IFPA "Official Rules of Footbag Sports" - update f

[Wiktor]

To all footbag players and organizers,

On behalf of IFPA's International Footbag Committee (IFC), I would like to announce that the rule book, the "Official Rules of Footbag Sports", has been updated for 2010 and is now available online (summary and details below).

The IFC is made up of players and organizers from around the world, and considers rule changes at the annual meeting during the IFPA World Footbag Championships, and by electronic discussion and voting at other times during the year, as needed.

Once the rules are finalized, they become effective April 1st of the following year.

So, this year's rules became effective a few months ago, and were proposed and voted into the official rule book last year.

Thanks to the committee and especially many hours of work by Steve Goldberg, we have just finished putting the 2010 changes online for everyone's use -- just in time for Euros, US Open, Worlds, and other tournaments this season.

You can find the 12th edition of the IFC Rules of Footbag Sports (including all the changes highlighted below) at http://www.footbag.org/rules.

***

SUMMARY OF CHANGES:

Freestyle changes:

(1) Circle Contest, Olympic-Style Judging, and Difficulty Analysis were added to the rule book. These are described in context below, along with other changes. Almost all the text of the rule book is new (either rewritten, reworked, or added as a result of this year's changes). Details are bleow.

(2) In 502 Field of Play, we added much more detailed requirements about the playing area than were previously in the rule book. These include surface, protection from the elements, and the inclusion of metric system measurements (since all previous versions were in English system only, but this is an international rule book).

(3) In 503 Equipment, we made some very minor changes to wording to improve clarity of descriptions. Also, there were several places (this is true throughout this Article) where "choreographed routines" were the assumed competitive discipline; so where applicable, we added the qualification "in choreographed routines", etc. For example, several of these paragraphs in 503 were about choreographed routines and wouldn't make sense for Circle Contest, for example.

(4) In the 11th edition, 504 was "Rules of Play". This was basically assuming that Choreographed Routines was the only discipline, and jumped straight into explaining how it works. So instead, the previous 504 Rules of Play (11th edition) was made a subsection of the new Choreographed Freestyle Routines chapter (505 in the new rule book). The new 504 is described next, and more detail of 505 will be below as well.

(5) In the 12th (2010) edition, 504 is now "Difficulty Analysis".

This is an ENTIRELY NEW section that describes in some detail the current state of the art of freestyle footbag -- all of these concepts are needed throughout the competitive disciplines; so instead of starting by documenting each discipline and repeating these concepts in each section, we pulled all these concepts up to the new 504 and described them in a way that does not assume anything about the specific competition that may use them. This is the single largest new section with all original text (and some text pulled from the formula-based routines judging system and the Shred:30 rules).

(6) As mentioned in (4), the 11th edition's 504 Rules of Play (for freestyle), 505 Formula-Based Judging System, 506 Ranked-Component Judging system were all merged together to form 505 Choreographed Freestyle Routines. This new section 505 was completely reorganized so that the details previously only within the Formula-Based Judging System are now common to all judging systems. In other words, prior to this change, all the details described only in Formula-Based Judging System (in terms of what we're looking for in a good routine) are now moved up to Rules of Play. For example, the aspects of good presentation (music & movement, personality & originality, etc.) are now described in the Rules of Play section and are expected to be the same regardless of judging system. Finally, the Olympic-Style system (new 505.03) was added as an official judging system (note: while it has been in use since 2002, it was never in the rule book until now!).

(7) The multipliers were changed in the new 505.02-D so that technical difficulty would have less total impact on score (since players are much less likely now to "max out" that card) -- and therefore allow better differentiation among players. The multiplier was 0.01 for singles and 0.0067 for doubles; the new multipliers are 0.003 for singles and 0.002 for doubles (preserving the same ratio of doubles to singles of 2/3). It would take a lot for a player to max out the technical card now. This means all the scores will be lower than before, making other aspects such as presentation, variety, and execution, weigh slightly more heavily as a result.

(8) The 11th edition's 507 Tournament Procedures was specific to choreographed routines, but really covers many general concepts that apply to other disciplines. So we moved this to the very end, after Timed Technical-Variety Competition and the newly-added Circle Contest. In the 12th edition, it is now 508 Tournament Procedures. We left some things the same, but rewrote sections of it to make them either more general, or to specifically call out that they were specific to freestyle.

This could probably use more work in the future to clarify things even more.

We also added 508.04 Resolving Ties, 508.06 Add Counting, and 508.07 Round-to-Round seeding. These can all be improved next time.

