Master of the Four Seasons Award

Beginning with the 2020 Stew Perry, The Boring ARC will be initiating a Master of the Four Seasons award, given annually to the operator who makes the largest adjusted single-op score totals in the four seasonal Stew Perry contests. The Master of the Four Seasons (MFS) year starts with the December Big Stew and ends with following October’s Pre-Stew. To be eligible for this award, the operator must submit single-op scores in all four events.

The Master of the Four Seasons (MFS) award does not have any effect on running any Stew contest. Whatever Stew rules are in effect are used. Final Stew Perry contest scores are the input to MFS calculations. Running MFS scores will be released after the March and June Stew Perry contests. Final MFS scores will be released once the October Stew Perry scores are final.

Without missing a contest, the MFS Master winner must have been single-op in all Stew Perry contests that MFS year. Operators running multi-op, submitting a check log, or missing in any of the four contests will not be considered for Master status, but the running and final MFS score listings and totals will contain any single-op entries they submit. Any adjustments for power level rest entirely in the normal Stew Perry scoring rules.

Normalizing

Instead of simply adding together the scores from all four events, a weighting factor for the smaller events will be calculated to make sure scores from each of the four events have a significant impact to the MFS total score. The December Stew total of all single-op entrant scoring is used as basis for normalizing of the spring, summer, fall scores. The smaller events will have their single-op score totals compared to the December Stew to determine a weighting multiplier for each event.

The normalizing score and ratios make sure that all seasons count, even if QRN or conditions depressed participants and scores. These MFS rules will give an advantage to plowing into the QRN, poor conditions and sticking it out, especially if others never get in or are jumping out early. Master of the FOUR Seasons includes summer QRN and QSB.

The multiplication factor for each of the seasonal events (March, June and October) will be computed by dividing one half of all of the single-op scores posted in the December Stew, by the total of all of the single-op scores in the seasonal event. The result is multiplied to all of the single-op scores for the seasonal event for purposes of the MFS award. No adjustment will be made if the seasonal event total exceeds half the December Stew total.

For example, if the total of all single-op scores posted in December is 1,000,000 points, then 500,000 will be the normalizing score that will be used for the three seasonal events. If the March Stew has a total of 50,000 points for all single-ops, then the scores from March will be multiplied by 10 for the MFS score total.

We will be using 2019-2020 season scores to work the kinks out of the compilation process. If this dictates changes in the normalizing scheme, we will publish those.

The Master of the Four Seasons plaque is awarded only once to any individual operator. The Boring ARC keeps and posts the MFS Masters list, added to every year. Prior winners can win endorsements.

If the current MFS score from a prior MFS winner (no longer eligible for plaque) is larger than the current year’s MFS winner score, they get an endorsement in the MFS list:

E.g. Op #1 and #3 continue to crank out top scores, get recognized in the list, but cannot monopolize the award. No operator can monopolize the award but continued high scores are still recognized.

See you in the contest & 73