A better shoot-off

For January we had 58 shooters, for February we had 61.  Next month we may have 70.  We really need to set up a second range.  With our normal shoot-off, it still would take over 2 hours to shoot a 3 bracket shoot-off. With a combined Mag 1x shoot-off we can shoot 7 or 8 seeding rounds and then have a 1 x shoot-off in just over an hour with two ranges.  It is not complicated or hard to do.  Actually it is much easier for announcers and score keepers.

Scoresheets:   At 1:01 p.m. Saturday I received the standing report for seeding.  We started shooting at 1:06 p.m.. By that time, I had the first two scoresheets prepared for rounds one through four. (I used old sheets because that is what I had with me.) A copy of the last page of the standing report is inserted:

The bottom six seeded shooters go on lane 1 to 6 and they constitute the first round.  The next three bottom shooters go on lanes 4, 5, and 6 for round two. (I will suggest changing the lanes later.) First scoresheet is ready to go and shooting can begin. This was done well before we started shooting with the three bracket system. Here is the score sheet for the first two rounds:

The next scoresheet is for rounds 3 and 4.  The next three shooters go on lanes 4,5, and  6 for round three and the next 3 shooters go on 4, 5, and 6 for round 4. Winners move down to 1, 2, and 3.  This second scoresheet was done before shooting started Saturday. Scoresheet for rounds 3 and 4:

I finished all scoresheets required at 1:19 or in 18 minutes.  It took 10 scoresheets or about 2 minutes per sheet to do. This was for one range, but for two ranges it would not have taken any longer. If I was doing this at a shoot, I would have one person making lane assignments and a good writer writing the six names needed on the score sheets.

Duplicating the Results:  I thought it would be a good idea to duplicate the results from Saturday's shoot using this system but found that that was not possible because of placing the new seeded shooters on lanes 4,  5, and 6. By putting the new shooters there the winners are always shooting winners and not newly seeded shooters, so it is impossible to duplicate the results.  I can almost duplicate the results by putting the new seeded shooters on even number lanes, 2, 4 and 6. This makes for an easy scoring  rule, winner on lanes 1 and 2, goes to lane 1, winner on lanes 3 and 4, goes to lane 3, and winner on lanes 5 and 6 goes to lane 5.  Winners are always shooting newly seeded shooters until you run out of them when you are down to 6 shooters or less.  Newly seeded shooters are highlighted in yellow.  You put them on the scoresheet with lower seeded shooter going on the top of the sheet in lanes 2, 4, 6 and then again in 2, 4, 6. When the scorekeeper gets this sheet there are only the 6 newly seeded shooter on the sheet.  The scorekeeper puts the winners in where they go following the rule. To illustrate here is page 9:

The final scoresheet would have been page 10.  There would been only been 4 shooters on this sheet in lanes 2, 4, 6 and then the top seed would have been in lane 2 of the next round. Notice the first 6 shooters would have been round 19, then round 20 would have had four shooters, the three winners and the top seeded Q.C Carter. Round 21 is the last pair on the sheet which is the final two winners,  this almost duplicates Saturday's  result.

Almost but Better:  This almost duplicates the results on Saturday but still does not because we are still using 6 lanes instead of two.  But the differences are actually much better.

Downside Risks:  Under are current system the top seed or any shooter can only drop one place by a loss.  Likewise the top seed only has to win one match to win the event.  Under this system the top seeded shooter has to win at least two matches to win the event and he could drop all the way to 4th. There is also greater risk for the shooter that does not show up. Old West was seeded 2nd and failed to appear (was not going to wait two hours to shoot) and under the current system he only dropped to 3rd.  Under this system it would drop him  to 7th (see placings below)

Speed bias and placings:  When I originally suggested this, I was concerned with mitigating the speed bias.  I thought that shooters going out together should get the same place instead of some getting an advantage based on speed.  I thought, for example, for Saturday the first three out should be in 20th place and so forth.  However, this is difficult to figure out during the shoot and I now think it is not worth the effort.  Also, shooters like to know a specific place. With only one range, only three shooters go out together, with two ranges 6 shooters go out together.  It is not worth the effort to change from the convention that placings are by time out. In regards to Old West, there were four shooters left when he went out with two other shooters.  He got a 22 so he is placed 7th and the other two are place on speed at 5th and 6th.  Someone who is not willing to wait around ought to placed lower than one spot.

