ISSA - International Slalom Skateboarding Association

In the BOD meeting we discussed the current overall calculation method described in the rules. I would be interested in hearing from any (and all!) event organizers how you managed the overall calculation in your event in 2009 and 2010 (primarily).

Thank you!

/Jani

The 2009 World Championships overall calculation was done exactly per the rules, with the Hybrid designated as the tie-breaker event.

The calculations were only carried out in order to find the top 3 overall finishers (for awards).

Thanks Pat. So you never had to use the negative points, good.

As a starter, the BOD have decided to remove the negative points from the overall calculation. All racers after the 32 position will receive one point for their participation.


The Worlds 2010 did not use the ISSA method. They added the places that the racers got. Ie a first place gives 1 point, a second place 2 points etc. We currently do not recommend using that method, even if it is a quick method to gain an overall standing. Just an example. The difference between winning and being second needs to be more important than ending up 9th vs 10th. So the ISSA method seems more appropriate.

Let us hear from other race organizers.

/Jani

It's really sad when you hear that not even World Championships for 2009 or 2010 does use the overall system fully. 2009 only for top 3!? 2010 a completly different system. Which may be that some overall results from the worlds 2010 are not correct. And from 2009 not even published except for top 3.

For the ranking itself it's not a problem. Overall is mostly used for price cermony reason but I think everybody in any event have the right to know what place they had overall as well as in each single event.

I remember when the current official system was introduced. It was fast and hasty. And then tweaked with minus points as a desperate last minute solution instead of doing something good from the start.

I remember my idea was not to invent any new point system. Just use what we already have in the world ranking. Then we would have had automatic overall results for any event and class almost for free. I even think they are even calculated but just hidden since the BOD decided to go with new invented system.

Not that the current system idea is bad. It's just a way of giving more points diff from top that decrease going down the result list. Exactly the same as the ranking system already does.

I will take the worlds 2010 and make a small research and just compare some different systems and we will see where and what the difference is.

I think we really should include the overall rankings for events in the worldranking. That will be a motivation for organizers to use the ranking system to register racers and add results. And they will get back nice results lists and "complete" overall listings for their event in return.

Corky, can you refresh my (and perhaps others') memory about what you mean by "Just use what we already have in the world ranking"?

We are still waiting for Junior awards!

9.4 Overall Winner
An event with several races may give awards for the overall winner. The method of calculating the
overall winner shall be:

The calculation is only needed as far as the event organizer decides awards are to be given for overall....

Pat Chewning wrote:The calculation is only needed as far as the event organizer decides awards are to be given for overall....

You are right but it could be nice with an overall score even if there is no specific price. It's enough with the honour.

Claude Regnier wrote:We are still waiting for Junior awards!

Claude,

What do you mean?

Jani

Ok, I finished my research of overall points. I took the Pro class at the Worlds 2010 as research data. And it turned out to be good test data. See table below...

Explaining some of the things in the table:

First 5 column showing overall placement according two the 5 systems tested.
ISSA1: The ISSA overall point system with minus points. Using 3 results.
ISSA2: The ISSA overall point system without minus points. Using 3 results.
Added that those with zero total points are sorted on best placement.
R2B: Using ranking points. Using 2 best results.
ROV: Using ranking points. Using 3 results.
Place: Using the placement method. 1:st place 1 point, 2:nd place 2 points, ...

GS (Giant slalom placement)
SP (Special/hybrid slalom placement)
TS (Tight slalom placement)

IS1,IS2,IS3: Points according to ISSA overall system
ISSA1: Points using the ISSA overall point system with minus points. Using 3 results.
ISSA2: Points using the ISSA overall point system without minus points. Using 3 results.

R1,R2,R3: Points according to the ranking system
R2B: Points using ranking points. Using 2 best results.
ROV: Points using ranking points. Using 3 results.

Place: Points using the placement method 1:st place 1 point, 2:nd place 2 points, ...


- Cells with red color in the first 5 columns are racers that missed one event due to not attending (NA) or disqualified in one event (DQ).
- The blue cells show the 2 best results used for the overall using the 2 best results.

Conclusions
Looking at the final placements in the first five columns it's interesting to see that it is only minor differences between all the five systems actually.

The two systems with cells marked red are those that punish hard racers that do not enter or DQ in one of the three races. The Place system even DQ those racers from the overall results. The ranking system punish them hard because it differs a lot between getting normal points, getting a DQ points and not attending (getting no points).

What is fun here is that the ISSA system, event though counting all three events, does not really punish the racers very much at all. Probably because lower max points (100) that make difference between a normal points and not attending not so big.

What is interesting to see is that the "Ranking 2 best result system" (that I have always liked) almost matches the ISSA overall results exactly.

What is very unfortunate with the ISSA1 system is that a racer that does not enter a race actually can get more points (0) than a racer that enters (who can get negative points). I have always put -99 points on those when I have calculated overalls to make it work. Which means that you actually discualify the racers as you do in the "Place" method.

This is what the new BOD wanted to fix by taking away the minus points. And by doing so they suddenly boosted the points for those racers that had bad minus points results.

The ISSA system have the same punishment (0 points) for those...
- having places lower than 32 (only ISSA2 system)
- having a DQ
- not entering the race

The ranking system actually takes all this into account. And have different levels for this.
- Place 1-32 50-100% of total points
- Place 33-nnn 25-49% of total points
- DQ 25% of total points
- No attandence 0% of points

There is some fundamental questions.
1. Do we want to punish hard those who fail in one race?
- If YES: The Placement method and the Ranking counting all 3 events are the choice
- If NO: The ISSA methods or the Ranking counting 2 best events are the choice

2. Do we need to invent another overall point system? Or can we use the ranking points we already have?
Whatever the choice of the first question I conclude that we do not need any other point system than what the ranking iteslf already gives us.

It's true that the ranking points in itself does not make life easier to understand but is it really the points we need to understand? Isn't it the final placements that are important?


Have a think about this during the week. Very interesting research I think.

Corky,

When the 2011 BOD discussed this topic prior to your detailed study, we decided to remove the negative points and replace them by 1 point for participation, so it would be ideal if you could update your table above and replace the 0's in the ISSA 2 method with 1's. I don't we explicitly discussed the value of a DQ, but personally I think that should be better than not participating, so that has to be a 1 as well.

Thanks,

Jani

Jani, I could make the changement just for the sake of it to have correct values in the "research table" above. But it will not make much difference from what it is. It's still the same probelm. I.e. very little difference between not attending, DQ and low placements.

Example:
Racer 1: <not>, <not>, 27:th place = 4 points
Racer 2: <place>, <place>, <place> = 3 points

Imagine if that third race only had 27 racers on top of that. And the first two had 45 racers for example.

And I actually found a positive effect by using the ranking points. It's nothing you can keep in your head (but same for all systems really). So to get it right it will be a good motivation to enter the results into the ranking quickly so that you can get the overall lists calculated for you.

And by doing so and using the official method of counting the overall points you also decrease the chance of errors. There is always a risk when doing these calculations manually.

And organizers/racers have a way of easily checking the results also.

Where I can download the excel for the overall calculation for our next MAIN?
Thank you all.

Eduardo Garcia wrote:Where I can download the excel for the overall calculation for our next MAIN?
Thank you all.

Go to the resource page where you can find all types of info: http://www.slalomskateboarder.com/resources.php

Look at the "ISSA Slalom Skateboarding Rules". In there you have the list of overall points. Even though they are not very good if you are more than 32 racers in total.
Then do what I do when calculating overall points in the World Ranking. Add 100 points to all places.

You can also make sure to send in the results very quickly to the ranking database and all overall classes will be calculated for you.