New IJS System Improvements

[bobbob]

If you fall and rotate, you get less than for a good double axel. That pretty much is where the problem lies. It's not worth the risk.

A 3A for a lady is much, much bigger a deal as well as more rare than a quad for a man, yet the reward is smaller.


Balancing should be done for the top levels. The lower end skaters will make do with what they get.

3A 8.50 - 3.00 is 5.50 - 1.00 (fall) = 4.50. Which is more than a good double axel. Unless you are looking at the effect on PCS, which may or may not happen depending on who it is. In any case, I think it is unlikely ISU will implement different values for the same element. All technical elements have the same value for singles disciplines.

 

[Shayuki]

3A 8.50 - 3.00 is 5.50 - 1.00 (fall) = 4.50. Which is more than a good double axel. Unless you are looking at the effect on PCS, which may or may not happen depending on who it is. In any case, I think it is unlikely ISU will implement different values for the same element. All technical elements have the same value for singles disciplines.

4.50 is about the same value as a good backloaded 2A, and the effect on PCS is still there. It really isn't worthwhile to perform 3A unless you have a good chance of landing it, properly rotated.

The point is, while I too would rather watch good 2As than fallen 3As, there needs to be such an incentive for progress. For example, we look at the Men right now - People complain as they are doing 4, 5, 6 quads and can't handle them. But they can actually handle 1 or 2 quads. Something ladies can't handle when it comes to 1 or 2 3As.

 

[GF2445]

The issue about what to award a jump in which there was an error that the naked eye cannot notice/an error that does not disrupt the program.
E.g. Incorrect edge or a slight single underrotation.
One can argue that it was an error and should be marked as one, but how can we distinguish between a jump with an unnoticeable error and a jump with a glaringly obvious error? At the moment, the penalty in terms of base value and GOE makes rotating a falling a better option than under rotating the jump or take off from the wrong edge without any interruption to the program.

I.E at the moment, a skater who plans a jump that is likely to fail and disrupt the program will be better rewarded.

I am of the belief that if your are doing a jump, you need to do what it requires. If you do a lutz off an inside edge, you are not doing a lutz, but a flip and therefore not doing what you say you are doing; if you say that you are doing a triple jump and only rotate 2.5 times in the air, again, you are not doing what you say you are doing- and therefore a severe penalty needs to be awarded.

And don't delude yourself in thinking that judges will acknowledge the disruptions in a technically demanding skate in the program component scores, because time and time again, they have failed to do so. Jumps are the key to high PCS

But at the same time, when you see someone fall on a fully rotated jump (creating a disruption to the program) and they still get rewarded more points than a jump with an error that does not disrupt the program, you cannot help but think that there are issues with the points.


Hopefully with the increased GOE range, there will be a clear difference between these two- have the invisible underrotation or edge error get the -1, -2 it deserves, and the noticeable errors like falls receive the -5



ALSO= they need to revalue the elements (think about increasing, not decreasing quads) and increase the factoring for men's skating to 0.6 in the SP and 1.2 in the FS and make the standards higher/tougher to receive 9s in the PCS. Also, encourage judges to have large differences between components if they are insisting on having 5 marks- the way it is being marked atm, there is no real point in having 5 components.

 

[Miller]

8. Find some way to reduce nationalistic bias by selecting the judging panel in a way to minimize judges from countries who have a vested interest in the event being judged.

8. I've been thinking about this whole judge bias thing, but it's an issue that's almost impossible to solve. Nationalistic bias is definitely a thing, but judges can also be biased towards/against certain skaters/countries even if they're not from the country (or the competitor's). But that's almost impossible to tell because it wouldn't be such an obvious reason as nationality. Plus, every judge is going to be biased regardless (e.g. maybe towards particular styles, or political reasons/country alliances). And you can't get neutral judges because every judge has to come from a country.

If you look really closely at the judging panels at the Olympics (see SkatingScores.com) you can tell that the ISU's way to do this is to 'parachute in' judges from countries that might have a vested interest in a particular discipline, but maybe not in others e.g. in the Men's you suddenly got judges from Spain, Uzbekistan (Misha Ge) and Latvia (Denis Vasiljevs) appearing, but those countries judges hardly participated in other disciplines. Similarly you had judges from Kazakhstan, Hungary, Slovakia and Belgium (Elisabet Tursynbaeva etc.) making their only appearance in the Ladies.