Final Standings:  You can edit the final standings on the computer.  It is possible to have three or six shooter have the same standing. The problem is with how many places there are.  Without the speed bias, I think there would been 20 places on Saturday but I am not sure.  It takes some effort to figure it out.  Using the CFDA convention of time out it is easy. Of the first three out, the slowest time out is 61st place, then 60th and 59th.  I would suggest editing as the score sheets are completed, that way the final standing are done when the shoot is over.  If you don't use the speed bias you probably have to edit the standings after the match because you need time to figure out the placings.

Two Range Operation:  With two ranges, you would shoot down to about 12 or so on two ranges.  So the first 48 shooters would be assigned equally to range A & B.  Once you make the lane assignments which are done near the start of the shoot-off you can post the assignments and everyone will know when and where they are shooting. Saturday the highest 13 seeded shooters would be assigned to Range A.  When you get to that point you will have 16 shooters left, the last 13 plus 3 winners from Range B.  Range B would be available to be taken down at that time.

You can always do better, but only if you try!

 

 

PostScript:  You never know how things work until you do them a few times.  I reran the club shoot only doing it on two ranges and in the combined Mag 1x format.  When I ran it on one range, I overlooked that one shooter had 99 so excluding him left 60 shooters.  There was some interesting differences from a one range shoot.

Downside Risk:  Shooting on two ranges makes the downside risk greater.  Shooting on just two lanes the downside risk for the #1 seed was just one place.  Shooting on one range combined, 6 lanes, the downside risk for # 1 seed was 4 places.  Shooting on two ranges, 12 total lanes the downside risk is 8 places. For illustration,  on two ranges the # 1 seed would fall to 9th place if he lost his first match with a 22.  Also, the no show shooter who had been seeded 2nd falls to 9th in a two range combined shoot-off.  To win the event the #1 seed must win 4 matches in a combined two range Mag 1x shoot-off.

Upside Opportunity:  There is also better opportunity for the shooter shooting well in the shoot-off.  For illustration, I was seeded 8th and won 7 matches to move to second. Winning 8 matches would have won the event in the two lane Mag 1x shoot-off.  However, in a two range shoot-off any of the top 12 shooters can win with 4 wins.  Once a shooter makes to the top 12, they all have an equal opportunity to win.  The 12th shooter can win the event with 4 wins, just like the #1 shooter can win with 4 wins. One more win gets you to top six, one more gets you top three, then finals.  A combined shoot-off is much more fair.  It rewards those who are shooting well and negates the advantage of seeding.

Fundamental Fairness:  Under the current bracket system only the top seeded 1/3 have a chance to win the event. To be in that top 1/3, for the average shooter, it has more to do with chance than skill.  With a combined shoot-off, all shooters have a chance to win the event.  In the bracket system, the 20th seed would have to win 20 consecutive matches to win. The bottom 40 shooters have no chance to win. In the combined system, any shooter, even the 60th seed can win with 12 consecutive wins.

Time:  With 60 shooters a 1x shoot-off takes 59 matches, you need 59 losses.  A bracket system is limited to one range, so it takes 20 rounds.  With a combined system you can use two ranges, so the time for the shoot-off is cut almost in half.  More time for the seeding matches, which of course reduces the chance factor in seeding.

Conclusion:  The combined shoot-off is so much better than what we do now, there really no good reason not to try it.  It is no more work than what we do now.  It does not take any more time.

Setting up a second range does involve considerable more work but we should be doing that anyway during the cooler months.  With a good crew of four a second range can be set up between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.

 

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!

Be Prepared!

 Be prepared!

By the start of the circuit on March 10th in Texas, I believe the pandemic will be over. Omnicon will have infected most people and most will have immunity effectively ending the pandemic. However, there may be some folks that have been lucky and, of course, there maybe some like myself that have had one of the vaccine variants, such as Delta, that does not provide immunity to omnicon.  Those that have been vaccinated probably will have been already infected with omnicon, but some who were boosted late may still be at risk.

