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Choosing your scoring policies
Choosing your scoring policies

How do I choose the correct scoring policies for my competition?

Matthew avatar
Written by Matthew
Updated over a week ago

This article deals with how to set up overall scoring for your competition - Placement, Points Table, Max Points, and Min Points.

If you are looking to set-up workout scoring policies, please visit this article on workout scoring policies.

Each scoring policy has very different ways of calculating the rank of scores in a competition.  The default scoring policy is "Placement" (described in more detail along with other scoring policies below).

You can choose your preferred scoring policy by division by:

  1. Navigating to the "Dashboard" of your competition

  2. Selecting "Programming"

  3. Selecting "Divisions"

  4. Clicking the edit button next to the division you need to change

  5. Selecting your scoring policy for the chosen division - this is also where you can add tiebreak policies by division

    *Note: Scoring policy default to Placement-based

We currently have 4 types of scoring policies which you can configure by division: Placement, Points Table, Max Points, and Min Points.

Placement

How it works:

  • The first place competitor in an event gets one point, second place gets two points, etc. 

  • The competitor with the lowest overall cumulative points wins the competition overall. 

When is it used:

  • This is the most common CrossFit scoring method and also the scoring that the CrossFit Open uses. But, if you have small divisions (say less than five athletes per division), the chance of an overall points tie increases significantly.

Points Table

How it works:

  • With this type of scoring, athletes receive points for completing in an event. The pre-populated Strongest tables are for 50, 100 or 200 points per event, with first place in an event receiving the maximum number of points (50, 100, or 200). Every placement below that receives fewer and fewer points. 

  • The competitor with the highest overall cumulative points at the end of competition wins the competition overall. 

When is it used:

  • This scoring system is useful if you have workouts that you want to assign different weights. For example, if you have a "Final" workout that you want to be worth more, or several half-workouts that you want to be worth less, you would use a points table scoring policy. 

  • You can also create a custom points table where you manually establish the points spread. A custom points table is also how you would set up a "Winner-take-all" scenario where the winner of a "Final" event is the winner of the competition overall.  (This scenario is rare, but sometimes used.)

Max Points and Min Points

How it works:

  • Max and Min points are both raw-points scenarios. These scoring policies determine placement based on the sum of all the points earned from the workouts. If your score for three workouts are 3, 12, and 5, you final score would be 3+12+5 = 20. 

  • In a Max Points scenario, higher total points are placed higher. A total score of 101 would beat any score of 100 or less. 

  • In a Min Points scenario, lower total points are placed higher. A total score of 101 would beat a score of 102 or greater. 

  • Because is uses raw-points, "lower-is-better" workout policies (which use a time format) will default to number of seconds. (Example: 1:23 will become a score of 83)

When is it used:

  • These policies are very rarely used, but are options if you are looking at doing a unique scoring policy.

Our platform allows you to have different scoring policies by division, depending on the needs of your competition.

If you ever have questions or need more help understanding which scoring policy would be best for your competition, you can always reach out to us at support@throwdowns.com. We would be glad to explore the options in more detail with you personally. 

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