(9) The Timed Technical-Variety Competition (Shred) was 507 and is now 506 due to the merging of 504, 505 and 506 into the new 505 (and the addition of a new 504). In addition, this was completely rewritten from the ground up (without changing any rules) to remove what would now be entirely redundant definitions of all the things now in 504 Difficulty Analysis. We also added more clarifying language, and organized it like the other sections as: rules of play, followed by judging, followed by scoring, followed by tabulating scores. This makes it much easier to follow. The only substantive change was the clarification of variety vs. difficulty -- in the previous version, the letter of the rules stated that moves below the minimum adds (e.g., 3 adds in open) would not count towards either difficulty or variety. This was not actually how anyone played this game, so either it was an error or something that was changed soon after it was added to the rule book. The new rules state more clearly that adds are counted no matter what, but that variety excludes moves less than the minimum add-value if defined.

(10) An entire new discipline was added to the freestyle rules -- Circle Contest was added as new section 507.

The rules are based on the format of Circle Contest at the 2009 IFPA World Footbag Championships in Berlin and at several other events over the last year.

***

Net changes:

(1) Section 303.04-G Continuous Play was added to 303.04 Service, to describe the principle of continuous play, including a 20-second service delay, among other things.

(2) Two alternative scorings systems were added to the rule book, making the text of the rules of play (303) much more complex, since many rules change as a result of the scoring system being used. The scoring systems are: Classic (the one we have used for years), Rally Scoring (which will likely be the default starting next tournament seasons), and Game-Set-Match (GSM). Details are threaded throughout 303, with the basic definition of each system in 303.03 Scoring Systems.

(3) GSM Scoring is essentially the same scoring system as used in tennis, but modified to meet footbag standards. By dividing a match into segments that have a quick result and lots of drama, we can entertain our audience earlier and more often. Players will benefit from multiple pressure points with games to 4 points and capping at 6.

(4) Rally Scoring is a system that has been in use in pick-up games but has not yet been used at official tournaments. It will be the default system starting next year, so expect this scoring system at the 2011 IFPA World Championships as well as other events after this year's tournament season concludes. In Rally Scoring, a rally is defined as the sequence of playing actions from the moment of the service hit by the server until the footbag is out of play. Every ompleted rally results in the award of a point. Just as in volleyball

-- our matches will be faster, and will be more exciting. Games are played to 21 or 15, with consolations to 11. Details are now in the rule book.

(5) Section 303.07 Time-Outs and Breaks Between Games was modified extensively to change the time-out rules and to add the limit for inter-game delays. (These are slightly different depending on the scoring system used, so the details can be read in 303.07-A Classic Scoring and Rally Scoring, as well as 303.07-B GSM Scoring.)

***

As stated above, according to IFC by-laws, the updated rules became effective starting April 1, 2010. So these new rules will be in effect for all IFPA-sanctioned tournaments unless the tournament organizers explicitly say otherwise. In areas where there are multiple systems allowed (judging in freestyle, scoring in net), it is a good idea to always double-check with the tournament organizers before the event to ensure you are aware of which system will be used.

Again, the full Rules of Footbag Sports, 12th edition (effective 2010), are available online at http://www.footbag.org/rules.

My personal thanks go to all IFC members who were working hard over last year to make this project a success. We made major changes to the rule book, and brought both the freestyle and net rule books into closer alignment with how the sport is currently played. We hope everyone agrees and gets value from these revisions. Please feel free to contact your representative on IFC if you would like to contribute ideas for future changes, and/or to join the committee to help further our sport's development.

Thank you.

Wiktor Debski
IFPA Rules Director
[email protected]

[webmaster]

Hi, everyone.

Just some interpretation to help you see why this is important:

2010 is a BANNER YEAR in the organization of freestyle footbag and footbag net!

For freestyle, we finally have a rule book that matches how we really play the sport! This has been years in the making. We really codified in the rule book the radical change in freestyle footbag from just a sideline event with really lame showy and droppy routines, to a serious athletic discipline with multiple competition formats and judging systems!

Not only did we add Circle Contest as an official sport, but we also added a very important new section called "Difficulty Analysis" that actually explains almost all of the technical concepts in the sport today! This is the first time we've ever had all this information in an official document that will also be translated into multiple languages very soon.

Our rule book is finally something we can be proud of in freestyle, because it really describes the sport we play, not some antiquated version of the sport that most of us don't identify with.

