Florida Judo Ki no Fuda's Technical Official

Tournament Scoring Systems

“5-Man” Pool System

Home
Archive Home
Contact Us
Last Update: May 1, 2005

[WEBSITE EDITOR'S NOTE: This article ran in the paper newsletter Volume 2, Number 3 dated April/May 1990 written by John R. Ellis. It has been slightly modified for the location of the sheets.]

Background

In the October 1989 issue (Vol. 1 No. 5) of the printed Ki no Fuda (the November/December 2004 online version), we discussed the ideas behind tournament scoring systems. In that article, we stated that the objective of any scoring system is to fairly determine the best players in a group of players, so they may be rewarded. We stated that scoring systems fell into two categories. First, there are systems which eliminate players who have a set number of defeats and the survivors become the victors. The other category permits each player in a group to compete against everyone else in that group. That earlier article then explored a popular elimination type of scoring system, called the “Modified Double Elimination” (MDE) system.

Scoring systems in which a player meets everyone else in his group are generally called “round-robin” or “pool” systems. Below we will explore a round-robin scoring system, called the “5-Man Pool” system. This is the scoring system which was used during the March 1990 Shiai in Cocoa.

The “Pool”

The “5-Man Pool” system requires that players be divided into groups of no more than 5 competitors (“man” is not intended to imply the gender of the players). If a particular age/weight group has many entrants, this system allows the organizers to consider the players’ skill levels when making up the classes. For example, ten entrants could be divided into groups for the more and less experienced players.

In a full 5-man pool, each player has four matches, one against each of the other players in the pool. In total, it takes ten matches to play off a full 5-man pool (6 matches if there are only 4 in the pool, and 3 matches for 3 players). By comparison, full double elimination scoring for 5 players requires eight or nine matches, while MDE reduces that number to seven. This means that there are almost half again as many matches using the pool system instead of the popular MDE system (ten matches vs. seven).

The fact that there are more matches is both good and bad. On the good side, each player gets more opportunity to compete for his entry fee. On the flip side, the tournament will run longer.

Pool vs. Modified Double Elimination

Under the MDE scoring system, the best and worst players in a group (of four or five entrants) will only play two matches. The class winner quickly rises to the top of the winners’ pool and the rest are eliminated after their second loss. Often players must enter two categories just to be sure of playing four matches. A full 5-man pool guarantees each entrant will have four matches.

In any type of elimination-based scoring system, the order in which the players are first listed on the score sheet has a possible effect on the overall outcome (especially in determining the third place finisher). With the pool system, the “luck of the draw” is removed because every player faces every other player in the pool.

In MDE system, not only will a player not normally meet every other player in the category (for example, the second place finisher may not compete against the class winner), but some players may have to face each twice (once in the winners’ pool and again in the losers’ pool). A round-robin type system obviously spreads the competition more evenly across the competitors.

In fact, all elimination-based scoring systems assume that by defeating an opponent, a player will also be able to defeat anyone that the loser has beaten, so there is no need to hold those matches. That may be a convenient assumption, but it is not necessarily true!

So although it may take longer to administer, the pool-based system does offer some advantages to the competitors.

Reward Good Judo

A common complaint these days is the quality of competition Judo has degraded greatly over the years. There is too much emphasis on only winning matches. Strategies have developed to quickly score a koka and then play defensively to protect that lead. This type of competition philosophy is counter to the development of good Judo.

Since very competitor in a pool plays the same number of matches, it is possible to weight a competitor’s victory by the highest score earned. This is a way to reward “good Judo”.

Round-robin competition could be scored with each victory earning one point (and each loss zero) so that the winner of the most matches becomes the pool champion.

On the other hand, consider giving a match winner a score based on his highest technique score during the match. For example the following weighted scores were used at the March 1990 Central Brevard/Melbourne Judokai shiai:
     Win by ippon………10 pts.
     Win with waza-ari……8 pts.
     Win with yuko………5 pts.
     Win with koka………2 pts.
     Win by hantei………1 pt.

Using this weighted scoring, a competitor’s match score is the sum of the scores earned in each individual match. The player with the highest match score is awarded first place. If two players end up with identical match scores, then the winner of the match between those two is given the higher finishing position.

Notice how this system changes a competitor’s strategy. Instead of defending a koka lead, a competitor must aggressively attempt to score higher. It is possible for a player to win all of his matches and finish behind a player with one or more losses. One win by ippon is worth more than three koka wins!

A Score Sheet

At the top of the pages is a core sheet to run a 5-Man Pool system. It can be used for three or four entrants by ignoring matches against nonexistent opponents. Matches are indicated in each round by the connected boxes. After each match is completed, enter the winner’s score in the box on that player’s line and zero for the loser. After the fifth round, sum across to determine the total match score. Resolve any tie scores and assign finishing positions.

It is possible for three players to end up with the same score (usually third place) and the “tie” cannot be broken using the “winner” rule. This happens if Player A beats Player B, Player B beats Player C, and Player C beats Player A. In these cases (which came up twice at the March 1990 shiai in Cocoa), you may either give duplicate awards, or use a different method to break the tie. One approach is look at the scores of their matches amongst themselves. A last resort could be to give the advantage to the lightest player (i.e., lowest weight at registration).

Conclusion

An informal pool of some of the instructors and players at the Central Brevard/Melbourne Judokai shiai showed that almost everyone enjoyed playing this system. It gives all players in a class the same number matches and rewards good Judo (77% of matches were won by ippon and another 7% by waza-ari). It also removes the effect of initial pairings.

Its only significant drawback is the added time needed to play the extra matches. However, the tournament time is reduced when most matches end in ippon victories. Also, the time could be reduced further if fewer players felt they needed to enter multiple categories to get enough competition.