Soft scoring in tournaments irritates me.
There I’ve said it – shoot me down. What particularly annoys me is when “sportsmanship” scores are used to determine overall ranking.
Now I need to “declare an interest”. I’ve attended 2 tournaments this year so far where I would have been top Tau Player, but for sportsmanship scores. I’m not complaining about those tournaments. I knew sports scoring was included before I went. I paid my money and made my choice. What I’m complaining about is sports scoring generally. The “principal” of the thing if you will.
The whole point of sports scoring is (I assume) that it encourages sporting behaviour. Well let’s think about that for a moment. As far as I can see there are broadly 2 elements to “sporting behaviour” - how much “fun” you had playing your opponent and sticking by the rules. My contention is that sports scoring is irrelevant in both cases.
