UKC

Consider a group of people of different abilities (small children, teens, competitive adults, adults...). For simplicity, let's consider only bouldering problems. (The same should be extended to lead/toprope routes, somehow)

We're trying to create some sort of challenge to encourage all sorts of people to climb. We will give them a sheet and ask them to record what they have climbed and then we need to find a way to score what they have climbed, but not in absolute value (otherwise the punters will be put off).

What's important is the relative effort. If X climbs 10 problems at his maximum difficulty he should get more points than Y who has climbed 10 problems under her max capacities. (But what if Y climbs 20 problems?)

So we need to find a way to score in terms of volume (number of problems) and relative effort.

The end result (who wins) doesn't matter much but everybody must have the impression that they could win.

Does anybody have a scoring system for something similar?

Isn't that how Golf works? Handicaps?

No idea how golf works! I will look into that, cheers

The competitive adults will never tolerate such a scoring system! Nor any competitive teens.

We did such a competition where each person started at their grade (perhaps the hardest problem they had managed in the last few weeks). You scored a certain number of points for every problem climbed each week, perhaps 1 point per problem 2 grades below your grade, 2 points 1 grade below, 5 points at grade, and 10 points per problem above your grade. Then the following week each person's grade would be bumped up to the hardest they had climbed.

There were 'prizes' for the most points each week, and for advancing your grade.

Our club has used something similar in the past. The boulder centre has grades of different colours. You picked two colours, an easy colour and a challenging colour, you get two points for each challenging colour climb you do, and one point for each easy colour. You had 50 mins to complete as many as possible. In the end, the person who chose their colours the most conservatively wins. It's not a great format but it worked. 

An alternative would be to give everyone a raffle ticket for every climb they do and draw the winner from the hat. The more climbs you did the greater your probability of winning. I think this option is better, as it's more honest about it not really being a competition. For the last few years, we've moved to a system where more difficult climbs get more points and the person who climbs best wins. As it's a fun competition, nobody takes it too seriously anyway.

Something along the lines of the first sounds good enough. I think people understand it's about having a good time and trying to emulate every one, that should work.

Good stuff too, I'll see if we can do that over several weeks, that sounds like a very good system.

Annoyingly I can't remember the relative scores. It comes down to how much you want to reward progress vs volume. Depending on how much climbing people are doing running it in two week blocks might work well.

Design a scoring system which takes account of difficulty so the best climbers get the highest score.

Combine the raw score with a handicap to calculate the actual score used to see who wins.

Whoever wins gets their handicap increased.

The nice thing about this system is that it gives everybody a chance at winning, its easier to win if you are new and it is really hard to win twice running no matter how good you are.

Only the winner gets their handicap increased so you don't get your handicap bumped up for improving until you actually win.