SCORING Cowboy Action Matches.
This information comes from Evil R.Slade (SASS# 3219) and CVV Life Member who, when he's not in Cowboy atire, is a professional computer programmer, and who has designed "Cowboy Count" a scoring program used by a growing number of the larger CAS clubs. E-mail him if you want to discuss why his program is the "Fastest Cowboy Program in the West!"
(HINT: You can stop and "quit" at each Blue Line if you've had enough!)
"What do all these numbers mean?"
We hear this question a lot from new shooters and occasionally from the ones that have been here for a while, but were afraid to ask. This page will try to clear up some of the confusion.
RANK POINTS??
As each individual stage is scored the shooter is given a RANK in that stage based on his TIME IN THAT STAGE. The fastest shooter, in that individual stage, gets 1 Rank point for that stage, and the second fastest shooter in that stage gets 2 Rank points FOR THAT STAGE, and so on...
It looks simple, "the Shooter with the lowest TOTAL RANK POINTS, at the end of the match, WINS"! (NOT necessarily the shooter with the lowest total Time for the match!!
...And you can "beat" your shooting buddy overall in your posse, but he can still beat you overall for the day!
If you are willing to accept all of the above, on faith alone, you need not read further... (Caution: Alcohol and the following explanation do not mix well!)
If you really want to understand it .....here goes...
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Let's start with the listings that you often see at a match. In this example, the first column (on the left) is the shooter's final(finish) position or RANK, moving right the next column is the shooters ID number (often a SASS or club, or entry number). Next is the shooters ALIAS and then shooting CLASS (CLS) (In our example they are all shooting in Traditional(T) class. After this comes the shooters scores for the individual stages.
In this example, above each time is the listing ST-1, ST-2, and so on. These are the stage numbers. Below these listings are the shooters total time for that stage followed by their RANK position (also called points) for that stage.
Now, let's try a very small match.
Take a look at the listing below. You'll notice that CowboyA has 16.00 seconds on stage 1. This RANKS him first on that stage so he gets one(1) RANK point.
CowboyB has 20.00 seconds on stage 1 (a slower time than CowboyA) which RANKS CowboyB second on that stage, so CowboyB gets two(2) RANK points.
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If we look at the far right column, we see a 5, that's the total of CowboyA's individual stage RANK points ( 1+1+1+2 = 5), and a 6 directly below, that's the total of CowboyA's individual stage RANK points ( 2+2+1+1 = 6)
CowboyA wins the match with 5 RANK points, and CowboyB is in second with 6 RANK points.
EVEN THOUGH CowboyB(with 60.00 seconds TOTAL) has a lower TOTAL time than CowboyA (With 65.00 seconds TOTAL)for the day.
Make sense? Of course, but we can fix that.
You can stop here, if you've had enough of this, but there really is more...
If you can "beat" your shooting buddy overall in your posse, how can he still beat you overall for the day!
Let's add 2 more shooters, (they were shooting on another posse).
| RANK | ID | ALIAS | CLS | ST-1 | ST-2 | ST-3 | ST-4 | TOTAL | |||||
1 |
3219 | CowboyB | T |
20.00 | 2 | 20.00 | 2 | 10.00 | 1 | 10.00 | 1 | 60.00 | 6 |
2 |
2601 | CowboyA | T |
16.00 | 1 | 19.00 | 1 | 10.00 | 1 | 20.00 | 4 | 65.00 | 7 |
3 |
1024 | CowboyC | T |
22.00 | 3 | 24.00 | 3 | 14.00 | 3 | 15.00 | 2 | 75.00 | 11 |
4 |
332 | CowboyD | T |
24.00 | 4 | 26.00 | 4 | 12.00 | 4 | 18.00 | 3 | 80.00 | 15 |
Notice what happened? We added two more shooters and the top two shooters swapped places.
Pay close attention to stage four (ST-4). That's where everything changed. All of the magic happens on stage four. When we added the two extra shooters it moved CowboyA to fourth place on stage four.
The two new shooters had better times on stage four than CowboyA, but not as good as CowboyB. This added two(2) more RANK points to CowboyA's total, moving him to second place.
His total time didn't change, but the number of people to count did. Instead of 5 RANK points, he now has 7 RANK points. Instead of coming in second on stage four, he came in fourth.
About now you're probably asking "How can the fastest shooter come in second?". Easy. It isn't about who can shoot the fastest overall, it's about who can shoot consistantly enough to win the most individual stages. How you finished the individual stages determines how you finish the match. Your TOTAL time is only used to break a tie, it doesn't have any other use .Remember, this is only an example. Real times would spread out a little more, but you get the idea.
THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE YOU BEAT YOUR BUDDY, IS TO BEAT HIM/HER ON EVERY SINGLE STAGE!
If you have any questions, e-mail Evil R.Slade or visit a Comanche Valley Vigilantes match and ask him in person.