Hypothetically, what if there was no cap limit on entries?
With our local competitions, don't we always seem to find a way to get it done and send the best on to the next round? My only beef would be that, given the current BJCP experience point table and the points cap, there's no benefit for the judges to go along with this approach.
However, that could change as long as the BJCP and AHA are willing to give judges credit for the number of flights judged over many different days (or, even weekends). Our point accumulation should not be limited by a points cap--which exists for most competitions. Otherwise, it makes no sense for local judges at the various regional centers to put out additional effort to help judge the surplus entries. It is great that we get the occasional judge from one state or another, but the bulk of the judging is going to be done by the local club (or clubs). The current points table seems to favor the judge who comes into town for the competition weekend. The local club has already pre-judged the "first round" of entries and screened out all the inferior beers; only the good beers get pushed onto the next round. The out-of-town judge ends up judging better beers in the second round and mini-BOS (and even BOS), and potentially maxes out on judging points within 48 hours (and may only judge one flight per session). However, local club members who put in countless hours and (multi-flight) sessions over several weeks to cull the inferior beers and make the number of entries more manageable for the weekend competition don't necessarily get the benefit of the same number of points.
In other words, if I judge one or more flights a day Fri-Sat-Sunday for three weekends straight, then I should be able to get 9 BJCP points (0.5 pts/session*, 1 session/day, 1.5 pts per 3 day weekend x 3 weekends). However, Table 1 on the BJCP EXPERIENCE POINT AWARD SCHEDULE shows us to be capped at 5.5 judging points max regardless of the number of comp entries.
*A session is one or more flights per "sit down period," e.g. morning, or afternoon, or evening).
You'll need more entry locations (to entice more local judges--i.e., the ones who won't travel to a more distant regional center) or you'll need to be able to give the judges more points if they've earned it. Otherwise it'll be hard to entice judges to take their valuable personal time and money to judge (for nothing). In fact, as it stands, judges would do better to just judge one flight per session and then go hang out in the hospitality room, or leave the judging area--there's no reward for being "helpful" to the organizers. Meanwhile, the comp organizers are unsuccessfully trying to recruit judges for the next flight and everyone seems disinterested--as one comp organizer recently described to me, "it is like herding cats."
This could be improved--we need to reward the effort. Perhaps the BJCP and AHA governing committees could address this.
Topic: NHC Entries closed.... (Read 28449 times)
