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Evaluation modes

You have two options to calculate how participants are awarded points and how the competition ranking is built up:

Static evaluation

Every boulder receives a predetermined value by the organizers or setters. This value does not change over the course of a competition. This means that every person who climbs that boulder will be awarded its predefined value.

A participant's rank is based on the sum of all their ascent points: for each ascent, the value of the boulder is multiplied by the factor for the respective ascent type. This could be 1.3 for a flash and 0.3 for a zone, but in the end it's up to the organizers to choose suitable factors.

Limit boulders

Static evaluation gives you the option to also limit the number of ascents that are taken into account in the ranking. If a limit is active, all of a participant's ascents will be sorted from highest to lowest number of received points and the values of the top most boulders are summed up until the limit of ascents is reached.

If ascents styles flash and zone are available in your competition, those will be taken into account when selecting the top most valuable ascents of a participant. That means that a zone-ascent for a high-value boulder could get included because it benefits the participant more than topping a low-value boulder. The same applies for flashes on low-value boulders.

Dynamic evaluation

Every boulder receives an initial value by the setters beforehand. This value is reduced by the number of ascents that were made on that particular boulder. The more often a boulder was climbed the fewer points it will be worth.

A participant's rank is based on the sum of all their ascent points: for each ascent, the value of the boulder is multiplied by the factor for the respective ascent type. This could be 1.3 for a flash and 0.3 for a zone, but in the end it's up to the organizers to choose suitable factors.

Boulder value calculation

Each boulder has a difficulty rating based on the ascent ratio, i.e. how many of the participants managed to climb the boulder:

  • a boulder that hasn't been climbed by anyone has a difficulty of 100%.
  • a boulder that has been climbed by half of the competitors has a difficulty of 50%.
  • a boulder that has been climbed by everyone has a difficulty of 0%.

The difficulty \(d\) is calculated like this:

\[d = 1 - { ascents \over participations}\]

The current value of a boulder is obtained by multiplying its initial points with its difficulty \(d\):

\[value = points \times d\]

Info

That means, the maxium points a competitor can receive for topping a boulder is 99 points of a boulder's initial 100 points (if they are the only one in a contest of 100 participants to top it).

To really give a realistic estimate of the difficulty of a boulder, flash and zone ascents are also taken into account if activated for the competition. Common factors for flashes and zones are are \(F = 1.3\) and \(Z = 0.3\).

\[ d = 1 - { F \times flashes + tops + Z \times zones \over F \times participations} \]

To not dilute boulder values by a huge number of idle participants, we only consider those participants that did at least one ascent in the competition.

When to choose which mode?

Static Mode Dynamic Mode
✅ Ideal for events that only span a short period of time because you can limit the number of required boulders and participants are not required to climb every boulder. ❌ All participants are required to climb all the boulders in order to calculate proper boulder values.
❌ The setters needs to accurately estimate the difficulty of their boulders to avoid a skewed ranking. ✅ If you want to have real-world based difficulty estimate of your boulders.