Boxing Scoring: An Alternative to the 10-Point Must System
by Bad Left Hook on Feb 22, 2012 5:16 PM EST
in Boxing Commentary & Opinion
Email
Print
With another recent scoring controversy in the books (Cloud vs Campillo), Ryan Bivins returns to BLH today with another look at what can be done to improve the way boxing is scored.
As previously discussed in "Robbery or Close Fight? - The Failings of the 10 Point Must System", boxing scoring still leaves a lot to be desired. Close fights can produce shutout scorecards and dominant wins can produce close scorecards. The reluctance to score even rounds along with only having 10 points to work with per round makes this possible. Currently the narrowest margin a judge can give, which isn't even, is 10-9, effectively a 10% difference. If there were more points to work with, that difference reduces.
A scorecard is essentially a statistical analysis of a fight. Anyone who has ever studied statistics would know the results are more revealing when the data pool increases. For example, when you flip a coin there's a 50% chance it lands on head or tails. But, if you flip it 10 times you could easily end up with 7 heads and 3 tails. However if you flip it 100 times achieving 70/30 would be virtually impossible. You're going to get closer to 50/50. Likewise, if you score rounds out of 100 points, the scores are more likely to represent how close rounds actually were. It's not an opinion, it's just math.
That said, the tricky part is to decide how judges will arrive at those 100 points. Some may suggest dividing the total amount of points by 4 for each official scoring criteria: clean punching, affective aggression, defense, and ring generalship. However each of these categories does not hold the same weight. In fact clean punching is 90% of what judges score by, covered by HBO as far back as 1986, and aired the night of Pinklon Thomas vs Trevor Berbick:
Boxing Scoring Explained on HBO 1986 by JFKConspiracy
So given the weight distribution, 90 of the 100 points would go to clean punching while the remaining 10 are divided by defense, ring generalship, and effective aggression. Making close calls differentiations on the 90 would be fine; on the rest not so much. Thus points per category doesn't really work out. Honestly I don't think the decisions made to come to the 100 points should be much different than they are with 10 points.
Rounds currently get scored between 6 and 10 points (and 6 point rounds are extremely rare, 3 knockdowns don't even make them mandatory). Under the 100 point system I suggest scores should be no wider than 100-94. Now while that's a 6 point difference rather than 4, it's only a 6% gap rather than 40%. Fighters today that face the early 10-6 rounds have a hard time grabbing a decision even if they pretty much dominate the rest of the fight, perhaps most notably Juan Manuel Marquez in the first Manny Pacquiao fight. A 40% gap is a chasm while 6% is manageable. How did I arrive 100-94 representing 10-6? Here's how:
If you allow 100 points for a round, when it's razor thin 100-99 accurately represents the margin. Now say it was a dominant round with no knockdowns or perhaps close one with a flash knockdown, then call it 100-98. If it's dominant and the one being assaulted also goes down once, go ahead and call it 100-97. Let 2 knockdown rounds range between 100-96 and 100-95 and let 3+ range between 100-95 and 100-94. Currently when someone dominates his/her opponent with no knockdowns in 5 rounds and loses by a thin margin in the remaining 7, he/she loses the fight 113-115. In the proposed 100 point must system he/she wins the fight 1193-1190. That's an outcome I think most people would prefer, and the margin of victory is fair on top of it.
The only drawback I see with this system is the longer addition. But that's what calculators are for. And calculators should be used even on the 10 point system. No system is perfect. And my proposal is hardly an original concept. It's an upgrade to the 10 point system, not an entirely different way of scoring fights. I'm not trying to trying to change the sport. I'm just trying to remove the puzzled looks on fans faces when final scorecards are announced. You can only blame the judges so much.
22 comments
|
1 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Why make it a 100 though
You might as well use the new principle but still in the 10 points system…. Unless there is something clear cut that I am missing. (Highly likely considering the long day I have had)
But none the less
A very good idea.
I have long been of the opinion that rounds should be scored 10-8 for a onse sided round (Without being proeprly pounded or a KD) or a 10-10 for very tight rounds
by Sweet science on Feb 22, 2012 5:24 PM EST up reply actions
There’s nothing in the rules that can’t call it 10-10 now, just there’s a prejudice against it that drives me nuts.
Otherwise, good suggestions, I think. But I’m way slow-witted about numbers, so my opinion is kind of worthless on such issues.
