Sportmanship Scoring: Your Thoughts

Through out the years I have played in many different tournaments. I have played with and with out sportsmanship scores, and I have played with varying types sportsmanship scoring.

But what is the right way to judge your fellow opponent in sportsmanship. I'm going to highlight three different type of sportsmanship schemes and give the pros and cons of each.

1. The Variable Score - This scoring allows for the most freedom to choose how good of a sport your opponent was during the game. It is usually a score that varies between 0 and another set number. For instance it could be 0-5, 5 being the highest score, and 0 being the worst.

Pros
- Gives the player the choice of what to give the opposing player.

Cons
- Is very subjective to the scoring player.
- Is hard to define what each numerical value is in terms of sportsmanship.
- Players can manipulate this score to hurt their opponents out of spite.

2. The Bad Game Score - I was introduced to this system last year at Wasteland Wars and was pleased with the way it works. The basis is that that everyone starts with the exact same score, and at the end of each game you decide if you had a good game or a bad game. If you had a bad game you mark your opponent as a bad game and that's it. If you only have one bad game as a player you lose a small amount of points, but if you have multiple bad games it escalates going from 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 to 64 for a five game tournament. So if everyone starts out with 64 points you will most likely end the tournament with 64 points unless you had something to be a bad sport about. To read more about this kind of scoring check out www.wastelandwars.org or www.alamogt40k.com where this system is run

Pros
- One spiteful hit from an opponent will not hurt your score drastically. Instead of being a 20% dock in a five game tournament it's only a 6% hit.
- It's not as subjective, it's a Yes or No answer to how good of a game did you have.

Cons
- There is still a small amount of subjectivity, and being hit by a spiteful player still hurts.

3. Answer the Questions Scoring - This is the type of scoring I've run in my events. It is a set of questions asked such as;
Was your opponent reasonably knowledgeable of the basic rules? +2 points.
Was your opponent courteous and civil? +2 points.
Even if you got destroyed, did you enjoy the game? +1 point.
This allows you to create a focus of how you would like people to behave and perform at your event.

Pros
- The TO can customize the how he would like an event to be held.
- Players are making informed decisions on what each point is worth and how to score their opponents.

Cons
- Players do not have as much control as how they are scoring their opponents.


These are the three different sportsmanship schemes that I've seen and played through. As of right now I prefer the last one but still enjoy playing through the second one. I have a problem with the first one as it makes it real easy for players to be spiteful if they lost the game. What are your thoughts and which type do you prefer to use in your events.