Competition Rules Reset

[Kimber.204]

Preface: I have never competed in a PRS/NRL match.

@lowlight - I enjoyed your recent podcast "Resolution Broken, Drama too fun to Ignore"

I recognize that compared to your vocal stances in the past, you've been going out of your way to let the competition organizations be, and just ignore them. And I agree with your statement that it might be a great time for a rules reset. (I understand that certain types of rule change are difficult to enact immediately, and may need to have a planned rollout to be fair to competitors who have invested in specific equipment).

I like your idea of two classes - Open and Limited - with simple easy to understand differences.
I've wondered if there isn't a way to level the playing field even more. Or, change the scoring all together. I'm thinking of Bracket Racing in drag racing.

Would this put different people on the podium at the end of the day, no maybe not, but that's not my goal. I'm only thinking of how to make this sport accessible to more folks. The "Production Class" sounds like it's trying to do that, but I think it misses the mark. I'm not trying to hand out participation trophies either, but can the playing field be leveled somehow to attract new folks running "entry level" equipment.

I haven't thought through how it would be broken up (at this point it doesn't matter to me). I'm just thinking out loud about ways to find and retain new shooters.

Regards and Happy New Year,
Ross

 

[308pirate]

There is only one shooting sport in which any sort of handicapping has been successful and that is American Trap. It only works there because of the specific layout of the field.

Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel (as if none of the ideas proposed have ever been tried.....LOL) why not just look at what shooting sports that are successful today are doing and either copy or adapt what can be reused?

On the equipment thing...………..

USPSA used to be run what ya brung, no limits.

Then it split into Open and Limited divisions

Now there's Open, Limited, Production, Carry Optics, Single Stack (aka 1911), Revolver, and Carbine

I can guarantee you that if USPSA had remained at just Open and Limited its growth would not have been what it has been.

Oh, and there's no handicapping/bracket racing/consolation prizes in USPSA. If you're shooting carry optics and Hwansik Kim (as an example) is in the same match, well, you're gonna get your ass kicked.

 

[Dthomas3523]

There is only one shooting sport in which any sort of handicapping has been successful and that is American Trap. It only works there because of the specific layout of the field.

Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel (as if none of the ideas proposed have ever been tried.....LOL) why not just look at what shooting sports that are successful today are doing and either copy or adapt what can be reused?

On the equipment thing...………..

USPSA used to be run what ya brung, no limits.

Then it split into Open and Limited divisions

Now there's Open, Limited, Production, Carry Optics, Single Stack (aka 1911), Revolver, and Carbine

I can guarantee you that if USPSA had remained at just Open and Limited its growth would not have been what it has been.

Oh, and there's no handicapping/bracket racing/consolation prizes in USPSA. If you're shooting carry optics and Hwansik Kim (as an example) is in the same match, well, you're gonna get your ass kicked.

Yep. You start with only the amount of classes your membership can handle (I.E. not 5 divisions with 500 shooters) and then expand the divisions when/if your membership gets large enough.

You also don’t keep the same failed divisions year after year. Let’s just call it what it is, ladies, junior, tac, and production are failed divisions. About 10 people are ranked nationally in each. That means they aren’t working and are just white noise.

Figure out some other way to get women, kids, and new shooters involved. Then bring back the divisions when you have enough women or kids.

 

[308pirate]

You also don’t keep the same failed divisions year after year.

Well, since there's no admin burden to managing divisions with low participation (at least in Practiscore) in reality it affects no one that 5 people shoot Revolver in USPSA.

Divisions like that are a failure to no one except those who don't participate in them but complain about them.

The wheel's been invented already

 

[Lowlight]

What people don't get really is the history,

It was never designed to succeed, it was just a money making scheme in a lot of ways, they never sat down and looked at the other shooting sports, in order to use what works and what doesn't. They just took what others were doing, (mostly Me and Jacob) and decided they wanted to get between the shooters and the MD because there was money to be made.

Because our matches were always full, sold out in minutes and at the beginning was growing someone wanted to tap into that market. If you don't make a product, and you are not hosting a match, what is left... keeping a record of your scores for money.

It's that simple there was never a grand plan to make this something special, it was a bunch of friends playing a loose Ponzi scheme to become involved. They didn't host matches or make something they just said, pay me and I will keep your score and at the end we'll have a match and crown a winner. Which is really what was happening already just without the finale.

Remember, this thing started in 2012 (There were precision rifle series before, they failed) since that time it was sold, then that person sold shares to 6 people, then those people sold it all to another guy for 5X more money. (All they were really selling was the name) Then when that guy realized he got ripped off he walked away, and not Now Shannon has it.

I agree there is no need to reinvent the wheel but there is a need to make it work across the country, based on how we participate. it's not hard but you have to actually run it like an organization and not a loosely affiliated group of shooters which is now. The only difference is only one guy shares in the profit of a group activity.

Matches all used to be Open, then the series played with divisions and royally screwed them up because they only care about the Open people anyway. The other divisions are an after thought to quiet people down giving you the illusion of doing something positive. The are beyond stupid is a lot of ways.