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else--James Thurber, 1939
I don’t see how this really follows from the sample size argument, which if anything would seem to imply increasing the number of judges instead. Increasing the number of points awarded isn’t equivalent to increasing the number of trials in a coinflip; it’s merely allowing for a slightly higher degree of precision. After all, we could still have the 10 point-must system with decimals (or even potentially without them) and arrive at functionally the same result as this proposal. The choice of 10 or 100 (10.0) or 1000 (or 10.00) is more of a convention than anything else, and while I realize you want to change that convention to allow for greater diversity/flexibility in scoring, I don’t see how this is an implication of the statistical analogy.
I don’t really have a problem with the 10 point must system. I think the reward for knocking your man down should be significant.
I remember Scott suggested that judges score rounds 10-10 and 10-8 more often. If judges were more flexible in that sense I think the 10 point must system works fine.
The bigger issue is incompetent judges. Inexperienced and/or poor judges often over-reward ineffective aggression. EFFECTIVE aggression is the most important scoring criteria in boxing (as you noted). A good judge can tell the difference. A lot if not most terrible decisions are a result of rewarding ineffective aggression.
I remember Scott suggested that judges score rounds 10-10 and 10-8 more often. If judges were more flexible in that sense I think the 10 point must system works fine.
Yeah, this is my view on it — more 10-10s, more 10-8s, more 10-7s in dominant rounds with a knockdown. The gap has to matter — dominant rounds have to matter. Close rounds don’t HAVE to go to someone, and they certainly don’t HAVE to go to the guy who holds the paper belt. But I’ve said before I was going to score more that way myself when just watching fights and I never do. It’s a hard habit for me to break — it would be really hard with judges who have been doing this 10, 20, 30 years.
Bad Left Hook
"The internet has undermined professionalism in journalism, which is a good thing." - Bill James
by Scott Christ on Feb 22, 2012 10:24 PM EST up reply actions
My idea for overcoming that psychological barrier
Is to make 10-8 the standard, so that the majority of rounds are scored 10-8. 10-6 for a dominant round. 10-5 or 10-4 for a dominant round with a knockdown.
The shift is small enough so that it doesn’t require that much adjustment, but big enough that judges still have to make a conscious effort to make almost every round they would have made 10-9 scored as 10-8. A score of 10-9 would still be possible, but judges would subconsciously feel an urge to give both fighters even numbers as their score, and I suspect this will lead to a boost in more 10-10 rounds.
I know how you feel, Scott.
Half the time it’s like I need to have two cards going. One for the fight I’m watching and one for how the judges probably saw it.
I put a little “c” beside each close round and if there is a certain “priviledged” fighter, you know he’s getting all, or most of them.
I hate the fact that there is so much wiggle room for these guys. They know that they can do whatever they want as long as they give dominant rounds to the right guy. Everything else “could go either way”. It’s lazy, sloppy and in many cases, corrupt.
yeah im not sure what this proposed system changes but the amount of digits, it seems to be how the judging system should work but with an extra number in it almost like a decimel. also i dont think the system is wrong, the judges are wrong, even with your proposed system we are talking about robberies to the extent of clear rounds going to the wrong person which could happen in any system. although i do agree that very close rounds should be 10-10, and dominant rounds without knockdowns should of course by 10-8 and then fighters will be more willing to go the full round rather than the styles of say felix sturm who knows he only needs to win the round, not necessarily convincingly though
precision is only one of the problems
The proposed solution addresses one problem — i.e. insufficient ability for judges to indicate the degree or (really) the confidence with which they give a round to one fighter or another.
The other big problem (aside from outright corruption, which is the primary cause of robberies) is a consequence of a small sample size. When political pollsters want to see what candidate is likely to win an election, they sample hundreds or thousands of people and offer a “margin of error”. This margin decreases with increasing sample size. With a sample of three judges, as is the case in boxing, the margin of error is large.
So increasing the number of judges would do far more than increasing the “resolution” of the scoring system. Ever wonder why the studio crowd in “Who wants to be a millionaire” was so accurate? Heard of the expression “wisdom of crowds”? Moreover, by increasing the number of judges you could throw out outlying scores using a statistical criterion, etc.
Then there is the minor issue of judge selection. Who picks these judges, anyway? You don’t suppose Don King has a say in the selection the judge. Would n’t that be a conflict of interest.
Anyway, the problem of bad scorecards is easily solvable, but there is clearly no will to solve it.
You can make rounds worth as many points as you want, but boxing judges will still find a way to give Williams v Lara to Williams and Cloud v Campillo to Cloud. It sucks but corruption/incompetence/finding a way to let the home fighter win will always be a factor.
Nobody will read this and care and why should they?
Not a bad idea, although personally I am more partial to the 4 category system you described (even if you give different weightings to each category as long as those are consistent).
