shanshani

Selfishly I want it to be at ACI because then I'll get to see it in person, but given that it's the debut of his programs and those programs look insanely complicated and challenging already, I think it's more likely to come out later. Fingers crossed that we at least get to see it in practice

Where is this originally from?

There's a way to jump 3A in sequence and gain points in BV! (*continues to evangelize*) 3Lz3A sequence instead of 3A2T! It's 2 whole BV points more--the same as replacing 4Lo with 4A. (Really, being able to replace 2T with a triple is worth about as much as adding a quad in some cases. Granted, replacing it with 3Lo would be better than an axel sequence, but for whatever reason men don't tend to jump loop combos.)

If he gets his flip or lutz back, he's actually better off replacing his 3A2T with a 3Lz3A or 3F3A sequence BV-wise. The loss of points from +SEQ is more than made up for by replacing 2T with 3Lz or 3F.

Nathan's 2017 LP outfit was pretty decent. He doesn't have to do Yuzu-style costumes--just something more interesting than quasi-underarmor.

I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason he doesn't talk much about ladies is to avoid fueling speculation about his personal life, not because he doesn't pay close attention to the discipline. Figure skating is essentially his career--he has more reason than any of us, not less, to keep up with with other levels of competition and other disciplines.

This has already been discussed a lot in General Skating Chat, but let me just pop in to say that the idea that the new rules favor people with multiple quads more than the old rules is a myth (they actually slightly reduce the advantage gotten by having multiple quads), and new rules should favor Yuzu if they favor anybody. He has the highest average GOE in the men's field, so he should benefit the most from the shifting of points to GOE and away from BV under the new scoring system. There's really no reason to say the new rules hurt him--if he's disadvantaged this upcoming quad for whatever reason, it will have everything to do with the judges themselves, not the rules as written.

Why is he so murderface-y in so many of the media day stills

Haha, where is this? Somewhere in mainland China judging by the simplified Chinese. Don't know if it was one fan or many, but it's certainly written like it's from a single fan. (It says "Yuzuru Hanyu, I love you" not "Yuzuru Hanyu, we love you.")

Thank you! For future reference, I pulled the bullets from the video: Jumps: Very good height and very good length (of all of the jumps in a combo or sequence) Good takeoff and landing Effortless throughout (including rhythm if it’s a combination jump) Steps before the jump, unexpected or creative entry Very good body position from the takeoff to the landing Element matches the music Spins: Good speed and/or acceleration during the spin Good, controlled, clear position(s) (including height and air/landing position in flying spin) Effortless throughout Maintaining a centered spin Creativity and originality Element matches the music Step sequences: Deep edges, clean steps and turns Element matches the music Effortless throughout with good energy, flow and execution Creativity and originality Excellent commitment and control of the whole body Good acceleration and deceleration Choreographic sequences: Creativity and originality Element enhances the music Effortless throughout with good energy, flow and execution Good ice coverage (ie. skater uses the whole rink in their performance) Good clarity and precision (ie. the steps and turns the skater uses are obvious) Excellent commitment and control of the whole body Underlined are the "core bullets" a skater is supposed to hit before judges are supposed to give them more than +3.

Can someone point me to the revised list of GOE bullets for the +5/-5 system? Thanks

I don't know about Yuzu not being protected. He has to face one of Nathan/Shoma/Misha at each of his GPs, and facing Misha twice is definitely the most favorable situation among the possibilities. The only wrinkle is having to face Boyang in Helsinki too--but even though Boyang and Misha are both threats if Yuzu doesn't skate well, Yuzu still has a pretty hefty advantage over both of them.

I use Yuzu vs Nathan because Nathan is a good representative of the BV-centric strategy that takes a huge hit with the new rules, and Yuzu is Yuzu (and also a representative of someone with high GOE that benefits from the new SOV). Based on my re-scoring of past competitions, Shoma is somewhere between Yuzu and Nathan in terms of how much his score suffers under the new rules. He doesn't get hit as bad as Nathan because Shoma gets somewhat better GOEs than Nathan (though tbh, I'm not sure why--imo Nathan's the better jumper between the two) and Shoma doesn't repeat 2 quads or jump 4Lz (4Lz got nerfed harder than other non 4A quads), but there's still a decent-sized gap between Shoma's GOEs and Yuzu's GOEs. Boyang is roughly in the same boat as Shoma as far as GOEs go, though Shoma has higher BV and PCS. In the two competitions I looked at where I have data for both Yuzu and Shoma (2018 Olys and 2017 Worlds), their score gap grew after they were re-scored under the new rules. So I'd say Yuzu is stronger against Shoma now than he was under the old system (Shoma is in turn stronger against Nathan now than he was in the old system). To be honest, I just know less about Shoma as a skater, so I'd have a harder time giving him a plausible layout for next season, whereas I know more about Yuzu and Nathan (and Boyang). What do you think a plausible next-season Shoma layout is? If we can put one together I can see what it should be scoring given various GOEs. I think both is unlikely as well, but I think 4Lz is more likely than 4A. At the end of the day, he's been able to land 4Lz in practice for a while now, as well as with positive GOE in competition, so getting it back is going to be easier than getting a good enough 4A to attempt it in competition. I think Yuzu probably wants 4A more than 4Lz, but it's better to go for lower-hanging fruit first.

We were speculating earlier about the possibility of a 3F-3A sequence because it has higher BV than 3A-2T and Yuzu seems to like axel sequences. So there's still a possibility of seeing Yuzu's triple flip. Yuzu with 4A and 4Lz eliminates Nathan's BV advantage even if Nathan gets back the 4Lo. Yuzu doesn't even have to repeat either of those quads--repeating 4S is fine. Nathan and Yuzu having the same BV means Yuzu wins in the clean skate scenario even if the GOE/PCS margins are narrow (and other scenarios where both make similar errors). I haven't done a simulation where Yuzu gets 4A but not 4Lz, but I imagined it would be like the Yuzu acquires 4Lz scenario, except even more in his favor.

