Personal Handicap

   At Wilsonian we use personal handicaps for pursuit races, because they can make the racing and finishes much tighter than they would otherwise be (once you're passed by a faster boat in a pursuit, you can see all too clearly that you're not going to win). 
The handicaps were initially guessed at by looking at the finishing order of boats in normal series, and allotting personal corrections accordingly, assuming there is a 10% difference between the fastest and slowest sailor; with hindsight, I'd make that 20% difference, incredible as it sounds. Thereafter, the results of pursuit races are fed back into the system to tweak the personal handicaps by rough and ready rule of thumb/calculation.
We don't use personal handicaps for normal massed start racing because they don't make the racing any better on the water, and lead to a set of results that everyone regards as even more arbitrary than the official PY's. There's not much incentive to improve if the only consequence will be a stiffer handicap, and people might sandbag prior to important events, making the whole thing a pantomime. 
The real answer is for slow sailors to learn and improve if they want to win, but in practice few bother to even get a book out of the library...

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Medway Maniac Send Private Message Find Member's Posts Visit Member's Homepage Really should get out more Joined: 13 May 05 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 2788	Post Options Post Reply Quote Medway Maniac Report Post Quote Reply Topic: Personal Handicap Posted: 25 May 07 at 9:31pm
	At Wilsonian we use personal handicaps for pursuit races, because they can make the racing and finishes much tighter than they would otherwise be (once you're passed by a faster boat in a pursuit, you can see all too clearly that you're not going to win). The handicaps were initially guessed at by looking at the finishing order of boats in normal series, and allotting personal corrections accordingly, assuming there is a 10% difference between the fastest and slowest sailor; with hindsight, I'd make that 20% difference, incredible as it sounds. Thereafter, the results of pursuit races are fed back into the system to tweak the personal handicaps by rough and ready rule of thumb/calculation. We don't use personal handicaps for normal massed start racing because they don't make the racing any better on the water, and lead to a set of results that everyone regards as even more arbitrary than the official PY's. There's not much incentive to improve if the only consequence will be a stiffer handicap, and people might sandbag prior to important events, making the whole thing a pantomime. The real answer is for slow sailors to learn and improve if they want to win, but in practice few bother to even get a book out of the library...
	Wilsonian SC 3000 Class

andymck Send Private Message Find Member's Posts Far too distracted from work Joined: 15 Dec 06 Location: Stamford Online Status: Offline Posts: 397	Post Options Post Reply Quote andymck Report Post Quote Reply Posted: 25 May 07 at 9:09pm
	After another drubbing by the handicap bandits the other day the subject of personal handicaps was brought up, suprisingly by the chief bandit. There do seem to be a few clubs that run personal handicap series, does anyone have any knowledge of how the handicaps tend to be set, and are modified, as we felt that it would be a good experiment for one of our series. Cheers Andy Edited by andymck
	Andy Mck