There is no standard on how matches are run, they are designed to be individual events. They just want to be paid for the name, not how the event runs. So you have a bunch of loosely affiliated individuals doing something similar so people can say they belong to a series. How could it succeed?

Meanwhile the inmates run the asylum, the Series competes with it's own matches, the Series director demands loyalty from all and is equally vengeful against transgressions.

It was never designed to work for others, it was never designed to be properly run or managed, it was never designed to be scaled, all it does is create disgruntled shooters who want some where else to go. So they either start their own series like the NRL, which is just disgruntled PRS people or the Regional stuff so they don't have to play in the PRS Pond. When you see unaffiliated series creep up that is the shooters in that area telling you they don't like the national events.

it should have a path, local to regional to national that should have been laid out in the beginning and grown into. There should be a spelled plan for people to move up, to learn, go to any other sport like this and look the training and education aspect. Completely missing here. How do you grow the sport when you have no recruitment strategy? Telling your friend to bring a friend is comical at best.


It needs to be looked at from space, nuked and left for morbid and someone needs to start over with an actual plan. Or else it's just a bunch of people like 90% paying for the top 10% to be given all the things everyone else pays for... If you look at the costs as part of doing business and you really don't get anything but the experience, great. For most the money is no big deal, but the reality is:

I have no interest, I am too busy, but I will help promote and give a home to anyone who I think is gonna do it right, there is enough wrong out there, those doing things correctly need to be thrust higher in the air.

 

[Dthomas3523]

Well, since there's no admin burden to managing divisions with low participation (at least in Practiscore) in reality it affects no one that 5 people shoot Revolver in USPSA.

Divisions like that are a failure to no one except those who don't participate in them but complain about them.

The wheel's been invented already

Not true at all. In its current form, it gives more bad publicity than anything.

Production runs off more new shooters than it attracts.

Ladies class highlights exactly how many women participate and when women considering see there’s practically no one, they assume it must not be interesting.

I’ve literally forgot how many times I’ve heard this in some shape or form from new shooters and women.

Also, you’re thinking small time with the “wheel.”

Americans flock to other things such as pool, golf, bowling, etc etc. The common themes are “amateur” “handicap” “2-4hrs.”

The wheel has been invented. But it hasn’t been used in rifle sports yet.

 

[Lowlight]

One of the things people miss is mindset,

How a shooter thinks when they venture out in a new endeavor, they are timid, unsure, looking for direction in a place non exist.

Having a "Production" class that says up front you need $5k to enter this game means everyone with a $800 rifle and $500 scope will never show up. They are discouraged from the start at the fact they (series, shooters, companies) promote the highest dollar equipment available.

The message is, don't bother being poor, or walking in off the street, they want you competition ready on day one.

Classes are meant to encourage not discourage these discourage. People understand the value of competition, however not everyone wants to be competitive to the point of investing all of their time and effort into a single event.

The reason we grew as fast as we did, and became part of the model was, if you came in off the street with a Savage 10FP in 308 with a Sightron on it, you looked like everyone else, and we offered training classes ahead of time to learn. It was completely open.

Attaching dollar figures to a Division is the DUMBEST thing on the planet

This is why the Pistol world is not the same, we have much more expensive stuff overall. That investment has to be considered.

 

[308pirate]

The wheel has been invented. But it hasn’t been used in rifle sports yet.

It's pretty presumptuous to assume that no one has thought of handicapping rifle competition.

The fact that it isn't done at all today could very well indicate that it has been tried and found wanting.

 

[Lowlight]

We tried the handicap route,

The problem is you have to include the range, the math formula become too unwieldy it's not a quick easy adjustment

You have to look several factors

Trust me early on I looked this, we designed a series that became the model for the Missouri Most Series, even that had to be changed and we wrote it out.

I had a Tactical Rifleman's League or something spec'd out, with a handicap system, we threw it away

 

[Lowlight]

20 years of SH, if you don't think this conversation is on Repeat, you're too young

Every single thing talked about has been discussed or tried in one form or another

it always comes back to simplicity

 

[Lowlight]

Remember with a handgun, where I point my finger is where the bullet goes, there is no drop and drift we deal with in those events.

Rifle events have a lot more factors that come into play that have a bearing on shooter success.

Shooting 10 yards, 25 yards, 50 yards, does not have these same obstacles. A 9mm in this context is pretty similar beyond barrel and sights, maybe throw in recoil factor, that said, all 6.5CM are not created equal when it comes to hitting a 1000 yard target. Putting a 700 5R against a GAP Production Rifle is vastly different at distance. At 100 yards we can probably be within a crosshair of each other, the further out we shoot the more this will change.

 

[Rant Durden]

As a casual competitor I like the production division, but I think having some differentiation between top guys and scrubs (like me) might be a good thing. The shotgun group I used to shoot with had divisions based on points and finishing position. If you won a match or consistently placed top 5, next year you moved up one division for the following year. If the following year you did neither in the higher division you could move back down.
Maybe Open and Production, then an A and B group in each.

