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Would like to suggest a minor amendment to the current scoring system - correct year and shipper still get 1 point each, but incorrect year and correct decade now receives 1/2 point.

Comments?

Works for me.

Scoring is always the privilege of the organiser anyway.

Suggest "error <= 5 years" would be better than "correct decade" for the half-point
(cf guesses of 63, 67, 72 or 77 for a 70, for example)

PhilW wrote: ↑23:18 Wed 26 Feb 2020 Suggest "error <= 5 years" would be better than "correct decade" for the half-point
(cf guesses of 63, 67, 72 or 77 for a 70, for example)

Good (half) point.

This loosely reminds me of a change that was made to the Formula 1 scoring system many years ago which introduced the possibility of a driver becoming World Champion without winning a single race because the differential between winning and losing had been narrowed.

Perhaps the differential should be greater and also introduce a premium on correct guessing to avoid that scenario occurring?

Alternative suggestion:

Correct shipper and vintage - 3 points
Correct shipper or vintage - 1 point
Vintage error <= 5 years - ¼ point

PhilW wrote: ↑23:18 Wed 26 Feb 2020 Suggest "error <= 5 years" would be better than "correct decade" for the half-point
(cf guesses of 63, 67, 72 or 77 for a 70, for example)

This range doesn't follow the "<=5" rule, which for a 1970 would surely be anything from 1965 to 1975?

DRT wrote: ↑17:17 Thu 27 Feb 2020

PhilW wrote: ↑23:18 Wed 26 Feb 2020 Suggest "error <= 5 years" would be better than "correct decade" for the half-point
(cf guesses of 63, 67, 72 or 77 for a 70, for example)

This range doesn't follow the "<=5" rule, which for a 1970 would surely be anything from 1965 to 1975?

I think that was Phil’s point - using a decade rule, a guess between ’61 and ’79 for a ’70 would score a half point (assuming Phil was meaning a decade to be ten years either side of the actual year). Whereas a <=5 years would narrow the range.

I think Neil may have intended same decade to mean the actual decade, so a guess of ’97 for a ’91 would score a half point. Though with such a method, a guess of 2011 for a 2009 would score nothing...

And we then get into the debate about “what is a decade?”, which I think has been discussed before around these parts

Is there any mileage in trying to restrict it to one fully declared vintage either side? Would clearly need a consensus on ‘fully declared vintages ‘ I appreciate!

I like the idea of the premium for guessing both right, even if the likely hood isn't high for me! but this could increase the chance of the monkey winning

Having thought about this further, I would suggest also formally allowing for partly-correct Shipper, e.g. guessing F when actually FG or vice-versa:
- Shipper: correct = 1pt, almost-correct = 1/2pt (e.g. F vs FG or similar)
- Vintage: correct = 1pt, almost-correct = 1/2pt (<=5 yr error)

I think the above is sufficiently simple for easy use.
If including Derek's bonus-for-both idea, then as an addition to the above perhaps:
- Both bonus: both correct = 1pt, either/both almost correct = 1/2pt

That said, a while ago I did re-calculate the scoring sheet for a couple of tastings to see how much difference the above made and it wasn't much, so perhaps our current simpler scheme is sufficient however.

We've started using the old system (1/2 point each for shipper and vintage) because it's super simple and makes it very easy to figure out "percent correct" in the end. It really puts the difficulty into perspective when the best score at the table is 1.5 points out of 12 bottles. Sure, you can figure out the "percent correct" with any system, but the fact that the old system was 1 point per bottle makes it much easier to visualize even without the exact percentage having been computed.

1.5 out of 12 possible is instantly recognizable.

Top score was 4.5! Out of how many? Uh... well it's 2 points per bottle unless they get it both parts right in which case there's a 1 point bonus, so max 3 per bottle but usually only 2 and there's 12 bottles so that's 36 but kind of only 24. So 4.5 out of 36, except there's sort of a soft cap at 24?