Full placements and scores are now up on the ILHC website. Every year, people have questions about how it works, so I thought I’d do a little preemptive strike with a quick and dirty explanation.
The main thing to remember is that relative placement is based on majorities. For example, if there are 7 judges and 4 of them award 1st place to a couple, then that couple wins even if the other 3 judges place them as low as last. If no one wins a majority, then placements are added up starting from 1st place to last until someone does get a majority.
Here’s a good real world example which can confuse people who aren’t familiar with the system. These are the first and second place scores from the Team Division.
Lindy Hoppers Dozen 1 2 4 4 1 2 2 2 1
Swinging Air Force 2 1 1 1 6 1 4 3 5
Most people will see that the Swinging Air Force has four 1st placements to Lindy Hoppers Dozen’s 3, so why does Lindy Hoppers Dozen come in first?
The key here is that there are nine judges. Swinging Air Force needed FIVE 1st placements to win the division outright. Since, they only got 4, we then start adding up the 2nd placements to the firsts. As you can see, Lindy Hoppers Dozen cleans up here while Swinging Air Force's scores start going all over the place. So after counting up the total 1st and 2nd placements, SAF now has 5 placements while the LHD has 7. Thus, first place for LHD.
If anyone has any more questions about how the scoring works, I can try answering them best I can.
One thing I can’t do is tell you what each individual judge was thinking. You have to ask them directly for that. However, don’t confuse a judge's placement of a performance with their actual opinion of it. They could very well have loved a routine, but thought that some others were done better. The opposite is also true: they may have hated a piece, but placed it first because they thought everyone else was worse. Although I have seen that happen in some contests, I doubt that this was the case at this year's ILHC. I think everyone did themselves proud this year.
Anyway, remember that it's called "relative" placement for a reason.
Bobby and I sort of talk about this last point in our latest video blog on A Word on Swing. Check it out along with the brand new website we created for the show. The current show compares videos from the first Invitational Jack & Jill done in 2001 with the Open Jack & Jill at ILHC last year. I would say it's an interesting discussion, but you know . . . I'm one of the people talking. ;)
We also did an ILHC reaction show which should be up sooner rather than later. I may do my own blog about it as well. We'll see.