There is no need to be fearful.  Covid is an easily treated disease and generally is not lethal.  The 850,000 deaths are largely the result of lack of treatment.  That is why the USA has the highest death rate in the world from covid, lack of treatment.

Vaccine Viruses:  The experts predicted that if you have a vaccine program during a pandemic it would lead to variants. That is exactly what happened with such vaccine viruses such as Delta.  The original strain of covid 19 has been long extinct.  The vaccines were for the original strain and that is why vaccination will not give you protection against Delta or omnicon.  But there is no need to cower in fear.  Preparation is the answer.

Off Label Treatment:  There are numerous off label drugs that work very effectively against covid. The one I am most familiar with is ivermectin. It is normally given in a 5 day course of treatment.  I personally know many people who have been treated with ivermectin and all have recovered within the 5 days.  It is best if treatment begins within 72 hours of the onset of symptoms, but it appears to also be effective in the later stages of the disease. I watched a podcast of an elderly woman in Houston who came to a treating doctor with an oxygen level of 86 who was treated with ivermectin and she survived.  Had she gone to the emergency room, she would have certainly died.  I also know of an instance where treatment was started just hours before the ventilator with a discharge from the hospital five days later.  Ivermectin is safe, effective and cheap, but you have to work to get it.  Be prepared!

Personal History:  I was fortunate that a good friend came down with covid in the summer of 2021.  He was struggling with the disease and it took us two weeks to get him off label treatment.  Most doctors in Phoenix have been ordered not to treat covid patients by their employers. Hospitals here also refuse to treat.  Once we got him treatment he recovered in a few days.  Because of that, I found a doctor and a pharmacy that would provide me off label drugs as a preventative.  I started a preventative ivermectin program before the South Dakota shoot in August. I got covid after the Nebraska shoot.  I started ivermectin treatment within 24 hours of symptoms.  I would say that my illness was similar to a mild cold.  I stayed away from folks for 14 days but think I was not infectious after about 2 days.  My wife did not get covid.  I have four or five comorbidities: heart disease, kidney failure, obesity, old age and Vitamin D deficiency.  The vitamin D may not be a comorbidity because I did not have a blood test the summer of 2021 so I don't know.  Vitamin D is produced by being in the sun, so all the range master duties may have raised my levels to the level of prevention.  Studies have shown that adequate levels of Vitamin D is preventative.

Course of Action:  I am seeing my kidney doctor on the 23rd.  I will have had blood test to check Vitamin D levels by then and I will demand a prescription for ivermectin so that I can start a preventative treatment program before the start of the circuit in March.  I may have already had omnicon but I will prepare for the season as if I am at risk.  That means ivermectin when traveling and the supplements recommended such as Vitamins D, C, Zinc and others.  See flccc.net

Be Prepared!  And stop practicing missing!

Points and Speed Bias

Club points ought to reflect how well a shooter has shot at an event.  On the national level, the top gun system works pretty well for those shooters in contention, say the top 30 or so shooters in the sport.  However at the club level the system does not always work that well because of the speed bias.

The speed bias is necessary to make the computer work.  Placings are based on x count and speed.  This results in quick shooters generally getting more points than they deserve.  For example, at an event at Rio this year, Half Cock and I had the same x count. Half Cock had beaten me in the main match and a reasonable conclusion would be that he had shot better than me.  However, I got 6 more points than Half Cock because of the speed bias.  Rio, of course, really emphasizes the speed bias because they do not consider the shoot off.   

On national level speed bias is not a problem because of the rule that recognized place must be shot off.  Since to be competitive, one must have 6 or more good events and these points will have come from recognized places.  Therefore, for the shooters in contention, points do not result from speed bias. 

We do a fair job of mitigating the speed bias by awarding points after the shoot off, but we can do better.  I ran a trial system based on only x count this year but I have concluded that it was not worth the effort it took to administer.

However, a small change in our shoot off format would have a substantial benefit in mitigating the speed bias.  I suggest the three shooter 2x magnificent shoot off.

