Disclaimer: I'm not on the IFC and have never looked at this issue in depth at the committee level. The above post is my stated opinion on the matter and I hope it won't reflect poorly on my impartiality as a board member of IFPA. It certainly wasn't diplomatic and for that, I apologize.
Jeremy emailed me just now asking about the Australian Footbag Championships and it's eligibility for sanctioning since they planned on counting unique's differently as prescribed by the rules Jon has pointed out. This prompted me to do some actual digging of my own and I found some interesting stuff in there
This is a link to a draft version of the
new rule book:
http://www.footbag.org/groups/showfile/136
You have to be an IFPA member to download it. This version has been revised slightly, but not substantially in this area, I do not believe, though I don't have time to make an actual comparison with the version that is in the process of being published.
I will add that it's my fault the online version is out of date

I volunteered to help Scott revise the online edition 6 months ago, but as of yet, have not done anything with it. My bad. Sorry.
Let me reiterate, this is a DRAFT version that was posted privately in the Board of Directors group on .org - I made it public for the purposes of this discussion (without committee consent, so I hope I've not stepped on any toes, but I felt it was important).
The highly relevant part, I'll re-print here as
the 'Uniques' section has been re-written.
508.03 . Unique Moves Judges will count the number of unique moves in each performance that qualify based on the “Minimum” allowable move value set by the Event Director. When possible, Judges will write down every move completed in order and indicating where and if drops occurred. When every move is written down, the advantages are that the scores are completely accurate and from this single list, all other partial scores (adds, contacts, ratio and total score) as set forth in 508.04, 508.05, 508.06 can be calculated.
I bolded the relevant part. This makes sense to me. This leaves it wide open for this debate to continue and, for the most part, resolves the question at hand. It was the World's organizer's discretion as to how to count unique's and therefore, Vaska did, in fact, beat Honza.
The only debate would be over whether the judges did this
consistently across the board, for
every competitor. As Steve always tutored in his judging clinics "Judge however you want, but do it
consistently. That it is the
key element to having half way accurate results.
I think that this highlights the fact that it is recognized that the sport is still in it's infancy and that there is plenty of room to grow and try stuff out. IFPA does not exist as a punitive regulatory body that is trying to enforce "the rules". It's by the players for the players.
As Jon pointed out, there is a committee for this stuff. If you want to change it, all you have to do is speak up. We're doing it right now. It doesn't really matter if the discuss happens in official committee as long as the results are passed through it by it's participants.
So, there are still some interesting points that have been brought up in this thread that should absolutely be debated. I am firmer than ever in my conviction that, for the purposes of judging shred :30 that the definition of a "unique" move needs a drastic overhaul in the opposite direction that Jeremy proposes.
As briefly as possible, Jeremy, yes, most of those moves are unique from one another. The defining aspect, for me, is what happens
after the bag leaves your foot. Dada and ripwalk are unique because the dexes happen at different times during the move - crispy V original are unique because of the timing. DOD, Barfly, etc are the same because once the bag leaves your foot, the exact same move happens on the way down. There is no difference, but for the setting surface. Yes, if you apply this concept across the board, all sorts of caveats start to pop up. But I don't think such issues invalidate the theory and simply need to be fleshed out.
In modern Shred :30 Uniques are
everything. One unique move can give you a win. I think we should be challenging the definition of "unique" and keeping that "old school" train of thought that raises the bar a little higher in the interest of exposing the hundreds of thousands of moves out there that are not being explored.
To me, similar is not unique and I think that while it may make judging this event slightly harder (counting unique's isn't the easiest judging assignment) , I think it is a level that we should aspire to as a community instead of allowing this homogenizing trend to continue.
Aight. Work to do.
- Allan