1st Quarter Online Competition Official Release! All Video's

[King Monkey]

So a barfly already has a butterfly in it. If the only thing wrong with it is a 'the' dex, it makes no sense to rank a butterfly over it, right?

A Barfly is essentially a double Butterfly. So if one Butterfly is The, then it is a Butterfly, and an ugly looking Butterfly at that. In my opinion if you compare an ugly Butterfly to nice looking one, I'd have to go with the nice one for its execution. To argue that the The'd Barfly/ugly Butterfly should be judged higher because you did more physical work for it doesnt make much sense.

[Jeremy]

Exactly. If I set the bag up in the air, bash my head against the ground and then do a clipper stall, it's harder work than just doing a normal clipper stall, but that doesn't make it a better move.

[Zac Miley]

So now a trick's rank should not be based on how difficult the trick is?

I doubt either one of us will be convinced so I guess we can just leave it here, though...

[Colin]

The new hotness is 'not-barraging'. It's a stepping set with an extra wiggle thrown in. Kids love it.

[King Monkey]

So now a trick's rank should not be based on how difficult the trick is?

But the difficulty of the attempted trick is irrelevant if its 'The'. If a player hits Dimwalk>Blurriest and 'the's' the third Blurriest dex, and a second player hits Dimwalk>Ripwalk, then the second player would still be ranked higher regardless of how difficult the first player made their ugly Ripwalk by poor execution of the Blurriest.

[Jeremy]

I think Ken was on the money when he talked about mastering moves. I've always liked to think of footbag as like a martial art. The aim for me has never to be the best or even to impress other people. Although I certainly am exceptionally competitive in everything I do, and I do enjoy impressing people, my strongest motivation in most things I do in life is to do things perfectly and right. I might enjoy impressing people, but I hate impressing people with things that are wrong, and ultimately the only person who I really try to impress is myself. I get as excited hitting new moves in front of 10,000 people as I do hitting them by myself. I'm competitive because if I lose at something it's a clear indication that I could have done something better, and at the times when I lose but know I couldn't do much better (such as being outmarked in football by somebody a foot taller than me), I never feel disappointed.

If I were to sell my soul to the devil for something footbag related, *all* I would want would be to master every single move and component. That's really my goal - not to be able to hit everything, but to hit it perfectly.

Now let's pretend that a 'the' trick counts as hitting that trick. To make things easier let's talk about a specific trick - say barfly. My goal is not to be able to hit barfly, it's to be able to hit it perfectly every time. Unachievable maybe, but it's also the kind of goal that means you'll always be pushing yourself and improving (until you find new interests). What does hitting a 'the' barfly indicate? It indicates that I'm a very long way from my goal. What does hitting a clean and stable butterfly indicate? It indicates I'm close to the same goal but for butterflies. When you're judging any footbag event the first question you should be asking is; "how close are they to mastering the move/combo/component/whatever?" If the execution is terrible then they're a long way away from it. If they hit something easier but well executed then they're much closer to it, and so this is better.

Hitting a move is only the first step in the process of mastering it.

[TheLast]

keep talking guys i want at least 5 pages of comments or I will not run the online comp again



just kidding


(I still want the 5 pages)

[SirSerje]

Any results from novice competitions?

[JoshC.]

:cry:
Any results from novice competitions?

Yes please.

[Zac Miley]

All of the results will come out at the same time.

Sorry it's taking so long, I'm a little busy with school.

[Zac Miley]

Novice Sick 1 rankings:

If you're curious about your ranking, please PM me or Matt K.

1. John Goode: Zulu PS Dragonfly
2. Sergey Vyazkov: Blurry Whirl
3. Pavel Nasonkin: Spin PDX Mirage
4. Grigoriy Frangoni: Phoenix
5. Roman Ivanicky: Ducking Far Rev Whirl
6. Tamas Papp: Spinning Rake
7. Nathan Kelber: ATW Sole

Open Sick 3 and Open Sick Link will be done either Thursday or Friday. Sorry for the delay.

[Matt K]

Open Sick 1:

Byrin - Stepping Mofly
Ken - Pixie Flurry
Artem - Whirlygig Swirl
Jeremy - Sailing Gyro Mirage
Camilo - Zulu Pdx. Blender
Mark - Moby Dick
Josh - Symp Bubba Motion
Dmitry - Alpine Fairy Paradon
Vitaliy - Alpine Scorpion's Tail
Alexander - Mind Bender

Elaborations can be given if anyone wants one.

[C-Fan]

I guess I'd like to know why my trick placed where it did. Was the video quality not good enough for you to see how clean the dexes were? The only other reason I can think of why you'd place a "the" trick ahead of mine, is the fact that stepping mofly is "rarer" than pixie flurry. But then my question would be: had you ever seen a clean pixie flurry in shoes before my submission?

I'm also baffled by how Artem's trick ended up scoring so highly. Even if the second dex wasn't completley "the" (which it was), look at the seal. If you have to make a diving handcatch where you end up on your back, do you really even count that trick as sealed?