If I were supreme overlord of boxing the system I’d use would be to have a 4 point system per round. To exempify:
If fighter A dominates fighter B in clean punching then fighter A gets 1 point in that category and B gets 0.
If fighter A gets dominated by B in effective aggresion then A gets 0 and B gets 1 in that category.
If both are about the same in one category then both get 1 point.
This means that final scores for a round can range from 4-4 (a completely even round) to a 4-0 (a completely lopsided round), and everything in between, 4-3, 4-2, 4-1, 3-3, 3-2, 3-1, and their opposites (3-4, 2-4, etc).
This breakdown I think gives you some of the precision that you are looking for with the 100 point system to differentiate close rounds from clear rounds.
This means that in the end, a perfect fight would be 40 points for a 10 round fight and 48 for a 12 round fight. Now if you ask what happens with Knockdowns, well the answer is that the fighter who scores a knockdown gets 4 additional points toward his/her total. This mean that a fighter that gets knocked down needs to win 1 shutout round (4-0), or up to 4 very close ones (4-3) to make up the difference for the knockdown. Deductions work the same way except that you subtract the points.
Finally, since a lot of the problems stem from judges that seem to be watching a completely different fight I’d have 5 judges instead of 3, and at the end of the fight you get the median score difference from all 5 judges, and then eliminate the cards from the 2 judges whose difference most deviates from that median. That way you keep only the cards from the 3 judges that saw the fight more closely to each other. For example if for a 10 round fight the final cards were: 40-38, 38-40, 39-40, 40-32, and 40-30, the median difference for all cards is 2 points, that means you get rid of the 40-32 and 40-30 cards which were the most out of line from the group.
Something like that is what I’d propose. What do you guys and gal think?
4 points for a KD
But then what happens when someone just dominates a round without putting their man down (A usual 10-8 round with no KD)…Still just a 4-0 round?
My argument against this is someone could score a 4-0 round without really putting the hurt on their opponent. I think they should have a reward of somesorts for really dominating the round? Does that make sense?
by Sweet science on Feb 23, 2012 4:21 AM EST up reply actions
Yes I understand your point, and since this is the equivalent of a drawing board of ideas my answer to your request would be sure it can be included. Since you get 4 extra points for knocking someone down, why not say a fighter gets 2 extra ones for seriously hurting his/her opponent in a particular round but without achieving a KD when dominating a round. So you could say the basic 4 points cover the technical aspects of the round while the extras are given for hurt dished out.
How to score a fight is an interesting topic.
For years I’ve thought that we could drastically improve the current system simply by training the judges to use
A. More even rounds
B. More 10-8 rounds.
Why should a clear round and a razor thing round be worth the same?
Maybe the judges should be allowed more freedom with the numbers. Scary thought I know…
But let’s say a guy gets absolutely pounded on in the first round, goes down twice and offers virtually nothing in the round. I would have no problem with him starting out significantly in the hole. You could take away a point for losing the round, another for offering nothing back and another 2 points for the KDs. That makes 10-6, and that may seem a bit steep, BUT…
Let’s say he comes back in the next round and clearly wins it. Nothing devastating, but he comes back nicely and the round is his. 10-8
Next round, the same. 10-8
Fourth and final round is basically up for grabs and could go either way. 10-9 either way.
Final math:
Fighter A gets 35 or 36, depending on who the last round goes to and Fighter B gets 35 or 36.
So you have a draw in a 4 rounder where the first round was wide, but the fighter who faced a major defecit early was still able to come back without major fireworks.
Just an idea.
In the old PRIDE FC days the judge would simply vote for who he thought got the better of things at the end of the fight. The lack of paper may make people nervous though.
I think the REAL problem is the judges themselves though. How about getting BOXING people to score fights?
I hate the corruption in close calls…
However, if you lose a round, 1 point off is enough. I don’t really like the idea of giving a 10-8 unless a guy got really schooled. Zab Judah vs Mayweather saw Judah coming on strong the first 6 rounds, let’s say he won all 6 rounds, some pretty convincingly, did he deserve some 10-8 wins? I just don’t buy the system because it encourages fighters to give it all when they can, and then tie when they’re tired… Or at least I think it encourages it.
Rivers Runs Red.
The system proposed by Mr. Bivins works on many levels
The law and order of math working for boxing. I like it.
Just trying to imagine Michael Buffer saying “1193-1190”…
and it doesn’t sound too bad at all!
