Couple videos of my own fencing

I took a video of myself and George fencing in practice recently, and George took a video of my pool bout against Carlo Malaguzzi last weekend. I am putting them up here with the intention of analyzing the many examples of bad form I can see. But not right now, later...

Videos from SAS Open Mixed Epee, 11/23/2014

Shawn Dodge and George Raush in a Final 8 DE bout:




Just the last bit of Matthew Comes and Scott Phillips, Final 8 DE:




Matthew Comes and George Raush, semifinal DE:




Yuly Suvorov and Steven Benack, semifinal DE:





Matthew Comes and Steven Benack, final bout:

SAS Open Mixed Epee, 11/23/2014

One of the small, somewhat informal SAS tournaments. These tend to be nice. There are often just enough fencers to be an A1 event, and usually mostly fencers I know pretty well, which makes for a decent chance of earning a better rating. I earned my E at one of these.

This time, however, I didn't do as well, coming in 14th out of 17:

https://askfred.net/Results/results.php?tournament_id=28369&highlight_competitor_id=91067&event_id=112379

The main reason I came in 14th instead of something more like 9th was two pool bouts that went 4-4 but I lost. At 4-4 things can easily go either way and I've had plenty of times when I won against a better fencer after getting to 4-4. But not this time.

I see the AskFred results link above has an error, showing me losing to Mark Blom 1-5, when in fact it was 4-5. I remember checking the scorecard after the pools and signing off. Probably Russ entered the data into the computer wrong, or misread the handwriting. So my pool on AskFred looks like this:

But I ought to have a D4 against Mark Blom, 16 under touches scored, and an indicator of -5 instead of -8. Mark's TS, TR, and Ind ought to be 20, 18, 2. I worked out whether this mistake made a difference for DE seeding and I don't think it did, so no harm done.

I also worked out how the DE seeding would have been if I had won those two 4-4 pool bouts. As it was, losing them, my first DE was against Yuly Suvorov, which I predictably lost badly. If I had won both of the 4-4 pools I would have seeded 8th instead of 14th. But John Varney would have seeded 9th instead of 10th and I'd have to fence him. That would have been at least as difficult as Yuly was. But if I had won one of the 4-4 bouts and not the other, and/or if other people had scored slightly differently I could have ended up with a number of different people, some of whom I would have had a decent chance with. Anyway, another example of how every point matters in pools—and not only your own points! And also how winning pool bouts matters. Losing 4-5 is better than losing 0-5, but winning 5-4 is even better.

I have only brief notes on my pool bouts. My first bouts were against my SAS clubmates, who were also the toughest fencers in the pool. First I fenced George Raush. I tried some tricks that sometimes work with him, but they mostly failed. He won 5-2. Then I fenced Yuly Suvorov. Sometimes in practice I can beat him to 5 points, but not often. This time I got the first point in a nice second intention kind of way, drawing him into a mistake and taking advantage. That bright moment faded fast though and I lost 5-1.

I didn't really expect to beat George or Yuly, but I thought I had a decent chance with Carlo Malaguzzi and Mark Blom. I faced Carlo first. George took a video, which I'll put up in another post. We were mostly tied up to 4-4. I tried to find an opening to take advantage of and when I thought I saw one I attacked, but either it wasn't really an opening or Carlo was tricking me. Also my attack was technically rather bad. So he scored and I lost 5-4.

With Mark Blom I tried to repeat the tactics I used to beat him in Portland a month before. Both my LP epees were out by then (one failed the weight test, to my surprise, the other was okay for a couple of bouts but then failed the small shim). I was using my Vniti which just isn't as good for the kind of beats I used in Portland. Still, I felt like my timing was good and I managed to keep the score tied off and on. Near the end he was up 4-3. I kept making shallow threats, trying to draw his counterattacks. Eventually he countered and I was able to sweep his blade up into a kind of septime or prime-like thing and score. That felt pretty nice. Then at 4-4 I tried to be careful, waiting for the right moment. He fleched from a long distance. I had enough time to think I had it, he was fleching from too far. Yet he managed to score a single light through a combination of nice bladework on his part and poor form on my part. Doh.

My final pool bout was with Mark Benack. He is getting better but still a beginner. I got to 4-0 fairly easily and wanted to get a 5-0 win, but he managed to double at the end, so I won 5-1. I felt a little bad for him during the tournament, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

My post-pool seed was 14 out of 17, so I got paired with seed 3, Yuly. He won easily, no surprise.

I stayed and watched the rest. Shawn Dodge beat John McDonald 15-14, renewing his D, before losing to George in another 15-14 bout. Joel Howard lost to Andre Stackhouse in a very close bout that went to 14-14. Joel probably would have earned his D had he won, alas. The main surprise was Steven Benack, who was fencing hot. He won all his pool bouts, including John Varney and John McDonald, and got 2nd seed. In the DEs he beat Russ 15-5, then John Varney 15-12. That surprised me. I had thought of Steven as more or less as good as me (though very different in style, and of course much much younger). So to see him beat Varney in a DE was surprising. Then he fenced Yuly and won 15-12. Wow. That got Steven to the final bout, against Matthew Comes. It was fairly close for a while, but toward the end Matthew seemed to figure out some tactics and pulled ahead to win 15-10.

I took several videos which I'll put in a separate post.