We currently divide the field into three brackets based on x count and speed.  We then shoot a 1x magnificent shoot off in each bracket.  This can result in the speed bias affecting the ability of a shooter to mitigate the speed bias if he does not make it into Bracket A because of the speed bias. The split between Bracket A and B can really be unfair.  What if we divided the field into 2 brackets with about 1/2 the field in each bracket.  Looking at 2021, 100% of the points that were counted for all of the award winners were earned by being in the top half of the field.  Of all the points earned by the award winners, being in the top half of the field amounted to 93% for Master Gunfighter, 82% for Gunfighter, 71% for Sheriff and 93% for Deputy.  To do well, you have to be in the top half of the field.  Sort like at the national level, you have to be shooting for recognized places to get enough points to compete.

The division of the field would be at the break between 2 and 3 x or between 3 and 4 x.  You need to divide at a clear break to avoid the speed bias.  The wording for the rule would be "The field will be divided into two brackets at the nearest x count break to the center of the field"  For 2021 the break would have been at 2-3 for January, February, March, April, August, September, October, November  and at 3-4 for May, June and July.  I guess we don't shoot as well in the heat of summer.

Three shooter 2x Magnificent Shoot Off:  Three shooters shoot on three lanes (two or three) winning hits.  When a shooter gets (2 or 3) winning hits, he/she steps back and allows the other two shooter to finish the match (2 or 3) winning hits.  Loser  is eliminated having been beaten by two shooters.  In essence the loser has lost to two shooter and therefore has 2 xs. Next seeded shooter shoots against the two winners.

Big advantage of this is:

1.  All places are determined on the line and not by speed bias.     

2.  It is a two x elimination event.  

We need to test for time on the mountain. 

Time Test: 

We tested this on the mountain with 21 shooters shooting.  For the first 45 minutes we shot 3 winning shots.  We got 19 losses per hour.  We then tried 2 winning shots.  We got 22 losses per hour. A average turnout shoot at Pioneer has 38 shooters and it would take 2 hours to do a 3 winning shot shoot-off.  It would take 1 hour 45 minutes to do a 2 winning shot shoot off. Three winning shots may not be practical considering time but two winning shots may be.  For example, 8:30 to 11:30 for seeding no x matches, then 11:30 to 1:15 for 2x three shooter two winning shots shoot off.

Scoring: Winning shots were carried over from the three shooter portion of the match to the two shooter portion of the match.  Prior shots by contestants were not re-scored between the two shot contestants. (You could restart at 0-0, but that would lengthen the matches)

Match Length:  With three winning shots the majority of matches were resolved in less than 8 shots for both winners to be determined. However there were two matches that went to 14 rounds. (14 is the maximum on the score sheet so that was the dreaded two loss maximum.)  With two winning hits the majority of the matches were determined in less than 6 rounds with only one match going to 8 rounds. (14 was maximum in this event, but we could reduce it to 8 for 2 winning shots, since shooter are familiar with that. I would prefer keeping it at 14.)

Best Length:  Two winning hits was clearly better than three winning hits because it resolved the issue quicker while still doing a good job sorting. See next paragraph below.

Speed Bias vs. Gunfighter Bias: The three shooter match has an inherent speed bias built into it but that did not appear to be a problem.  I think the speed bias was overcome by the 2x factor which of course favors the better gunfighter. A quicker shooter may eliminate a better gunfighter in a single elimination type event but the better gunfighter is normally going to prevail in a multiple x fight. Examples of this were No Name surviving 4 rounds, Wyoming Ranger surviving 8 rounds, Desert Gator surviving 9 rounds and Half Cock Willie surviving 11 rounds. (For those not familiar with our shooters these shooters tend to be our better gunfighters while maybe not our quickest)

Conclusion:  The 2x three shooter shoot off two winning hits would be a good format to try at Pioneer.  It does a good job of insuring that top gun points are determined on the line and not just by the speed bias inherent in the computer program.

We would still have the speed bias in seeding, but I think that is actually a good sorting tool.  We have a fair number of shooters that succumb to the pressure of trying to go fast in the last round and end up being penalized by the dreaded 22.