You're absolutely right, and to be honest, that will happen in any tournament format. People get competitive, and they start playing to the rules to gain points rather than focusing on techniques that would be used if your life were really on the line. Having said that, I saw less of that than usual, and I think there was also some really good fencing going on (though some guys REALLY need to dial down the power).
I think there was less of it in the ring you were judging.
All in all, it was great fun. I wasn't playing for points, so I knew I'd do badly on the score. But the judges didn't start counting doubles and after-blows in my bouts until maybe my 4th bout. They'd go for quick sniping shots without controlling the line, so I'd just hit them back, and lose.
At least that's the way I remember it. I'll have to see the videos. Admittedly some of those were some messy binds. I doubt it would have made much of a difference since I was playing to have fun and they were playing for points, I just would have liked to have had the chance to have more exchanges where they couldn't get away with a snipe that didn't close the line. Once they started actually counting the doubles, I scored a few points, finally, since they weren't getting away with it anymore.
I agree completely about the power. In fact, I wanted to raise a concern with it. I'm starting to feel that they should disallow hand-strikes completely. I hate adding artificial rules to restrict target area, especially with valid historical techniques that involved shots to the hand, and I don't want to encourage people to over-expose their hands either. But I think it's very difficult to adequately pad the hands under these conditions with the power ramped up. I feel like I saw way too many hand injuries this weekend. David took a shot to his knuckle that swelled up. Chris Wheeler had a purple fingertip. The dude in the finals this morning who had to go to the hospital with a crushed fingertip. And I think I saw at least one or two other people with ice-packs on their hands. I received a half-inch blood blister from a shot that squarely hit the padding of my glove just fine. And Mike Edelson apparently took some sort of hit too (I just know I had to shake hands with him with left hands). To me, this indicates a problem, especially since we all need our hands in our day jobs.
Oh, I was also wondering... when did the idea of saluting each other go away?
I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. It was a fun event, and there will of course always be rough corners to iron out over time with this sort of thing. I hope everyone else had a blast, because I certainly did.
