Who is the better archer

[Woodie]

A poser for you
Who is the better archer with the same score? The one with the most 10s or the one with least 10s.

[goa dan]

I would say it depends if one archer has the most tens but lots of fours but the other has less tens but more 7's then the less tens. But if i had to say i would say more tens.

[whisky]

It depends how you want to define 'better' and then apply it to the scenario.

Wih exception to the obvious situation on tied scores in a comp its the one with the higher score.

But I'd say the better archer is the one that offers to make the tea

[Tarkwin]

Technically I guess it would be the one with the tightest/better/repeatable groups...once this is achieved it should be relatively simple to steer them into the yellow bit..

no solace if on the day the groups are falling in the blue tho'.

T.

[SLOWHAND]

Very interesting question Woodie and I'm intrigued to know what prompted you to ask it. I'd say without doubt that for recurve, it's the archer with the fewer 10's that is the better shot. On a Fita round at 90m for us mere mortals if you hit the gold you're doing well and it's largely down to luck whether it's a 10 or nine. The same can be said to a slightly lesser degree at 70m and even 50m. The only distance that I can say with certainty that I'm aiming at the 10 (and be dissapointed if I get a 9) is 30m. Therefore the archer with the fewer 10's has been more consistent over the four distances with fewer bad shots.

[SimonW]

How about this one.

18 arrows at 18m on a 40cm face.

Two archers are tied on 170.

Which archer is the "better" archer? the one with more or less 10's.

OK.

Now I say that one of the archers missed and so scored 17 10's and a miss. The other archer at the very most scored 8 10's and 10 9's.

Now which is the "better" archer?

This really happened (as I'm sure some of you know) at the recent European Indoors champs.

Rivollta (sp?) did this in an early H2H round and went on to win the gold medal.

It's a funny one this debate. All the text books say "just shoot one arrow", "shoot a perfect shot", "the arrow before and the arrow after don't matter".

So, we try and shoot a 10 and then repeat this n times.

Then, people want to tell you that the better archer is the one who shoots lots of less than perfect shots.

Hmmmm. I for one would rather count my 10's (or 9's in English scoring) as a measure of how well I'm shooting.

Simon

[geoffretired]

That's an interesting point of view,Simon.
Strangely enough, we were talking at the club last week about targets getting shot away in the centre etc etc.
I suggested having target faces that were just the gold. Four archers on a boss and four gold discs to aim at. Only arrows in the gold, score. Very little adding up-golds count one. Not so much damage to the bosses as they are not in the weakest place; the centre.

[Little Miss Purple]

We aspire o gain good groupings but at a competition it is the score that counts!

[LineCutter]

Should keep the beginners happy Geoff (122cm gold faces anyone?)

Maybe we should compare tied scores on standard deviation rather than golds/10s. Least random archer is clearly the best.

[SLOWHAND]

Originally Posted by SimonW

How about this one.

18 arrows at 18m on a 40cm face.

Two archers are tied on 170.

Which archer is the "better" archer? the one with more or less 10's.

OK.

Now I say that one of the archers missed and so scored 17 10's and a miss. The other archer at the very most scored 8 10's and 10 9's.

Now which is the "better" archer?

This really happened (as I'm sure some of you know) at the recent European Indoors champs.

Rivollta (sp?) did this in an early H2H round and went on to win the gold medal.

It's a funny one this debate. All the text books say "just shoot one arrow", "shoot a perfect shot", "the arrow before and the arrow after don't matter".

So, we try and shoot a 10 and then repeat this n times.

Then, people want to tell you that the better archer is the one who shoots lots of less than perfect shots.

Hmmmm. I for one would rather count my 10's (or 9's in English scoring) as a measure of how well I'm shooting.

Simon

Shooting 18m is a lot different to shooting 90m. I can honestly say that I aim at the ten at 18m but I cant say that I'm 'aiming' at the ten at 90m. We are often told that being consistant is the key so I think that the archer who gets all of his arrows in the Gold is better than one who gets half of his arrows in the red and the other half (some of them by luck) in the ten. It's an old saying in target rifle shooting that it's not how good you shoot that counts but how bad you shoot.
You could get a score of 1296 in a Fita without shooting a single ten. Dont know about you but I'd settle for that.