For net, we have for the first time in many years, a complete reorganization of the game as well -- to include two new scoring systems. Rally scoring is long overdue, and helps net games move a lot faster, and makes every rally count. This is where many other sports have been for a long time, and footbag net is just catching up -- finally! And on top of that, we added a format to allow even more excitement if we ever get in the big leagues, with GSM scoring. The GSM scoring is not something everyone does today in pick-up games, but having it in the rule book also gives us lots of opportunities if we ever do get on major TV (especially live TV).

Anyway, since not a single person replied to this posting, I thought I'd just help interpret why any of this matters. I hope I did.

Steve

[SlashC]

Just curious, which judging system will be used at worlds this year for freestyle footbag routines?

[webmaster]

Just curious, which judging system will be used at worlds this year for freestyle footbag routines?

We'll try a completely new system that's never been tried bef....

No, I'm just kidding.

Of course we'll use the Olympic-Style system, it's too late in the year to bait & switch players with a different system.

Though, in theory, the players shouldn't have to know which judging system is being used (obviously, the judges do!). But in practice, yeah, we wouldn't dare whip out a different system from the previous year's Worlds without first socializing it with the players. (Note that in 2002 when we first introduced the Olympic-style system, we had quite a bit of discussion about it online before the event. It was not a surprise then, either.)

Finally, note that there were some changes to the Olympic-style system once we finally put it in the rule book. Specifically, in Doubles Routines, we added a third card (the CO-OP card) which was a long overdue addition to doubles freestyle judging. We may use it at Euros, that's still up for debate. But I will insist on us using it at Worlds.

Steve

[webmaster]

Oh, one more thing...

For completeness, let me also clarify that net will be using the "Classic" scoring system as well (i.e., the same system used last year).

The addition of these options in the rule book does not mean we will use the options, just that they exist. For Worlds in particular, we have standards that we adhere to from year to year -- so, the goal is to have the rules reflect the standards, not the other way around. The addition of clarified rules and more detailed options for tournament organizers does not imply a change at Worlds, per se.

However, we will use "rally" scoring at Worlds for net starting next year (2011). Again, not this year -- this year will be the same as last year (classic scoring), though with some caveats as described in the recent announcement.

Steve

[CIC flurry]

I was happy to see circle added.
Props to Ianek for starting and developing it.

[Laroche]

I was happy to see circle added.
Props to Ianek for starting and developing it.

Absolutely, it's cool to have seen it develop from ground up. Major props Ianek!!

[professor]

I don't know if this is the right place for this, but I'll post it here anyway because it is about rules.



Evan Gatesman told me a concern he has about how the tiebreak for Circle Competition is carried out. I agree with him and feel like it's worth bringing up.

The tiebreak at Worlds this year was 1 run for each player. We think that because of the strategic aspect of Circle Competition, the 2nd player to have the bag has an unfair advantage. The 2nd player has seen the entirety of the 1st person's run and knows exactly what needs to be done to beat the 1st player. Because of this, we think the 2nd player has a clear strategic and mental advantage over the 1st player. (If you don't think so, then why does footbag and many other individual sports implement a seeding system where the top seed goes last?)

Two solutions we can think of to this problem:
1. Have 2 rounds of 1 run per player, where the rounds are judged independent of each other. Player 1 goes first the first round and Player 2 goes first the 2nd round. Whichever player wins BOTH rounds, wins the competition. The only issue with this could be multiple tiebreaks. Although, if this were the case it would be a good test of endurance (an important trait of a Circle Competition winner). It's essentially a "win by 2" tiebreak system, which is used by many sports. This solution seems ideal.

2. Have the 2nd player not watch the 1st player. This seems slightly awkward and is contrary to the general essence of Circle Competition (head-to-head competition). This is less ideal.


Thoughts?


Btw, this is in no way in response to the results of the recent Circle Competition. Meaning, we don't think Dave won because he had an advantage in the tiebreak or Damian lost because he had a disadvantage in the tiebreak.

[webmaster]

Better solutions:

(1) Have a system that doesn't allow ties nearly as easily. I figured out a way to do that in routines; we can apply a similar solution to circle, I think.

(2) Have a full phase of 3 turns per players instead of just 1 turn.

Steve

[Corey]

I really do not see an advantage to going second. David still had to perform well to beat Damian. If i was the one in David's place i would have lost. Have you ever tried too hard? Have you ever built something up so much that you get nervous and crumble?What if Damian went for five minutes hitting only 6s?

