The Marina del Rey Venture MacGregor Fleet

[TLDR] -- this is an in depth discussion of the ratings system this year for the VSTNT races, feel free to ignore it.

We have had several discussion this season about the ratings system.  Some of the boats that are new to the fleet this year and have not been around for the fine tuning of this system over the last several years have been heard expressing discontent with the system as it relates to their boats standings in the results.  I thought I would go over the classes and the handicap systems here so everyone can make some choices about where their boats belong in the fleets.  Of course we will likely make some further adjustments as we go into next season including the possible adding of another fleet with different ratings policies or some other changes in the ratings systems to accommodate the changing make up of the fleet.

We are doing everything we can to continue the tradition and history of the TNT races passed down to us by Vic Smith who ran these races for decades, and those of us who have taken on continuing this tradition are doing everything we can to provide a series that is both competitive and fair as well as being open and fun to all levels of racers.  We strive to find a system allowing racers that for one reason or another (equipment, condition, or skill level) cannot be competitive with their base ratings to have a place to come where if they sail a good race for them, they have a chance to win a race every once in a while.  One of the reasons people do not race their boats, is because they believe they have no chance to win a race even if they do everything they could with their boats on any given day, and in this series if they are racing in the right class, any boat will eventually be able to win a race if they have a good day on the water for them based on their previous performances.

First of all, just the basics.  We have an adjustable rating system in the A and B fleets which result in the ratings changing based on performance in those fleets.  Each fleet is handled a bit different this year.  The A fleet has a maximum adjustment of 15 points per race, and the B fleet has a maximum adjustment of 20 points per race.  The A fleet ratings reset to the base handicap for the boat each series, and the B fleet handicaps continue to adjust the entire season, and they carry over from series to series.  The performance class boats do not adjust in handicap at all, and always race at their base ratings.

Another difference between the fleets, is we allow boats to declare spinnaker or non-spinnaker and get an adjustment to their rating for their non spin offset in the A and B fleets, where there is no adjustments for non spin in the performance class.  The non spin needs to be declared for the series, and cannot be changed from race to race.

We calculate the ratings in a spreadsheet and here are links to the spreadsheets, which keep a historic record of changes, and so you can look back at any race in the season and see the calculation for that race in the version history:

Calc Handicap A 2018 TNT Races
Calc Handicap B 2018 TNT Races

All rating systems are flawed in different ways, and depending on the rating system, occasionally different boats will win a race or a series based on the way the rating system works.  Our adjustable handicap system is designed to allow boats that can not compete with boats if all the boats are at their base rating to find a level where their boat actually sails to based on their performance relative to the other boats.  This system both lowers the handicap of the boats at the top of the fleet, and raises the handicap at the bottom.  This year we use an adjustable multiplier to produce results that have a maximum adjustment at the top and bottom and lesser adjustments in the middle of the fleet based on differences between adjusted time and average time for the fleet.  A boat that comes in very close to the average time of the fleet will have no adjustment.  This type of system results in a narrowing of the gaps between the boats, and the results often become very close in A fleet by the end of a series before the handicaps reset (we have had races this year where the first and last place boats were within a minute and a half of each other).  This also has produced situations where boats find the ratings they compete at in the B fleet and start to adjust up and down around those levels.

In the last race in the A fleet we had a situation where a couple of new boats came into the series in the middle of the series, and performed well, which puts them in an advantageous situation in comparison to the higher performing boats who had been winning races earlier in the series.  This is because they race at their base, and the boats that have been performing above average in the previous races in the series had lowered ratings.  I was aware of this issue when we set up this system, but these boats do not have any chance to win the series, as they have not been accumulating any points in the previous races, and so they are in a good position for particular races, but they are not competitive in either the series or the overall season competitions.  Their presence in the fleet also creates a situation where the gaps between the boats that did well in this race and the boats that did not are higher because there are more boats in between creating an opportunity to be further above or below the average adjusted time.  So, even though there was a gap in the series points created between the first place boat in this race and the other boats in the class, because of this result a maximum adjustment downward and a maximum adjustment upward will occur in between the boats on the ends of the fleet, and the negative impact of the new boats in this race on the lower placing boats will be offset by the fact that the presence of the new boats in the fleet resulted in a far larger rating adjustment between the boats that got more points as the result of them being there and the boats that did not.  This gives the boats that got less points in this race a better chance to make up points in the next race.  The system is not perfect, but it has balancing points to the negatives.

The result of these types of corrections is that over a series, and certainly over a season, the boats that are consistently sailed well will end up with more points.  However in particular races there are going to be times that a boat that has been sailing well will eventually be at a large enough disadvantage that another boat will have a very large adjustment working in their favor, and when new boats that have not raced in the first few races of a series show up for a race, and if they are boats that sail well in comparison to their base ratings, they are going to be harder for the boats that have been winning in the first races of the series to compete with.  I believe that this system results in a fair playing field for all the boats competing in the season, I do not believe any particular type or rating level of boat is at an advantage to any other.  Certainly there are races where results are far different than they would be with a non adjustable system, and that is the point of the system, but over a series and over the season, I believe the boats that sail the best will win and more than likely, over a series and over a season, the same boats will come out on the top of the leader boards, but in the middle some of the boats that would not have had much of a chance will get to be competitive in some of the races and get to win sometimes.

If you do not like the adjustable rating systems we are using in the A and B fleets, you are of course welcome to participate in the Performance class and avoid these systems entirely.  We have had some discussions about creating a second class that does not have adjustments in it for the higher rated boats that do not fit well with the faster boats in the performance class, but currently we do not have enough boats to support another class, though this may change as we have been picking up many new boats this season, and if there is interest we can always change the way the fleets are set up for next year.

Of course we are always trying to adjust these systems so everyone feels good about racing, and feels they are being treated fairly.  That is why I do my best to explain what is going on and make sure everyone understands the systems we are using and why.  Please feel free to ask me any questions either in private or here on the website if you have any comments, ideas, or concerns I am open to all input.  Fair warning I am far more open to ideas and comments if they are something productive and other than being upset when you don't win a race, we all get frustrated when things do not go our way and I understand that, but any system is going to produce frustration for someone some of the time.  It might be productive to think about the situation from all perspectives a bit and cool down after a result you are not happy with.  Those of us trying to put on this race are just trying to help the most people have fun racing and learning to race as possible, and the balancing act to try to make everyone happy can be frustrating as well.

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