10 ms·
Fencers Refused to Fight. Then Came the Rule That Changed the Sport
- pmoriarty 5y agoDoes anyone have a link to the full article that doesn't require a login or javascript?
- smitty1e 5y ago> That’s why FIE introduced the Unwillingness to Fight rule in 2019. It dictates that when a minute elapses without a point, the fencer who is behind receives a yellow. Repeated offenses lead to a red. Incentives matter.
- trhway 5y agothey should have made a rule that a counter attack point wouldn't count if the attack was initiated within the first say 3-5 seconds after the signal.
- dmoy 5y ago> counter attack point The rule was primarily aimed at epee though, where there is no such thing as "counter attack point", since there's no right-of-way rules. Unless I'm gravely misunderstanding your idea.
- trhway 5y agoJust paint 2 lines midway to the center - whoever crosses first gets the attacker designation and the 5 second window during which his opponent's point if such scored would be good only to break the attack and wouldn't be counted. Add to that that the fencers in many situations wouldn't be completely sure who crossed first.
- xen0 5y agoSo, the very first attack gets better protection on their attack than a foil fencer? And simultaneous attacks just look like sabre? And what about subsequent attacks after that? They're just normal where the threat of the counter attack drags us back to fencers not doing anything for 2 minutes? Or what if play is halted and restarted somewhere other than the centre en-garde lines?
- dmoy 5y agoOk yea but then you've just turned epee into foil Which, as a foil fencer in a prior life, I am totally on board with. But I don't see it happening lol.
- justinc-md 5y agoThis is exactly the kind of behavior that you'd see with reward hacking in reinforcement learning.
- grp000 5y agoI think humans are pretty good at finding the optimum strategy. It's only really recently that bots have overtaken us in a lot of highly environmentally complex games.
- bfung 5y agoSimilar article topic w/o the paywall, googled “fencing unwillingness to fight rule” https://academyoffencingmasters.com/blog/new-unwillingness-to-fight-rule-in-fencing/ https://academyoffencingmasters.com/blog/new-unwillingness-t...
- pmoriarty 5y agoNow if only they could eliminate draws in high level chess.
- powera 5y agoWell, there are two separate problems here. The first is that top-level classical time-control matches are draw-ish; there's really no solution to that other than playing some other game. If neither player blunders, often chess is just a draw. Top computer chess engines of equal strength draw even more often. The second is "grandmaster draws" at shorter time controls; the Champions Chess Tour has had dozens of draws with the exact same 14-move Berlin opening repetition. The solution there is pretty simple: 3 points for a win and 1 point for a draw.
- hyperbovine 5y agoThere is an inherent asymmetry in chess which afaict is not present in combat sports. Drawing as black is considered a decent outcome.
- publicola1990 5y agoWhen situation is draw can't they award the match to who ever is ahead on time? This would reduce draws by a lot. Or some different timing control that will force victories by timeout.
- megablast 5y agoChess boxing solves this issue.
- megameter 5y agoCompetitive judo has grown a plethora of rules of this type - restricted holds, stalling penalties, 20 second timers for the ground game. My teacher participated in some of the conferences leading to those rule changes, and he said it boiled down to getting the bodies to fly for the TV cameras. A lot of combat sports end up being slow and passive without rules propelling them into action.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwawaysea 5y agoIt’s also other sports. Basketball has a shot clock for a reason. American football also forces a play to begin within a certain amount of time. In fact I would say that football’s rules are almost a contrived set of constraints that force engagement and exciting action continuously.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cafard 5y agoExcept when football's rules force delays to allow TV commercials. Now, if we could just enforce some speed in baseball, and bring the average game length down nearer two and a half hours.
- CydeWeys 5y agoThe rules of the game aren't forcing ad breaks; the networks themselves are. Ultimately the broadcast director is in charge of the actual flow of the game, and tells the ref when the ads are finished so they can start the next play.
- ddek 5y agoWell, the two minute warning... It's interesting to see the power dynamic here. Here in the UK there would be riots if soccer games were broken for ads (I'm really not exaggerating). Over COVID, a short timeout was added in the middle of each half, and this was conditional on there being no ads in the UK. That said, I watch a fair amount of NFL and with the intensity of play I'm quite grateful for the pauses. American ads are irrelevant to me anyway.
- hash872 5y agoGreat! Let's do judo next, seeing as the constant penalizing of almost every attack has made the sport semi-unwatchable. It's rare to see any scoring before overtime in international-level judo- why take the risk? Judo pretty desperately needs a rules upgrade
- stormcode 5y agoIt's a really great rule change that has made top tier epee fencing a lot more interesting to watch.
