If transitions were standardized in the system like spins are, then you'd really start seeing "cookie-cutter" programs because everyone would be doing those transitions (albeit there are many different basic steps) that one, the system tells them they must do; and two, garner the most points.
Thanks for your reply.
It seems that the transitions are both rewarded in the GOEs and PCS. I sometimes wonder if they are being overly-rewarded. I would imagine judges who already reward the transitions in the GOEs would reduce the reward in the PCS (I think you would still reward them, but by less amount because you already reward them elsewhere), otherwise it would be double reward. The same transitions get rewarded twice.
I personally think the PCS are relative scores. They are not absolute scores. There are no clear enough or absolute guidelines to define the 7s, 8s and 9s. Depending on how harsh or how lenient the judges are, some judges will give 7s, and some judges will give 8s to the same performance. So I usually just pay attention to the gap between two skaters’ PCS. I believe that as long as the judging is consistent, the PCS gap would reflect the difference between the difficulty and quality of the skaters’ performance (plus a little bit of judges’ personal preferences). But if there is no standard way or clear guideline to define the difficulty, then it’s inevitable that the PCS gap will get inflated with skaters’ reputation gap. E.g. a 0.25 bonus in every component (x5, then x2 in factoring) becomes a 2.5 pt difference in PCS in the free skate; a 0.5 bonus in every component becomes a 5 pt difference in PCS. I mean it’s pretty easy to inflate it, and reputation judging is pretty much the root of the majority of the judging controversies.
At least to me, if the PCS gap is 10 points, mathematically, this means the lower-score skater needs to have an extra quad to be considered the same as the higher-score skater. The judges probably don’t mean it this way, but that’s the mathematical implication. So, say two skaters have two quads and two 3As, and the rest of the elements are similar and they have equally good or equally bad execution. The only difference between them is the amount of transitions. If the PCS gap is 10 points, then the lower-score skater needs to have at least 3 quads to catch up to the other skater. I think that a 10 point gap in PCS is pretty common between a reputable skater and a skater with little reputation, even when the tech content and execution quality are very similar. I don’t know how much the transitions can justify that 10 point gap. I certainly don’t think you can justify that gap with perceived difference between the two skaters’ artistry. Artistry is too subjective. I personally think that artistry can only justify about 1 point, at most 2 points of the PCS. I was thinking, with everything else equal, the difficult transitions can only justify 5-7 points of the PCS gap at most. The rest of the gap is due to the skaters’ reputation and judges’ preferences.
I know it’s most likely not practical to have a standard way to rate the difficulty of transitions. However, if you want to minimize the influence of reputation and to create fair judging, a standard way to judge the difficulty is probably a must. (The TES standardize the base value, so it’s usually pretty hard to debate the tech score, although sometimes the GOEs can get inflated.However, winning based on PCS only is almost always debatable.) But the downside is that everything is so standardized, that everybody ends up doing the same thing. That’s the trade-off you have to consider as a rule maker.
It seems that there are two main ways to game the system.
1) Add lots, lots and lots of transitions to the program. Even if you don’t skate the best, your PCS won’t drop as much because all those transitions will keep your PCS high. E.g. Patrick and Javi. Both of them get close to 90 PCS even when they have relatively poor performances. The good thing about this strategy is that you will be consistently on the podium because your score will always be somewhat decent; and when you skate well, the PCS goes up significantly. So, it’s a safe strategy to get good score, more ups than downs. But the bad thing is that, it’s very difficult to be consistent and skate clean, and almost everybody would think you are over-scored, and there is really no way for your fans to justify your score convincingly. I hope Yuzu doesn’t use this strategy. It would be painful to see him getting the backlash.
2) If you have the technical prowess, then you can add a medium number of transitions to the program. It’s easier to skate clean and be more consistent, and you can raise the tech content in the future. Your PCS goes up when you skate well and goes down when you skate poorly. The score goes up and down equally. The good thing about this strategy is that the scores are more reasonable and can be justified, although you will still get some reputation bonus. I feel that Liza is using this strategy. Yuzu seems to be using this strategy too (at least this season).
You can also choose to have no transitions. But the bad thing about this strategy is that if your jumps fail, there is nothing left in your program and your PCS scores goes down significantly. If you execute your jumps well, your PCS goes up, but probably not by that much because your jumps are already rewarded in TES. So the score will have more downs than ups. So this doesn’t seem like a good strategy. I guess skaters only use this strategy if their skating skills are not yet very solid.
It’s been pretty quiet recently. We haven’t heard anything about Yuzu lately. I guess no news is good news.
!!! Looking forward to his 'A moment with......' episode..... 
arty:
