Comstock Factoring |
Matt Burkett
You walk up to a stage and you hear someone say, "Oh, that's a ten-factor stage."Do you know what they mean and how the figure it out?
Comstock factoring is the average points per second. A one-hundred point course shot in ten seconds is a ten factor. So is a fifty-point stage shot in five seconds. Divide the factor by the time, and that's the factor -- the amount of time earning a point on that stage should take.
You're probably saying, "That's nice and all, but how does it help me?"
Knowing the base factor can assist you in making the right decisions on how to shoot a stage. Say you shoot a "C" on a ten-factor stage at a Major, which is worth four points instead of five. Shooting the "C" cost you one of the available points on that shot. On the other hand, if you had taken an extra 0.10 and shot an "A", you would have exactly the same score. The extra point would have been "eaten" by the Comstock factor.
A five-factor stage is worth five points per second, so each point is worth 1/5th -- or 0.20 -- second. If you shoot a miss on a five factor stage and make it up in exactly three seconds you have the same score. If you make it up in less than three seconds, you're earning some points back. If you take longer than three seconds to make up the shot you're losing more points than the miss cost you in the first place. Something to remember is that a miss on a Comstock stage is fifteen points: Ten penalty points, and the five points that you didn't earn for an "A" hit on the target. What it boils down to is this: The lower the stage factor, the more important it is to shoot all "A's" and vise versa; with higher factors, speed becomes more important. On a ten factor stage, you better make up that shot in a hurry or forget about it! You should always average a minimum of 90-95% of points available on a stage. These days, at the upper levels of competition, you need to earn 97% or more of the available points to win the match.
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