooters.  They get to shoot more shells.

I was trying to be the scorekeeper, announcer, and computer person all at the same time and I got confused.  There was confusion on the lane assignments because of this.  This was my fault and there is an easy fail/safe method of lane assignment which I will describe below.

Withdrawal or failure to show:  After the shoot I recreated the final standing using the 17 shooters who participated in the shoot-off.  The standings are correct except I treated all that did not shoot as withdrawn shooters.  This I should not have done. Only Shady Mike was a withdrawal, the other 5 shooter should have been "no shows."  The difference can best be illustrated by Emi J.  By making her a withdrawn shooter, she finishes in 9th place with 4 points.  She should have been left in and because she was the 4th seeded shooter, she would have finished in 4th with 20 points.  Leaving "no shows" in also reduces the scorekeeper/announcer confusion as I will set for below.

Fail/Safe Scoring: The confusion I had came from the pressure of trying to do everything and by not correctly leaving "no shows" in.  There is a simple fail/safe method of doing this.   On the first scoresheet the computer person enters the bottom six seeds on lanes 1,2,3,4,5, and 6.  The next three lowest seeds are entered for the second match on lanes 4, 5, and 6. On the second scoresheet for the top match you enter the next three lowest seeds on lanes 4, 5, and 6.  For the second match on the second scoresheet, you enter the next lowest seeds on lanes 4, 5, and 6.  You now have the scoresheets for the first four matches with no possibility of error or confusion.  The first winner out goes to lane 1, second to lane 2 and third to lane 3.  You can make up the scoresheets all the way to the end of the shoot-off with no risk of making a mistake. Scoresheets should be make by computer person reviewed by match director.

The announcer and scorekeeper tasks is easy, they just have to put in the winners on lanes 1, 2, and 3. There is really no reason for the standing report to be given to the scorekeeper or announcer.  They simply work off of the score sheets.

Those that are shooting well, will rotate on the first three lanes because they will not normally go out in the same order every round.

"No shows" are left in so that they get they proper placings.  If you have a "no show" in a round you just shoot the round as if they were there. You would shoot 4 or 5 shooters or not shoot the round at all if there were three "no show," but the scoresheets will reflect the proper placings of these shooters.

It is not hard if you have a system and follow the system. 

Magnificent 3x, two winning shots: This will work great for up to 42 shooters.  It will take 15 rounds to complete. Three shooters go out per round so in 13 rounds 39 shooters have been eliminated.  It will take two more rounds to finish the last three shooters.

Magnificent 2x, two winning shots:  For matches with greater than 42 shooters, we would need to use a 2x shoot-off.  Four shooters are eliminated in each round and therefore 13 rounds would eliminate 52 shooters with up to 6 shooters to sort in two more rounds. 58 shooters would take 15 rounds.  Up to 64 shooters would take 16 rounds. 

Always Test: We never do anything we have not tested.  On Wednesday, I will have a 42 shooters event run and ready for shoot-off.  I intend then to shoot the shoot-off testing the scoring system.  I would ask the board to participate and see how it works. Please help me test this!