Semifinalist Captions on Finals night

[hostrauser]

Galen, please explain for everyone how DCPI will be handling the Finals' night scoring spacing. Some of us know, some of us are fuzzy, and some of us are new players who have no idea what I'm talking about.

Here's a hypothetical example: at DCI Semifinals on Friday, 8/9, the following corps, placements, and caption scores occur...

12th Blue Stars (17.5 color guard)

13th Crossmen (17.3 color guard)

...

17th Colts (16.0 color guard)

The Blue Stars advance, but for the Crossmen and Colts their season ends. Then, at DCI Finals, this happens...

12th Blue Stars (15.8 color guard)

The inevitable scoring drop for the bottom few corps at Finals, as judges try to leave plenty of spacing.

Now, DCPI players with Blue Stars in color guard get 15.8... but what happens to the players who have Crossmen or Colts in color guard? It wouldn't be fair to give them a score based off their semifinals score. Even a "generated" score of 16.3 would benefit a semifinalist corps that actually performed worse than a finalist corps in head-to-head. But, that could also be part of the strategy.

So, I'm curious as to how this will be handled this year:

A) Semifinalist and Prelims caption scores will be adjust downward on Finals night based on the Finals caption scores.

B) You're on your own: try to guess which corps places where, and which captions might be a gamble.

C) Other (specify)

Thanks.

[Galen]

I'll try to address this tomorrow.

[Galen]

So I think this is why we used to do a 4th round for world class. Not sure I want to go back to that because then open class and class A didn't get to use finals night scores for their championship round. I'll give it some more thought though.

[StarOrg]

I see Kevin's point. It has happened in past seasons to 12th place corps. Just for example I pulled these numbers from past 3 seasons.

I am not for a 4th round either for World Class but then I am not sure how to prevent this.

These scores do not include GE captions.

Last year, not so much damage.

Crossmen (2012)

Semis: 16.8 * 17 * 16.7 * 17 * 16.4 * 16.8 (total score = 84.9)

Finals: 16.7 * 17 * 16.8 * 16.9 * 16.4 * 16.7 (total = 84)

Now SOA in 2011 got hit harder.

Spirit of Atlanta (2011)

Semis: 17.5 * 16.7 * 17 * 17.1 * 17.8 * 18 (total= 86.55)

Finals: 16.8 * 17.2 * 17.2 * 16.8 * 17.3 * 17 (total= 85.35)

Glassmen also got hit.

Glassmen (2010)

Semis: 17.1 * 17.4 * 17.8 * 16.8 * 17.3 * 17.7 (total = 86.50)

Finals: 17.3 * 16.9 * 16.9 * 17 * 16.7 * 17.1 (total = 85.80)

[hostrauser]

Just for the record, I'm fine with HOWEVER you decide to run it. I just think everyone should know what criteria will be used in advance, for caption changes/planning. I wouldn't want to assume it's going to be scored one way and have it turn out to be the other. That's already cost me one title.

[Galen]

I'm going to leave things as they are this season- meaning that the first couple of corps' scores at finals will likely be a tad bit lower than the first couple of corps that miss finals. There's no way that I know of to realistically scale the scores or adjust the program to make things shift by that little amount that won't radically effect somebody else.

However, if somebody would like to propose a rule change during the off-season rule conference to change the way this is address for future seasons, I'll certainly entertain one.

[gcurrier]

I am all for a proposal in the changes, but this is kind of an age old issue. sometimes in any certain category it makes sense to shoot for whomever you think will get 13th place!

[hostrauser]

I am all for a proposal in the changes, but this is kind of an age old issue. sometimes in any certain category it makes sense to shoot for whomever you think will get 13th place!

I'm working up an idea for a proposal than would give players with Finalist corps a slight advantage, but still leave enough mystery to make it no sure thing.