However I think I have a better alternative.
(best of three) Have three/two rounds one run by each player. (still one player goes last twice)

Your first system seems fine. I would have no problem with that.
I do not like your second system. I would want to watch the other player not for the advantage but because I find it fun to watch others play.

[Fade2black]

I liked the one on one tiebreak, as I thought it brought some intensity to the finale of the event.

I like option 2 give them three phases and let them duke it out.

If they performed close enough in finals to tie, let them tiebreak, 1 v 1 was awesome. I can only imagine how crazy they would have got with an extra opportunity

[FlexThis]

Although I have been a proponent of Head to Head Shred for years, seeing it in person was not all that spectacular.

1.) The ONLY way 2 players should ever tie, is if they do the EXACT same runs. If the system cannot distinguish between 2 completely different runs, then is FAILS.
2.) The players were not expecting it; "Hi, Mr. so and so, nice runs 5 minutes ago, care to warm up real quick and do it again?" I heard several complaints about this afterward.
3.) There should never be a tie, but in the event, a full final round would be better, and/or some technical score that is used specifically for tie breaks.
4.) Agree that David had the advantage. Seeing what you have to beat is easier mentally than having to risk a drop on the unknown.

[Fade2black]

An objective system with multiple judges using the current judging criteria must allow for the tie. There are a multitude of combinations that can lead to a tie. Although the tiebreak system will be revised, this allows for there to be a clearer decisive winner. Ties (with tiebreaks) allow for more excitement, less sour apples to the loser, and the legend creating clutch performance.

[FlexThis]

I disagree. It felt like a rip off of Zohan. A Hack Off? And they thought the word "Pixie" was gay!

We never battle like that in a REAL shred circle. Isn't this comp suppose to reflect that? Also, unless you have super knees, you kinda need another warm up after waiting for results for 20 minutes before being asked to do it all again.

The system is flawed and needs revision, and has for years. I don't like hearing things like, "a very important new section called "Difficulty Analysis" that actually explains almost all of the technical concepts in the sport today!", but with no explanation as to what that means.

If it was such a great NEW system then there would not be a tie to begin with. No offense Dale, but I don't think you have been playing long enough to know just how complex a single run can be, then comparing it as EQUAL to another complex run. We certainly do not have any system currently that can do that. Which is why we had the tie. People are relying on their own skills to judge rather than an actual list of criteria. And the criteria they do have was written by Net players and then revised over time here and there.

I wish the old timers would get caught up to 2010 and start using technology to their advantage instead of relying on their eyes and best guesses to make decisions. Your eyes get old too!!!

As for the DS being used at the event? I got mixed feedback from folks. Most hated it. Especially older players that were there when moves were invented. Newbies didn't seem to even notice the new DS system.

All in all, I am glad to see circle comps and an attempt at fixing things. Anything is better than the old system, but the new system isn't quite adoptable yet IMO.

EDIT: No disrespect to Ianek, he is doing something that few would dare attempt and I applaud him for that. Just giving my 2 cents while I still am interested enough in footbag to care. After some of the disappointing attitudes at Worlds, I am certainly turned off to the politics of footbag and look forward to the rise of the newbie and/or next golden generation of footbag administrators.

[Fade2black]

Alright Mr. Damon,

I say that based on current judging criteria that statistical ties can exist....

You say I haven't played long enough to know that

2+4+4=10
3+2+5=10

No matter how long or complex this is there can always be equalities

How about you explain the differences in Damian and Davids finals run and how one should have easily won over the other

[FlexThis]

Given technology, I could easily assign a value to any trick, combination of tricks, drops, etc... Then simply film it, watch it, input some data, and out comes a result.

In today's environment a 4 add is a 4 add, which is flawed. Enough said, do your homework on the add system and you will find it to be flawed.

Your 2+4+4 = 10 relies on the fact that the 2 is a 2.

EDIT: The word "current" judging system is the problem. Ties exist in the "Current" system. Fix the system. BTW - Double Open Down (pixie pixie buterfly) is TOO NEW a move to meet any current statistical measure in any system, so it would be impossible to judge Damian's trick selection against Dave's for that reason. I say you are new and rely on others to convince you that a 2 is a 2, when in fact that is still under debate.

[Fade2black]

Go out and shred already.

[webmaster]

So I guess you're all ignoring my post that clearly said I have an easy way to modify the system to avoid ties. And instead of anyone asking me how, you're all just going back and forth on it yourselves without just asking me how.

Ok fine I won't tell you!

[FlexThis]

I have faith in you Steve

[Fade2black]

Ditto +1