Tournament judging is the bane of our existence. Either because we got robbed by a judge call, or because we are the judge that is having difficulty making the calls.
There are, however, some less obvious things that can affect the quality of judging over and above how good the judges are. And I’m not writing a comprehensive handbook on judging.
Proximity To Fighters
I once attended a smaller regional tournament that was using many of the same judges I had seen in action at a much larger event. I didn’t have a ton of confidence in their experience, but as always you work with what you are given. To my (pleasant) surprise I found the performance of the judges to be much higher than what I was anticipating. Which confused me, as I know I’m infinitely brilliant and the discrepancy could only be attributed to an unobserved external factor.
After paying careful attention to this I eventually came up with a hypothesis: the rings were much smaller than I had seen people doing in the past. Which was interesting, since I had never considered the distance from the fighters to be an important parameter in judging quality. Nor have I ever heard it come up in discussions about fencing ring size.
Now, you might have expected me to go out and find some scientific evidence on the topic and get out there with a SwordSTEM showing how much I now know. And I have tried to find a way to confirm my suspicion. But, as you can gather from where this is being published, I haven’t found anything that I consider solid enough to base a claim off of.
While I couldn’t find any real evidence to back up this idea, I have since spent several years keeping an eye on this as I visit tournaments across the world. Which has all the caveats of non-rigorous data collection, but if you think my judgment isn’t good I don’t know why you are reading my blog post anyways.
As you may have guessed, I’ve only become more convinced of this with more observation. Obviously bringing judges closer it’s not a one stop shop to having better accuracy. But it seems to help more than people think.
I’ve brought this up to a few people and there was a criticism of “well if they get too close then they will also see worse”. My response is typically “well duh”. It’s not as if saying a judge 3 m away can see better than a judge 6 m away is the same as me advocating standing basically right on top of the fencers.
So what is the optimal distance to watch a match? Well how about we do something really simple and look at where the directors stand. The director is typically the most experienced person in the ring and will, without thinking about it, try to put themselves in the best possible place to observe the fight. While maintaining a proper buffer for safety.
The further out you put the judges, the worse calls you are going to get. I believe this is one of the contributing factors to the performance of the 2-director system: everyone involved in the call can be at the optimal viewing distance. Even if you are doing a flag judging system you can increase performance by allowing judges to move in and out of the ring as the fight moves away or towards them.
(Martin Fabian lays out his case for the 2-director system here, but distance to the fighters doesn’t make the list. 2 Is More Than 4 – On The State Of Judging In HEMA Competitions)
Lighting Conditions
Scenario: A bank of lights in the sports hall is out, but it doesn’t seem noticeable and we run the tournament anyways. Judging is worse than usual. Then all the lights fail on that side of the hall, so we switch to the other side. And judging returns to normal form. (I didn’t say good…)
Scenario: In an venue that is normally a banquet hall. It’s nearing the end of the day and the director suspects that the judges are overtired because they are declining in performance. The judges are swapped out with other experienced judges and the quality is still low. Then we realize that the lights had been automatically dimming as it got into evening dining time. The lights are restored to full brightness and judging improves.
Now, it’s not going to shock anyone when I say that if it’s dark the judges can’t see well. What was interesting about both of these examples was that the level of light reduction was such a small amount that it never even occurred to anyone that it was affecting the quality of the judges. It was only the sudden transition to a better light source that made the difference very noticeable.
Actionable Stuff
- Get your judges/directors as close to the action as they can afford to be. If you are forcing them to stay outside the ring then you are limiting their potential. And if you are dead set that they can’t enter the ring, be cognizant of how the ring size affects their ability to perceive actions.
- Make sure you have good lighting. A small amount of dimness makes a much larger difference than you think it does.