The ISU's intention/hope must be to kind of get things to cancel out (thereby implying that there is some sort of problem that they're not willing to tackle head on), but of course this doesn't always work. For example the presence of a Canadian judge on the Free Dance panel, but not a French one might have the affected the result of that particular discipline, it certainly it would have been a 'dead heat' if the French judge had taken part and marked in a similar manner to the Canadian.

IMO the answer has to be judges don't mark their own skaters, take the middle 6 out of 8 scores, factor differently, and that's half the problem solved - the marking down of other countries skaters might be harder to solve but at least the judges would know their individual scores are being scrutinised a lot more.

 

[Jaana]

I hope that the jumps would have only two categories: A fully rotated jump vs. an underrotated jump.... and the difference would show up at scores very clearly.

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

As to the whole Pre Rotation crap. I really think they need to introduce language into the guidelines that encourages the judges a freedom to attach negative GOE for noticble PreRotation. It does’t even have to be negative for final GOE but let’s put it out there. -1 to -3 GOE may be applied to noticable PreRotation. This really doesn’t change much and the tech panel can still focus on the landings as it always has.

I’d be fine with little to no changes though. Ugh...I hate the way they change the system every so many years.

 

[yume]

I hope that the jumps would have only two categories: A fully rotated jump vs. an underrotated jump.... and the difference would show up at scores very clearly.

Then the tech score would only come from BV and not BV+GOEs?

 

[gkelly]

1. UR/e/level calls are currently basically based on one person's decision while two others with a say...instead of making this the responsibility of 1-3 people,

It is the responsibility of 3 people. The Controller and Assistant Technical Specialist can ask for a review right after the Technical Specialist says the call out loud. If they do review the element afterward, they can all have input on any questionable areas of the element.

Also, for leveled elements, and pair elements, where there are more details than one person can see and keep track of in real time, they divide up the responsibility of who focus on which features or which partner.

I think we should allow the judges have a say if the technical panel cannot come to a unanimous decision. Perhaps the judges could vote and the skater would get partial credit based on the number of votes e.g. if 5/9 say UR, then 5/9 * UR value + 4/9 * non UR value.

You’d have to have all the judges watch replay after the tech panel replays.

2. UR/e jumps should not automatically be relegated to negative GOE. If we want to penalize them more, than reduce the base value. But it should be possible to get good GOE on a flutz. Perhaps this combined with 1 would make the judges more likely to call out URs, prerotations, and wrong edges.

Under current rules, << and e calls reduce the base value of a jump (< and ! calls do not). Judges are supposed to reduce the GOE -2 to -3 for the more severe calls and -1 to -2 for the less severe calls. There is no requirement for the final GOE to be negative.

The tech panel is just calling what they see without value judgment. The judges are evaluating both the good and bad aspects of each element and in most cases balancing them out where an element contains both positive and negative aspects. So sometimes GOEs of 0, and -1 and +1, indicate that the element was basically OK. Other times they represent an element with an error along with several strong qualities.

3. No second half bonus! If there is unbalanced composition of program, take off from GOE!

Do you mean in PCS? PCS look at the whole program; GOE look at individual elements in isolation.

3 - Get rid of time bonus. If back-loading or front-loading is appealing choreographically, reward it in PCS (and if it isn’t, punish it in PCS).

Yes, PCS is the place to reward or penalize the structure of the program (in all aspects not just the temporal distribution of elements).

However,

I think small jumps might be simply because you don't have the most leg muscle strength, and so you shouldn't be penalised for small jumps, as long as you're doing them properly. But they are easier to land, so it's not as impressive to land them as a big jump done properly.

Personally I think such skaters should try to make them larger, by for example going into them with more speed, but maybe it's not always possible.

If an element is placed late in the program and a judge deems it difficult to perform it so late in the program, then it should be awarded in GOE. Difficulty of placing an element should be a GOE issue.

Almost all skaters, regardless of the average size of their jumps, will jump bigger at the beginning of a program than at the end. Although it’s not explicitly stated, I think that may be part of the reasoning for awarding a bonus to later jumps. If the bonus is removed, would it be appropriate to advise judges to be more generous with GOE scoring on jumps later in the program? E.g., the standards for “good height and distance” could be more lenient in the second half.

Of course, that puts the TES reward for late jumping back in the realm of subjectivity.

4. Right now combo and solo jump GOE factoring are the same. Perhaps give combos a little bit more GOE factorization and base value based on what the combo is. Also same for step sequences, they are worth too little.

Sounds good to me. Details would need to be determined.

5. Not really about scoring, but reduce the number of elements BUT NOT the length of the program. Give skaters more time to show skating skills and transitions and more time to breathe.

I like this, again depending on details.

6. Penalize falls more! Only -1? At least -2 or -3.

As I’ve often said before, I’d rather see the fall deduction be a percentage of the TES or TSS rather than a flat number that’s the same for elite senior men doing multiple quads with PCS in the 7s-9s, and lower-ranked ladies doing doubles and maybe some easy underrotated triples with PCS in the 3s and 4s, and everyone in between.

If -1 per fall is too small a penalty for the quad guys, -3 per fall is too much for skaters at the bottom of the same events with much lower total scores.

It could help to have different fall deductions for each discipline and higher for seniors than juniors. But that doesn’t address the issue that sometimes skaters in the very same competition have very different scoring ranges. The fight to make the cut for the free skate at Europeans is just as important to those skaters and their federations as the fight for the podium at Europeans.

7. In terms of PCS, tell the judges it is okay to differentiate by component. For instance a 10 SS skater can also have a 7 in transitions, etc. Of course they judges should be able to back that up when asked.

1 - More replay cameras with better resolution. None of this nonsense of putting the lutz on the far side of the rink where the camera can’t see it.

Yes, where possible. Most major events should be able to manage at least one additional camera angle.

2 - Professionalize judging. They should have zero affiliation with the federations and the federations should have no say in the matter.

Easier said than done. This could be a whole other thread topic, figuring out how this might work.

2 - Expand the GOE categories for finer granularity (they are already doing this by increasing it to +-5). Negative GOEs should have greater weight than positive GOEs. A bad step-out or tumble is more harmful to a program than doing a tano or intricate footwork into a jump is enhancing,

Of course, under the current rules it requires two positive aspects to earn one +GOE, whereas one small error alone will reduce it. I’m not sure whether/how that will change with the switch to +5/-5.

I would double the negative GOEs, so, for example, a fall would get -4.2 for triples and -6 for quads.

I agree that the –GOE needs to be larger for the very high-value elements, especially quads. I think that the values will be based on percentages of base value with the new GOE rules, but again I don’t know specifics yet.

However, for low-value elements there is value to making the +GOEs significant so that skaters will aim for quality in those areas. That seems to be the theory behind Choreographic elements: everyone starts out with 2 points assuming they do enough for the element to meet basic requirements, but beyond that it

The same theory could apply to encouraging skaters to do simpler spins or other leveled elements, or filling their extra jump passes with variations on easier jumps rather than attempting harder ones they can’t do reliably, and to aim for high quality.

That would probably require making the +GOE values the same or close to the same for lower-base-value elements as for the harder elements.

If the +GOEs will also based purely on percentages of base value, the opposite will be true –
good quality will be worth more on difficult than on easy elements.

Which should be valued more, difficulty or quality? Should the answer be different for jumps than for spins and step sequences (and lifts and death spirals)?

5 - Allow more freedom for skaters by allowing them to substitute for jumps or other elements with a spiral sequence or great additional spins or choreo sequences (or if they want, do more jumps). Adjust the values to make these choices competitive since programs are sooooooo boring now. Skaters need freedom to make it more interesting.

I totally agree.

General impression scoring. There is nothing objective about the current system, so dispense with the arbitrary base-values and multipliers and additives. Give everyone a score out of 100.

That’ll take you right back to ordinal judging. Judges will have to save scores for later performances and once some skaters approach the maximum and others start to challenge them it will be hard to avoid running out of room at the top.
How do you think the top 5 men’s free skates at the recent Olympics would have been scored, with Nathan Chen skating so much earlier than the rest of the contenders?
Not to mention that no one will have any idea any more about the reasons for any of the scores. Skaters won’t know where they lost or gained points and won’t know what to work on.

 

[curious]

There is the same thread every year when the end of the season has come.

I think changes should come from the Problems we have with the system.

1. Problem 1. T/M got incredibel high components for this bad candymen FP. How can we change that?

2. Medvedeva gets some GOE +3 for her Axel. Totally laughable. How can we change that?

3. There are just too many falls at mens' programs. I think the problem is solved a bit by reducing the numer of jumps next season.

4. Ice Dance competitions are currently decided by levels for the Step Sequences. Is this a real issue or not?

5. I think there should be no bonus for 3Lo combination. Zagitova won with this element without any bonus. She scored over 13 points.

Same thing. lets complain about the russian skaters because ours skaters cant compete at their level. Care to explain how changing the system again is going to turn them into fierce competitors lol so predictable.

 

[Jaana]

Then the tech score would only come from BV and not BV+GOEs?

