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Fencing Tournament Format
Fencing Registration for 2011 Now Closed and will Reopen in 2012
Fees:
$30 for the first event
$20 for each additional event
*$35 for onsite registration
Fencing tournaments are varied in their format, and there are both individual and team competitions.
The Michigan Championships will be comprise of all three weapons and consist of two parts: the pools, and the direct eliminations.
There will be Mixed Open events for Foil, Epee and Sabre as well as Mixed youth events, with medals awarded for 1st, 2nd and 3rd in both mixed events along with the highest finishing 12 and 10 year old.
In the pools, fencers are divided into groups, and every fencer in a pool will have the chance to fence every other fencer once. There are ideally seven fencers in a pool. If the number of fencers competing is not a multiple of seven, then there will usually be several pools of six. After the pools are finished, the fencers are given a ranking, or "seed," compared to all other fencers in the tournament, based primarily on the percent of bouts they won, then based secondarily on the difference between the touches they scored and the touches they received. Once the seeds have been determined, the direct elimination round starts. Fencers are sorted in a table of some power of 2 (16, 32, 64, etc.) based on how many people are competing
Due to the fact that it is highly unlikely for the number of fencers to be exactly a power of two, the fencers with the best results in the pools are given byes or the bottom seeded fencers are eliminated. The winner carries on in the tournament, and loser is eliminated. Typically no one has to fence for third place (the exception is if the tournament is a qualifying tournament with limited slots for continuation). Instead, two bronze medals are given to the losers of the semi-final round.
