Lord of the Rungs 2017 - April 4

The 5th Annual Lord of the Rungs campusboard competiton will be held on Tuesday, April 4th. Hours will vary by location, Any gym (or home gym) with 1" rungs spaced at 22 cm is welcome to join in; if you're interested, just email me. There is a website for tracking all the moves and scores, from all the gyms in real-time. Each competitor will be able to access their scorecard and a to-do list of the moves yet to be done. If you're planning on competing, create an account now (otherwise we can't log your moves) at portal.lordoftherungs.com then click "register" to enter the event. If you've competed in the past, your account will still be there.
   In addition to the individual competition, there is a team competition. Team scores are based on the score of the 5 top people from your location (there has to be at least one female on the team.)
   The move list is unchanged from last year. The scoring has been simplified: every move is worth 1 point. This makes knowing how far you are ahead/behind very easy. Last year's winner would have had 60 points under this system - let's see if someone can beat it this year!

Lord of the Rung 2016 - Results

This year's competition was our largest yet with over 100 competitors from eight climbing gyms. On the men's side, Connor Gurzi took first place - proving that this is a hard title to hold as no man has won the event twice. Last year's winner, Steve Lapen finished second with newcomer Rowland Chen coming in third. Whereas, on the women's side, Andree Areno won her fourth title followed closely by Deanna Lapen; with newcomer Laura Hechtlinger finishing third. For the first time, the team title involved serious competition with Earth Treks Climbing Center winning the big trophy.

Discussion: Scoring

Going into our fourth competition, we now have enough objective data to completely redo the scoring system and make it as objective as possible. Scoring for the first LOTR competition was done entirely by subjective judgement based on our combined estimation of move difficulty. After each competition, we review the results and adjusted scoring for the next competition; but this system was still largely subjective. Now, I want to present a formulaic approach to generate scores for moves based on the objective difficulty.

Lord of the Rungs 2016 - March 29th

This year's Lord of the Rungs will be held on Tuesday, March 29th. Hours will vary by location, Any gym (or home gym) with 1" rungs spaced at 22 cm is welcome to join in; if you're interested, just email me. We have a few refinements left to the scoring system - all focused on reducing the number of moves competitors need to do. Each competitor will be able to access their scorecard and a to-do list of the moves yet to be done.
   If you're planning on competing, create an account now (otherwise we can't log your moves) at portal.lordoftherungs.com then click "register" to enter the event.
   In addition to the individual competition, there is a team competition. Team scores are based on the score of the 5 top people from your location (there has to be at least one female on the team.)

Discussion: Proxy System

The next topic to discuss is the proxy system. The proxy is the least understood aspect of the scoring system, but is actually extremely simple and intuitive after a few minutes of reviewing how it works.

But first, to wrap up the previous topic... the vast majority of people agreed with the changes to the move list as well as adding monos. So, for the next competition, the Up Moves and Stacks can be done 4 fingered, 2 fingered and mono. The finalized move list is:

Discussion: Move Selection

After every competition we have reviewed what happened and strived to incorporate any possible improvements into future events. Previously, this was done informally, but I think the process can be improved by opening the discussion to everyone. This discussion will have three parts:

• First is move selection (i.e., what moves will be in the competition) and finger selection (i.e., should we add monos.)
• Second is the proxy system (i.e., what moves give credit for other moves.)
• Third is scoring (i.e., how many points for each move.)

We will tackle these in order, moving on after each stage is finalized. Please hold proxy and scoring related comments until they are addressed in future posts.

Results: Lord of the Rungs 2015

Lapen. That would have to be the defining term for this year's competition. Steve "Wolverine" Lapen blew away previous first place scores in his first competition appearance. His wife Deanna (aka "Dee") finished second, almost beating now three time champion Andree Areno. Dee managed all the 2-finger combinations to 5 (1:2-5, 1:3-5, 1:4-5) forcing Andree to pursue her. But as an experienced Santa Barbara campuser, Andree managed 1:2-5 and 1:3-5 2-fingered as well as the 4-finger stack 1:2-5-6-9 for the narrow victory.