Inventing interesting competition format

[Guset]

If you could invent a "most interesting" shooting competition format - what would it be?

Here's one below of my own. I made an attempt to include elements of strategy and making the format easy to follow for the spectators, where the shooters themselves as well as spectators are aware of the results, such that it is immediately obvious at any time at which level the shooter must perform to advance or stay in the lead.

1. Shooters complete normal course of fire (compatible with existing world records)
2. Top 8 shooters proceed to elimination rounds, where they are paired off against each other.
3. In the dueling round, each of the two shooters is presented with an array of five targets (falling-plate or electronic) with different sized hit zones, valued from 1 (largest) to 5 (smallest) [it would take some number crunching to calculate proper sizes of hit zones]. The shooters receives the score of 1 to five for hitting the corresponding target, or 0 in case of a miss.

4. The shooters fire N timed shots (i.e. 60 seconds per shot), and each shooter is free to choose which of the five targets to shoot at, facing a number of trade-offs:
a) If the shooter feels calm and confident, it should be preferable to choose more difficult target, while otherwise it should be preferable to opt for easier target with lower pay-off. The mathematical expectation of the shot should be maximal when the shooter can adequately evaluate his/her condition, while otherwise safely underperforming or registering a miss.

b) The shooter having a significant lead over the competitor may opt for lower scoring target, trading off a guarantee of staying in the lead to the reduction of the lead amount; The other shooter may opt to risk a more difficult target in attempt to reduce the score gap.

c) The target system gives clear instant feedback with regard to hit/miss, so the other shooter instantly knows the outcome and can adjust the strategy accordingly (i.e. if the first shooter missed, the other shooter immediately decides to opt for easier lower-scoring target). As such, it is natural that both shooters would hold off until the end of the allotted time to complete the shot, as not to give the other shooter informational advantage. The trade-off, however, is that the shooter gives up a chance to abort a shot or have enough time to achieve maximum quality of aim/hold. Additionally, holding off increases intensity for both spectators and the shooters.

Give me your thoughts.

[thruxtoncamshaft]

We have just held our invitational open." Invitational" so that our small club in the bush didn't have to comply strictly to issf rules and we could inject a sense of fun into our shooting.As a novelty match we cut a target into quarters through the bullseye.Each shooter had one quarter to shoot at. This is self handicapping as good shooters will still go for 9 or 10s with more chance of a miss. Worked good on the 25m and 10m ranges, will definatly try other matches next year.We had lots of compliments and stand on bookings for our next "open", bring it on! . Thruxton.

[Orpanaut]

It's an interesting idea.

I think that you'd need to find a way to set up the targets so that they'd still present the same sight picture despite their different sizes. Otherwise, there'd be too much twiddling of sights as shooters tried to adjust from their usual sub-six hold on a standard target.

[mikeschroeder]

Hi

In order to determine who represented our club in the state air pistol matches, we decided to put up targets held up by one tack in the ten ring. The first two targets to go to the floor, were the two person team. In short, punch the thumbtack through the paper, or blow it apart whichever. Worked o.k. took a while though, but we didn't waste time going downrange.

Later

Mike
Wichita KS

[thruxtoncamshaft]

Why the concern about the sight picture? Maybe some people dont enjoy being out of their comfort zone? Thruxton.