Sidesword at Queen's Gambit '23 - Just the Fighting

Here's about half of my sidesword matches from Queen's Gambit 2023. Unfortunately, the other half went unrecorded. Even worse for me, those were the majority of my wins, so please enjoy this montage of me mostly losing. I have elected to provide this without commentary, but I might follow-up with some breakdowns if there's anything in here I want to analyze further.

I finished this tournament with 5 Wins, 5 Losses. I did not expect much from my performance in this tournament, as while I have an academic interest in sidesword-style fencing, it constitutes a minority of my own personal training. This goes doubly so for using it in conjunction with an off-hand implement. Despite this, I was still able to sort highly in the pools, but my final pool went poorly.

I had the distinct pleasure of fencing several subscribers over the course of the weekend, and meeting several more. I thoroughly enjoyed my matches with you all, and look forward to the next!

The tournament operated on a Swiss pool system. You'd have three fights, and then your position in the pools would be rearranged based on your current W/L ratio. Pools would be resorted three times. The advantage of this over a traditional elimination bracket is that you're guaranteed a tidy sum of fights, and they'll be fights at your skill level, so you're getting better bang for your buck if your objective for the tournament is self-enrichment.

Fencers could elect to carry a buckler, targe, dagger, or cloak in the off-hand. There was about a 30% chance that both fencers would be instructed to conduct their match without their off-hand implement.

Scoring worked like this:
2 Minute Matches, first to 4 points
3 Points = Hits to the head, and thrusts to the torso
1 Point = Any other valid hit
Points would only be awarded if the fencer could land the hit and withdraw, or control the opponent, without being struck in return.

#sidesword #sword #fencing #hema #martialarts #tournament