Could you release a list of criteria you took into account when creating your rankings? For example, something like this:

1. Originality
2. Execution
3. Difficulty
4. Etc.

[Jeremy]

Yes I'd love to hear about why 'the' tricks finished first and third.

Also for that matter why a clean trick finished last, with three 'the' tricks in the next three positions above it.

I guess if we just take out the 'the' stuff we're left with;

1. Ken
2. Me
3. Camilo
4. Mark
5. Alexander

I think that's probably fairly accurate, although I'd probably put Mark above Camilo on execution.

[Zac Miley]

From Ken's video we determined that the third dex hit the bag with his calf (or somewhere around there) - the bag moved about a foot from it's starting position between the last barraging dex and the legover.

On Whirlygig Swirl, I sort of agree with you guys. I would have placed Camilo and Jeremy both above him. Really, though, the only problems with the trick were a thin dex (maybe the, not a good angle to tell from) and the obvious balance issues at the end.

Also, Stepping Mofly had great execution and form, with the only problem being a very thin/the dex and minor balance issues at the end. I would also say it's harder than Pixie Flurry. Subjectively. Objectively, our system agrees.

We're using a mathematical formula to calculate these results, so it's sort of difficult to list our criteria, but here you go.

1. Difficulty
2. Execution
3. Orginality - generally a tiebreaker.

I'd li ke to add that no one had perfect execution on their trick. The closest was probably Camilo.

And instead of placing the tricks at the end, we used the dexes as just another problem in a trick. If that symp bubba trick had been better executed it would have dominated. It got like a 4.75/10 in execution, which killed it.

Any other questions we'll gladly answer.

We'll try to get Sick 3 and Sick Link up tonight.

[C-Fan]

Wait, you're telling me your eye is good enough to "determine" my leg grazed the bag, but you can't tell that Artem's whirl was "the"?!

[Zac Miley]

Wait, you're telling me your eye is good enough to "determine" my leg grazed the bag, but you can't tell that Artem's whirl was "the"?!

I said it could have been the. We still downgraded it quite a bit. Slop is much more black and white than cleanliness of dexes.

And yeah, we 'determined' it. There's no reason to get defensive and condescending.

[Jeremy]

You can't have "great execution and form" if you hit a trick 'the.' Stepping mo-fly is clearly 'the' - not "thin."


I'm still curious to know why moves like symp bubba motion and alpine scorpion's tail in particular finished higher than mind bender, given the execution.

When you say you rated "difficulty" first - was that just the difficulty of the trick in general, or did you actually look at what the person did? If you did the latter did you ask how difficult it would be hit those tricks 'the', or did you think they were clean?

You say you downgraded the whirlygig swirl "quite a bit" yet it finished third. How far did you downgrade it and where would it have otherwise finished if you didn't think it "could have been 'the'" ?

[Matt K]

Zac and I are testing out a system where we rank a move's difficulty in isolation, and then rank execution.

We agreed that Byrin got a very tiny bit of the dex, but yes, that was taken into consideration, and he was deducted for it. His move's difficulty was high enough that the points he lost for that were not enough to bump him out of first.

Josh's trick's difficulty was very high, but his execution was really poor. If he had done just a little better with it he would've won.

Ken, your trick was excellent, I was really impressed. Unfortunately it looks like you did hit the bag with your leg, and if it was just some weird gust of wind, we're sorry.

Happy to answer any more questions.

[Zac Miley]

You can't have "great execution and form" if you hit a trick 'the.' Stepping mo-fly is clearly 'the' - not "thin."


I'm still curious to know why moves like symp bubba motion and alpine scorpion's tail in particular finished higher than mind bender, given the execution.

When you say you rated "difficulty" first - was that just the difficulty of the trick in general, or did you actually look at what the person did? If you did the latter did you ask how difficult it would be hit those tricks 'the', or did you think they were clean?

You say you downgraded the whirlygig swirl "quite a bit" yet it finished third. How far did you downgrade it and where would it have otherwise finished if you didn't think it "could have been 'the'" ?

I think we just fundamentally disagree (flashbacks to presidential race...) on how tricks should be ranked. Our difficulty system is objective. Each separate component has a score (similar to ADDs, but much more sophisticated). Then we ranked execution by deducting points (which there are guidelines and categories for). These two things gave us a final score. It just so happens that Whirlygig Swirl is a hard trick, and the camera angle makes it difficult to tell if the whirl was thin or the. Maybe we were slightly unfair to Ken, but it was unintentional. You still beat him.

Alpine Scorpion's Tail and Symp Bubba Motion are both a lot harder than Mind Bender. That's the only explanation as to why they're ranked higher.

Also, if you saw Byrin do Stepping Mofly without a bag like that, you would say that he had good form and execution. The only problem is the last dex, which is either very thin or the. It doesn't matter that much in the overall rankings.