The goe would come from how beautifully the jump is done (without visible hesitation, height, flow, air position, etc.)

 

[elle_e]

Under current rules, << and e calls reduce the base value of a jump (< and ! calls do not). Judges are supposed to reduce the GOE -2 to -3 for the more severe calls and -1 to -2 for the less severe calls. There is no requirement for the final GOE to be negative.

< calls reduce the base value of a jump, e.g. 2A< only gives 2.3 as opposed to 3.3
<< calls downgrades the jump, so a 2A<< is only worth 1.1, the value of 1A

It does mean that skaters who underrotate are being penalised twice, first in the base value and then GOE by the judges.

 

[Spirals for Miles]

hm, the people in this thread all seem to be the ones bitter that their favorite isn't winning

I'd say it's harder to jump with difficult entries and exits, plus a beautiful rippon, put in the second half, than a big but other than that normal jump in the first half and that needs to be rewarded
Why does jump size matter so much?

 

[QuadThrow]

Same thing. lets complain about the russian skaters because ours skaters cant compete at their level. Care to explain how changing the system again is going to turn them into fierce competitors lol so predictable.

I do complain about the judging and not about the Russian skating. I do think that Zagitova deserved this Gold and I do think that T/M lost the Bronze because the Judges overmarked them the from start to finish this year. With lower components at Nebelhorn they would have defintily changed the program over the season.

Well. But I forgot to add:

Satoko Miyahara received undeserved high technical marks for those pre-rotated falt jumps. How can we change that?

Shoma Uno's UR in this Olympic FP was not called although the whole world saw it in the slow motion. How can we stop those judging errors?

 

[cheerio2]

I like the system as it is. I think it has produced great, intricate, high quality, fully packed programs, and a nice balance is struck between BV, GOE, and PCS where skaters have to pay attention to all three aspects if they want to win.

For example, a clean Hanyu with 4 quads would have won against a 6 quad program from the young 'uns. That shows that the PCS and GOE have a proper weight in the system. Yet Hanyu still has to do 4 quads, which is still very difficult technically. So I think the system strikes a good balance.

 

[QuadThrow]

She won on many things, but 3Lo combination over a 3T combination is only worth 0.8 points, or 0.88 when backloaded(And within the context of her program, 1 points or 1.11 when backloaded). You don't think it's too small a reward? "She scored over 13 points" is one thing, but she would have scored over 12 points doing +3T instead, and would likely have had better GOE for that jump combination because of how much easier it is - especially when it comes to maintaining flow afterwards(Many +3Lo combos get stuck on landing and get lower GOE).[/QUOTE]

Add the value of both jumps is the natural way to mark combinations. I do not like the idea to optimize the system with some really complicated stuff. The GOE an components are way more important than any little BV push.

0.88 does not seem to be that low. Medvedeva and Koster even showed more simple combinations. That is why the BV gap was bigger than those 0.88.

Performing 3Lz+3Lo is an incredible strong statement from the skater and I think the judges reward this. Zagitova would not have come into the favourit position with 3Lz+3T before the Olympics.

 

[gkelly]

< calls reduce the base value of a jump, e.g. 2A< only gives 2.3 as opposed to 3.3
<< calls downgrades the jump, so a 2A<< is only worth 1.1, the value of 1A

Thanks for the correction. I knew that, but I was lazy and didn't check.

It does mean that skaters who underrotate are being penalised twice, first in the base value and then GOE by the judges.

One way to avoid that would be to stop showing the judges the calls. So they would only penalize if they saw the error with their own eyes.

 

[chopinskate]

Why does jump size matter so much?

Let me ask you a question as an answer: How many current ladies jump like Midori Ito, Tonya Harding, or Yuna Kim, as opposed to the ladies who can do a Rippon?

(answer: getting the speed, the vault, and the strength are hard, if not harder. At least there are more reasons to make a jump large being difficult, than varying your air position.)

 

[chopinskate]

Let me ask you a question as an answer: How many current ladies jump like Midori Ito, Tonya Harding, or Yuna Kim, as opposed to the ladies who can do a Rippon?

(answer: getting the speed, the vault, and the strength are hard, if not harder. At least there are more reasons to make a jump large being difficult, than varying your air position.)

Oh, before I forget, proper variations, that really make the jump harder, not helicopter tanos, should be counted.

 

[moonvine]

If you fall - 0 points.

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

If you fall - 0 points.

That would be some extra buttery popcorn. We’d probably see a lot more double jumps too :hap85: