IDPA Rule Chat

RobMoore · Joined: 03 Jan 2009 Posts: 55

You're right there. I can remember one specific stage at Blackwater that I felt was a cover trap....after crossing a hallway to a door opening to a room with another room adjacent to it, the target placement put one of the targets in the far room in the middle of the lineup of targets to be shot in the near room. I know a lot of people who swept the near room, moved on to the next room and cleared it (myself included), we all got cover procedurals for not engaging the far room target in the middle of the near array.

I don't mean to say "trap" to mean it was unfair though. I mean trap as in the placement was done with the intention of gigging many shooters with cover calls. The ones who didn't get cover calls were the ones who, time be damned, took slow, careful, and thorough steps during the walk-through, took notice of the placement, and planned accordingly. I walked through unaware of the trap, and not looking for it, assumed I'd be good shooting each room in order, not looking for alignment of adjacent rooms. I took it as a lesson for future matches (and future stages that day)
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A28264

Mayonaise · Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 19 Location: Georgia

I'm currently training to be a HS basketball Referee. Studying that rule book after being an SO for 10 years is enlightening. There are a lot of similarities.

People want subjectivity removed from the IDPA rulebook. It can't happen. Some SO's will always be more lenient than others. Just as I'm learning in basketball. Consistency is the issue and that is very difficult to mandate.
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Mark Mayo
A07211
SO Instructor

http://mayonaise1959.blogspot.com/

RickB · Joined: 07 Jan 2009 Posts: 41 Location: Seattle, WA

Bingo. I've trained as a Little League umpire (in addition to USPSA and IDPA officiating), and there's nothing more clear-cut, yet subjective, than balls and strikes. Who hasn't heard of an ump's "small strike zone"? The strike zone is there in the rule book, in black and white, but not everyone calls it the same way. On a close play at the plate, how often does a fan see it differently than the umpire? Check out some of the college basketball being played this week, and tell me if half of the block/charge calls couldn't go either way? The Russian judge awards a 9.5 and the Czech judge a 7.5. ALL sports officiating is subjective.
I don't know that a recertification test is going to do any good, though I think it's a good idea, as most of the problems I see are not that a SO doesn't understand the rules, but that they enforce them improperly, even if they're consistent from shooter to shooter. I can't remember being dinged for improper use of cover, in nine years of competition, because I don't give the SO any room to make a call. I can hang another 5% out there, and maybe one SO in ten will ding me? Another 1%, and maybe 90% will ding me? That's a choice for the shooter, the shooter shouldn't expect that every SO is going to call it the same way, but they have a right to expect that every SO makes the call the same way for every shooter.
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A07876

Mayonaise · Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 19 Location: Georgia

I'm actually in training now to be a basketball ref. I'm working on an article possibly for the TJ regarding this issue. There are interesting common issues between my training as an IDPA SO and basketball training. Obviously the human element is the primary issue. We've all seen missed calls by SO and Refs. That's life. Some folks expect perfection and that's just never going to happen. Consistency should be our objective. In basketball it's all about the angles. Pretty similar to IDPA, especially considering cover calls.
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Mark Mayo
A07211
SO Instructor

http://mayonaise1959.blogspot.com/

Joe4d · Joined: 02 Jan 2009 Posts: 21 Location: Surry VA

your basketball, baseball, anology doesnt really fit with IDPA.
An umpire having a different strike zone than another umpire is irrelevant as that single umpire will call every pitch of the game. Same with the other sports mentioned, sports fans and players can deal with calls a little off as long as they are consitent, generally they are because the same refs call the entire game. In IDPA most matches every squad will have different SO's and even on that same squad So's will hand off. At matches with dedicated SO's even they trade off quite a bit. So one ref having a different strike zone than another can have a profound effect on the outcome.