 

[Baron23]

Wow, so much of what you guys have talked about just brings up so many memories about NSSA American skeet and pretty much the very same (or similar) issues. I was a National Director at one point, state org President, and ran a major top 20 shoot for some number of years....all of which took a lot of the fun out of shooting skeet for me

Unlike trap, skeet doesn't have handicaps because, like with PRS perhaps, we all shoot from the same positions with the same target presentation.

Oh, individual shoots can offer a handicap option where if you choose you can pay in and depending on your classification, you get so many added targets to your score. But this has nothing to do with standings in the shoot itself...its just a fun side bet to get more people some sudden death shoot off experience.

But certainly the refrain of the sanctioning organization just looking to get money out of members, with very little in return, is so very familiar.

Also, Skeet doesn't have divisions based on equipment. Wayne Mayes, for example, could kick pretty much anyone's ass with a Mossberg 500 while everybody else is shooting a K-80 (actually, he did shoot a Win Model 1400 (not really a very high qual shotgun) in 12 ga and doubles and he consistently won championships with it, its in the NSSA museum). Its just not a very applicable discriminator in skeet.

But, it has the same barriers to entry (how do I learn to do this...I don't even know where to start), the same gripes about the competition (why should I compete at skeet and pay into the purse that's always taken by the same top shooters...I'll never beat Todd Bender), and some of the same gripes about NSSA (what are they doing to grow the sport with our money..precious little it seems).

Skeet does have classes based on past performance and your running average and one can concurrently compete at the open level as at the same time as at the class level and other concurrents like age, gender, mil, etc. Fact is that winning a class will return some money to you but we all kind of know that there is one real Champ (the open gun champ) and everybody else is a loser with perhaps a class/concurrent consolation prize.

Sporting clays uses a punch system...win (match or class??), and get a punch and bumped up in class...I don't shoot registered SC so I really don't know the details of this.

Skeet, however, is fairly standardized (diff in weather and condition of fields notwithstanding) while it seems, from the above posts, that PRS is not....yet perhaps. So state and national team selections from shooters across the country are reasonably fair .

I'm kind of new to rifles and I don't compete and at 68 y.o. its kind of hard to see me running and gunning and dragging a ton of stuff and a 25 lb gun around in the heat. Oh, I have a good gun....and yes, its 20-something lbs....and its wonderful to shoot from a bench or prone. But running with it...haha.

Hell, I'm too old, or at least my lumbar is, to compete at skeet anymore. But if I wanted to shoot PRS or similar, and I can say this as a guy who has been looking at this stuff for about 18 months, I really wouldn't know where to begin. Perhaps its my area, but local gun clubs do hold High Power and Silhouette match clinics, there was a .22 bench rest clinic given at one local club that I know. But PRS type shooting....nope.

So, its nice that some very experienced and fit rifle shooters, many of which were/are active mil/LEO shooters, can participate at a level that challenges them, but that seems like a small group from which to try to grow a sport.

Just some random thoughts....please feel free to totally ignore them.

Cheers

 

[308pirate]

As a casual competitor I like the production division, but I think having some differentiation between top guys and scrubs (like me) might be a good thing. The shotgun group I used to shoot with had divisions based on points and finishing position. If you won a match or consistently placed top 5, next year you moved up one division for the following year. If the following year you did neither in the higher division you could move back down.
Maybe Open and Production, then an A and B group in each.

I can see a point to shooter classifications if there's money in play. They serve to apportion the pot.

But they're pointless in sports where there's no cash purse.

 

[Lowlight]

I was actually thinking about this after reading the chess comparisons

if the scores remain the same and we use a percentage based method using possible points this can help on several levels including prizes

It took me a moment to reflect, but say you award standings off percentage of possible

A class
B class
C class
Etc.

You can have tables and prizes in each section a B table can have an A prize

go simple A, B C use 15% divisions and create a reward system inside each

Record percentage of winner by possible of match so a Winner can score 85% of possible then have a column for match, winner is 100%, then division

3 numbers to classify but all from one score

percent possible - overall
Percent of winner
Percent of division

computer can do all the work

 

[Dthomas3523]

I was actually thinking about this after reading the chess comparisons

if the scores remain the same and we use a percentage based method using possible points this can help on several levels including prizes

It took me a moment to reflect, but say you award standings off percentage of possible

A class
B class
C class
Etc.

You can have tables and prizes in each section a B table can have an A prize

go simple A, B C use 15% divisions and create a reward system inside each

Record percentage of winner by possible of match so a Winner can score 85% of possible then have a column for match, winner is 100%, then division

3 numbers to classify but all from one score

percent possible - overall
Percent of winner
Percent of division

computer can do all the work

We almost have a working handicap system that takes round count and target size from a CoF and assigns a CoF difficulty level. Similar to golf course difficulty.

Currently running data of any matches we can with the inputs. So far it seems to be pretty fair.

Computer does is with very few manual inputs.

 

[Lowlight]

I wrote this out more in the other thread