- dmoy 5y agoHere's a decent rundown that isn't behind a paywall: https://academyoffencingmasters.com/blog/new-unwillingness-to-fight-rule-in-fencing/ https://academyoffencingmasters.com/blog/new-unwillingness-t... Epee fencers refused to fight Because yea, for decades an epee bout was like watching paint dry. Just bouncing around in place for 9 minutes, and then finishing with nobody getting above 10 touches. > For a fencer’s fourth P-card sanction, the fencer receives a P-black card. This is quite severe. It means that if you do nothing for half the match (or have other infractions), you are disqualified. I have mixed feelings about the implementation of the rule, because as I understand it, it penalizes the person who's behind, which in epee can be tactically not great. Less of a problem in foil with the right of way rules. It's worth noting that saber bouts used to finish in under one minute. Consistently. This is like pre 2000 I forget when. They had to change the rules in the opposite direction - by allowing a viable strategy other than "RUN STRAIGHT AT THEM AS FAST AS POSSIBLE RAAAAAAAAAAAA" (I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not a whole lot). Foil had the non-combatant issue, but not nearly as bad. Foil was not without its own brand of silliness too. A couple decades ago, top level foil was all about flicking people on the back. They changed the rules on that too. Probably a good thing, because it was truly ridiculous
- stormcode 5y agoWatched some Saber bouts this Olympics and they still seem so fast as to be unfun to watch. At least for more than one or two in a row (so 5 min). Maybe I'm just used to watching Epee and Foil. I totally get why they changed the rule. Reminds me of anime where two swordmasters do their super special move and you don't find out who won until the loser levels over. Except over and over.
- throwawaysea 5y agoI had the same impression. To the untrained eye it is hard to appreciate what’s going on or what makes one fencer better. All I see is a blur and then the winner screaming in a fury. The broadcasting is terrible - they should show slowed footage with annotations (like in football plays) explaining what’s going on.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoThis seems like a common problem in all martial arts. We saw the same thing in the early UFC too. The best way to not lose is to stall forever, essentially. It makes for terrible television, but it seems to be built into the nature of fighting.
- crazydoggers 5y ago> It makes for terrible television, but it seems to be built into the nature of fighting. I think you probably mean “fighting sport” rather than just fighting. Fighting in real life is over in seconds typically. Sports have rules around them that can be gamed, hence why there’s stalling to “win” In real life if your defending yourself you want the confrontation over as quickly as possible or to exit the situation, delays only put you more in danger. I believe on average it’s something like over in 15 seconds, after that it typically ends up on the ground and even then it’s over in less than a minute. Probably being pedantic, but people sometimes confuse UFC and other martial arts contests with real self defense/street fighting. Here are the things that you can’t do in UFC for instance that would otherwise end a fight quickly: https://www.ufc.com/unified-rules-mixed-martial-arts https://www.ufc.com/unified-rules-mixed-martial-arts
- WalterBright 5y agoI've always suspected that real sword fighting was: 1. parry 2. thrust 3. game over
- crazydoggers 5y agoOften there’s not even a parry. Many katana skills involves drawing the sword simultaneously with a killing blow, even from a seated position. Check out Akira Kurosawa’s films for some fairly accurate samurai fights. https://youtu.be/GF5U83UIX1o https://youtu.be/GF5U83UIX1o https://youtu.be/zCjsazHO0c0 https://youtu.be/zCjsazHO0c0
- doikor 5y agoDepends on the time period and how rich/sell equipped the fighters were. Basically just before guns became popular armor was so good that sword fights usually turned into wrestling followed trying to stick a small knife into some small gap. Various hammers/clubs (or using the pommel of your sword as a hammer) were much more efficient weapons against a person in full plate.
- cweill 5y agoA fun video related to this and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is this one: https://youtu.be/xeUQlXmzuZ8 https://youtu.be/xeUQlXmzuZ8 Basically my understanding is that high-level competitive Jiu Jitsu (Gi) can be extremely dull to watch, because of the point system disincentiving taking any risks. So that's when No-Gi submission-only competitions became popular to watch. 20+ minute rounds without any points scorable for the first half.
- hash872 5y ago'Submission only' was popular to watch for the first few contests, then competitors realized they could just stall until the end of the match and then get rewarded in overtime. The rules just became a different disincentive to not take any risks
- CarVac 5y agoReminds me of stalling/camping in Smash Brothers. Here's an incredible short documentary on one particularly notable match that's relevant. https://youtu.be/z8llYT7KGdI https://youtu.be/z8llYT7KGdI
- andrewzah 5y agoThat zoom in on S2J is hilarious.
- twic 5y agoIs that during the Fauxhebro vs Chango bit? I came here to say exactly the same thing. Fantastic subversion of the medium.
- comex 5y agoThough, with Smash Bros. tournaments using a standard double-elimination format that doesn’t care about margins of victory, at least the losing player is always incentivized to try to stop losing - unlike in fencing.
- endgame 5y agoTerrible title, and we should not be rewarding such clickbait with our attention.
- nxpnsv 5y agoTextbook click bait title.
- redis_mlc 5y agoNo, the title is accurate. An acquaintance of mine who did US college fencing quit because of the avoidance of actual fighting. He said it's like watching 2 rabbits in lockstep bouncing back and forth 6' apart.
- 627467 5y agoWhy is it terrible?
- publicola1990 5y agoBecause it doesn't summarize the article.
- jffry 5y agoWas the title changed? Presently, the post title here matches the article's title: "Fencers Refused to Fight. Then Came the Rule That Changed the Sport" That seems reasonably accurate to me given the content of the article, which describes a growing trend of mutual non-agression in epee fencing and various rule changes targeted at putting an end to it.
- draw_down 5y agoCome on
- sgt101 5y agoThere was always an inactivity rule - basically the ref could call inactivity and move the fight to the last minute (as I remember it), but it was rarely done. Giving a yellow to the fencer that's behind is a good innovation. They should dump the off target element in foil and make it on targets only though.
- belter 5y agoCan we apply this game theory to developer salaries ? In other words, ( and as we have seen ) without forcing companies for compete for talent...They will end up under explicit or implicit ( non fighting ) a.k.a non salary compete agreements.