How it used to be.

Many fencers today do not realize that this tournament format we use now is; A. Not the way if has always been done, of B. Not the only way you are allowed to do it even now.

When I started fencing, and for many years after that, the standard format for tournaments was pools. A round, of pools, followed by another round of pools, followed by another round of pools. In each round the a percentage of the fencers were dropped. For example, if you started an event with 30 fencers the first round would be either six pools of five, or five pools of six. You were required to advance at least 50% from each round so in either case the top three from each pool (probably) would advance to the second round. ( I say probably because they could decide to advance 4 people from each pool if they wished, or even 5 from the pools of six although that would be pretty extreme.) Who advanced was determined by results of the pool. Victories of course were counted first, than indicators, then fewer touches received, then touches scored.
(At the time it was considered more important to have not been hit than it was to hit.) (To really confuse you, when I started fencing, scores were not kept by how many times you hit your opponent, but by how many times you got hit. First person to five lost. But we will leave that out of the explanation for now)
Fencers in those days kept a close eye on their indicators. I recall sitting by the strip cheering for a guy to score at least three points but not win so that I would advance due to indicators over his opponent. Once you figured out how things worked you paid attention to every point.

So in our thirty person event, we’ll say there were five pools of six, three advance. So the second round will have three pools of five. If you advanced three from this round you would have nine which is awkward, so you would probably advance four people into two pools of six into a final of six. At the end of the day the person with the best record in the final pool wins. First place though could not be decided by indicators, only by victories, so if there were a tie in victories the two (or three, or four) fencers who were tied would have to fence off for the victory. (it was conceivable that if there was a five person pool they could each win two bouts and have to fence the pool over in the barrage for first place) When I said “at the end of the day” I meant it. Events like this took a L O N G time to fence. There were events that would start early in the morning, eight to ten AM, and end early in the morning, one to two AM. Think you are tired now when you make the finals? Wait until you have been fencing for twelve hours and you are in your fifth pool and each pool has been harder than the one before it. Conditioning was an issue. But, if you were good enough, you got a LOT more fencing for your money.

This format is still acceptable. We could hold tournaments doing it now. But people are scared of the time factor. But it is still practical for a smaller event, say less than thirty fencers. It should be used as it will give especially the top fencers more quality bouts. Instead of burning through some cannon fodder before getting a hard bout in the round of eight, or four, when you make the final pool you get to fence five bouts against the top five fencers of the day. Not a bad way to finish off if you ask me.