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Board » General Discussion » Handicap Results

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Posted by
Chappo


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2009-04-17 12:00:35
2011-05-27 04:21:51 - Re: Handicap Results
Thanks 76, so I am talking about performance handicapping since the yachts are all one design (in most races)but some yachts have "more hot shots on board" and with their own meteorologist so they usually finish towards the top. Performance handicapping means those yachts get to drag some buckets around the course to offset the extra skill on board. The hot shots still get their scratch glory but the battlers get a little handicap glory. It is interesting watching the Sydney Hobart race and the absolute media focus on the line honours result but amongst the devotees, there is still a lot of interest and respect for the handicap winner (although I agree this is boat handicapping).
Posted by
76Trombones


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2009-08-03 18:04:56
2011-05-27 12:31:22 - Re: Handicap Results
Here's a quick workup for those interested.

The example has 7 boats in a 20 race series. Boats A,B,C,D have mostly consistent performances, with A being the fleet "ringer". "Inconsistent" has more random results, "Intermittent" is one of those boats that tends to win a few races mixed in with a lot of DNF, while "Improving" starts out near the back of the field but gets better almost every race.

The example uses pretty simple adjustment to your rating. Each race result is weighted. Note that the result that changes your rating is corrected time. It gets progressively harder to improve your score as you improve.

The spreadsheet shows DNF as scoring because I uploaded the wrong version, but it works for sake of argument. With DNFs included, "Intermittent" wins almost every race they participate in on corrected time. Drop DNFs and the scoring is more robust. Allowing boats to opt out of scoring individual races is an option, but a similar effect can be had by setting a threshold for inclusion of a race (so that cruising or extended BBQ races don't inflate subsequent results) or using a non-linear weighting.

Performance handicapping doesn't replace the leaderboard. The *overall* goal for individual boats is to reduce their handicap to as close to 1 as possible, not to win races on corrected time. This is why it makes sense for boats to drop "off" races - no benefit from padding the stats. What the corrected time results *do* reward is improvement/effort.

Dovetailing with the SYC, members would show their handicap in the leaderboard. Non-members would either rank based on an invisible "1" rating, or not at all. (former makes sense to me for in-race consistency and motivation)

For the spreadsheet, you can adjust starting handicap (mostly irrelevant on SOL) and race weight in the first few rows. Results can be regenerated by pressing f9. Feel free to modify!

76T
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Posted by
Chappo


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Registered at
2009-04-17 12:00:35
2011-05-28 12:02:19 - Re: Handicap Results
That is a clever worksheet 76, nice work. Your results seem to bear out the trend I would expect to see with the ringer's handicap results moving back to the middle of the fleet; a yacht that finished 8 over the line in one race, winning the next so naturally they get a handicap win (or do very well)and the handicaps approaching 1 as the number of races grows. I agree DNF or BBQ races should be excluded, my idea was to only do say the top 80% of finish times or say the first 300. I see you have treated a DNF result as an equal first as you have for "Intermittent" 4 times so that certainly distorts the result. You could put in a race result of say 1.5 being worse than the last place which corrects the DNF distortion but probably distorts the DNF yachts future handicap rating so better to leave that race out in some 76 creative way and let the previous good race handicap be the on going handicap. I think it is a good method and could give members some more motivating SOL challenges.

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