[CQ-Contest] 2 pointers vs 3 pointers: miscellaneous ramblings

[kr2q at optimum.net]

The only level playing field is a virtual reality game.  Assuming that the s/w is not hacked or 
shared/leaked ahead of time, then only skill, tempered by luck, will matter.

I love Igor’s comments.  Reminds me of what my mother used to tell me.  I cried because I
 had no shoes, then I met someone who had no feet.  Yeah.  Perspective counts.

So if we’re talking non-gaming via s/w, you are out of luck.  But this has always been the case.

In the old days in the US, the East Coast guys would complain about the W6 and 7 guys.  The 
west coast could muster up a multiplier equal to the east coat with just one QSO per country 
in EUR or Africa and then have a bottomless pit of JAs to work.  If the band didn’t open to JA 
from the northeast, oh well.  Now that the population of JAs has disappeared from contesting 
(relatively speaking), that story has changed.

And I remember when N5AU won M/M USA from Texas while us east coast guys tried our best, 
but didn’t make the grade.  Anything is possible.  

Even in a small geographical area, there are “complaints” about advantages.  For those of you 
who have been around contesting for a long time and saw the movie To Win the World, the 
classic line is, “Conditions favored the competition to the north,” even though it was just over 100 miles away.  

And in the so-called exemplar of WRTC, there are always complaints about how “their location 
was better than ours.”  

And since Russian track and field doping is back in news (at least here in the USA), you always 
have the cheating factor to worry about.  Just how big an amp was he really using?

The idea of a scoring system based on distance, ala the SPTBDXC, has always been intriguing.  
And really, anyone can “try it out.”  The CQWW databases are on line.  Come up with an algorithm 
for assigning a grid to each QSO based on prefix and let it fly.  Perfect?  No.  But let’s see what 
happens. I can envision one contest, unchanged, but with two scoring systems.  Why not?  
Force the entrant to enter their grid square in the header and then perfect scoring by distance.  Easy!

While I love the idea of “points per km,” I really do miss some sort of multiplier.  Working a double
 mult late on day two really pumps up the adrenalin.  

So failing something that will work in reality (always impossible), are you willing to give up using RF 
and instead use a magic black box?  Yup…Dr. DX all over again, but for contesting.

So until that happens, QRZ contest!

de Doug KR2Q