It would be better if they just modify the 10 pts must system than to change it completely
I agre with the general assumptions and I have made similar analysis. The math of the 10 pt must system is truely flawed. To me if you look at the last two fights that where highly contested (Williams & Cloud), I dont think the judges were that far off, I think the system just is not a good one. The biggest problem is that even rounds are usually scored in favor of the bigger name or the champ…(just the facts) judges know the reputation of the fighters. Now in the Williams fight he got the benifit of all the even rounds and he got credit for 1 or 2 rounds that Lara should have won and thats how the math of the fight worked out. Cloud had a 10-6 or 10-7 round which always makes it hard to win the fight because the math makes it so he only has to win 2 or 3 rounds to win the fight. Did he win 2 or 3 more rounds after the 1st I don’t think so but there were 2 or 3 close or even rounds.
My suggestions and this should be for all TV/ PPV fights at least:
1. Open scoring why you don’t know if your behind or ahead in a major athletic event in 2012 is crazy, boxing has a long history and most of the rules have not evolved to make the sport more fan friendly . Most of the rules have been to make it safer for the boxers which is good but you need both.
2. We need to see what a judge is thinking during the round there needs to be a scoreboard and we should see how a judge is scoring during the round . three options even, Xnumber of points for fighter A, X number of points for fighter B (still with in the 10 pts must format) And to make it easy both fighter should start off with 5 pts.
3. There needs to be a “yellow” or some type of “shot clock” once your up by a certian number of points you still have to fight and if you just try and run away and not fight you get a warning and then a point taken away. This would counter the strategy to just run once you have enough points to win.
Is this perfect no…but at least you would know what needs to be done and you could actually know if you need the last two rounds etc… Will this chagne the out come of Khan v Peterson no the ref would have still cost Khan the fight, But at least you wouldn’t have to wait for 10 min for the outcome (and who knows what the judges do with the final count, they could be going back and changing rounds etc…) the whole waiting for the decision thing sucks for me… Just my two cents. the same thing goes for UFC which is under the same rules.
The two major problems with the current scoring system:
1. Not common to differentiate between a close round and a dominant round (As Scott suggested this could be fixed by a more liberal use of 10-10 and 10-8 rounds)
2. The small number of judges who score the fight make each scorecard extremely important. Therefore one or two incompetent/inexperienced judges can significantly influence a fight.
We will have solved this problem when we come up with a solution that is not drastically different than the current system and fixes these two problems.
"The bell that tolls for all in boxing belongs to a cash register."
-Bob Verdi
As I suggested in response to your earlier article (or, maybe somewhere else, who know?), the point of a scoring system is to create a codified representation of the fight itself, and in that sense, a more finely subdivided scoring system would have more “pixels,” and so capture more details.
As a former statistics professor, however, I agree with bachwards that more judges rather than more numbers would be appropriate in the specific context you mention here. However, we all know that the quality of the judging is a big, big problem, and don’t know hw much training they get to become judges, nor how much or how frequent their recertification is. So, I’m not terribly optimistic that 9, 13, or 15 judges per fight would actually turn in better scores than just 3. Thay have to judge independently in order for the distribution of scores to be valid, and I don’t know what sorts of pressures or influences are operative here. Certainly, some results strongly suggest that these influences exist. I’m also not sure how well they would be able to handle either increased point values in general, or point subsystems that juggle the variables yu mention.
Maybe there could be a combination of a 9-13 judge system, with the judges comprised of a pool of trained and currently active boxing writers? This would increase the chances of a recognizable distrubution while eliminating outliers, and also guarantee accountability, since they would be active journalists.
This would, of course, increase the volume of their hate mail. I nominate Scott, and some others here on BLH.
If you find yourself going through Hell,
keep going.
--- Winston Churchill
You are just being Naive.
What kind of system is going to work when two of three judges are getting a big fat bribe under the table. Seriously if the commission cant control a drug test or even get the champion fights the mandatory challenger, How they can control judges getting money of don king or whatever?
Sorry for my bad english but i need to say it. Boxing in this day is crap and the corruption rules the sport.
Why I didn't discuss increased judges, among other things
Simply put, it’s not practical. Judges get paid. To have more judges means either more money is spent on judges or judges salaries go down. More money spent on judging just isn’t going to happen. And if the salaries of judges go down, you’re going to get crappier judges.
Also in general I don’t propose idealistic solutions. Yes I realize better, less corrupt judges produces better results. But quite frankly people are going to do what they’re going to do no matter what. All I can suggest is a system which it makes it as difficult as possible for said people to lie, inveigle, and obfuscate the truth. Currently I find the 10 point must system easy for people to lie in a big way. The more the points, the harder that becomes.
And I do realize adding a decimal place after the current scores accomplishes the same thing. But no one wants to work with decimal places. Over time the amount of points assigned to rounds has gone up, from 1, to 5, to 10. I’m just going in the same direction.
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