Yup, I have a spreadsheet of all the judges' scores that I used to recalculate. Japanese judges were less biased on average than judges from the rest of the major feds, but they still showed significant evidence of bias, though maybe not to the extent that it's obvious just from eyeballing protocols. I looked at all scores given by the judge at all major ISU competitions, not just for top skaters. It helps to look at lower ranked skaters' scores as well--judges actually inflate those as much as high ranked skaters. I would be curious to see this as well. Basically all the simulations I've run put Nathan at a significant disadvantage. Even the one where I gave them both the highest GOEs they've received for each element, refactored, (or in Nathan's case, since I gave him layouts with elements he hasn't done yet, the highest GOE for elements similar to the elements in their hypothetical layout), Yuzu and Nathan were about even assuming both upgraded. This way of modeling shrinks their GOE gap to around 0.5 (note that in the 2018 Olys Free skate, where Nathan was sort of clean and Yuzu was not, Yuzu's average GOE was still close a point higher on a -5 to 5 scale). Nathan occasionally gets high GOEs, but averages much lower than Yuzu--by giving Nathan the max GOEs he's ever earned on each element, I'm basically erasing Yuzu's major advantage of consistently high GOEs. I also gave Nathan 95 PCS despite him never having been near that and Yuzu 97.5 despite that being relatively low for a clean skate from Yuzu. It's basically only when I start shrinking the GOE/PCS gap to 0.5/2.5 (and these are fairly unrealistic numbers, at least for Nathan) that I start getting Nathan victories for cases where both upgrade or both stay the same. Otherwise, the only cases where Nathan wins in clean skates (and these would be exceptionally clean for Nathan) are where Yuzu doesn't upgrade from 2016-2017 and Nathan adds 4Lo. Basically: (Note that for these simulations, I had Yuzu doing 3A2T instead of the 3A sequence we've been speculating about. 3A sequence would turn ties into Yuzu wins) Average GOE/PCS margin 0.5 GOE/2.5 PCS 0.5 GOE/5 PCS 1 GOE/2.5 PCS 1 GOE/5 PCS Yuzu has 4Lz, Nathan has 4Lo Nathan Victory Yuzu Victory Yuzu Yuzu Yuzu has 4Lz, Nathan doesn't have 4Lo Yuzu Yuzu Yuzu Yuzu Yuzu doesn't have 4Lz, Nathan has 4Lo Nathan Nathan Nathan Tie Yuzu doesn't have 4Lz, Nathan doesn't have 4Lo Nathan Tie Yuzu Yuzu Historically, Yuzu and Nathan's GOE and PCS margins have been muuuch closer to the 1 GOE/5PCS end of the table, or beyond it. (Note that their personal best average GOEs are more than 1.3 points apart on the -3 to 3 scale, and even during the Olys FS when Yuzu made two errors, Yuzu's -3/3 scale average GOE was still 0.5 higher than Nathan's.) I also think that Yuzu is more likely to add back 4Lz than Nathan is to add back 4Lo. So I don't see any reason to be pessimistic.

I expect Vincent's PCS to go up as well. I think Nathan will remain the US's clear #1 though. At the end of the day Nathan's jumps are much cleaner than Vincent's.

I'm pretty sure the same result happens if you give Nathan +2 and Yuzu +3. Nathan wins only if Nathan upgrades from where he is now and Yuzu stays at 2016-2017. If they both stay or both upgrade, Yuzu wins. But I'm away from my computer atm so I'll check again later.

It's not just in theory. If you backtest the new rules using the actual GOEs the judges handed out (which I did here), you'll see that Yuzu loses around 4 points across the short and the free (entirely because of the loss of a jumping pass) even on messy competitions, whereas Nathan consistently loses double digits, even in his cleaner competitions. Yuzu would have won 2017 4CC under the new rules, not Nathan. If you run a hypothetical competition (for instance, here) with Yuzu having +4 GOE across the board and 97.5 PCS, while Nathan has +3 GOE across the board and 95 PCS, Yuzu wins in all cases except the one where he keeps something like his 2016-2017 layout while Nathan adds the 4Lo. Maybe +4 GOE across the board is optimistic for Yuzu, but so is +3 GOE and 95 PCS for Nathan, especially since he's landed the 4Lo exactly once and hasn't tried it again and still has trouble with his 4S and 3A. Basically, in order to get a Nathan victory in a case where both of them perform similarly (ie. neither of them falls more than the other), you have to make some pretty generous assumptions about Nathan's progress and pretty ungenerous assumptions about Yuzu's. Note that so far, (on the 3 point scale) Nathan's personal best average FS GOE is 1.29 (Olys), whereas Yuzu's personal best average FS GOE (GPF 2015) is 2.64. No, I was comparing the gap in BV between skaters that existed before and after applying the quad repetition rule. The gap always goes down once you apply the quad repetition rule. In both cases, the skaters will replace repeating a quad with repeating 3A or 3T (3T allows them to get rid of 2T). The replacement options are the same for both skaters, because they couldn't repeat any triples when they were repeating quads. I highly encourage people to run numbers before drawing any conclusions on what will happen next season. I've made a template for this which you can find here--just input hypothetical layouts and GOEs and go to town, the spreadsheet does all the calculations for you (but you'll have to download it first). I feel like there's a lot of pessimism here that isn't really warranted if you do the math.

Actually I think the guys with higher value quads get hurt more by the quad rep rule, because they can only repeat one of their higher value quads. For instance, without the rule in place, Nathan could have done 4Lz3T, 4Lz, 4F3T, 4F, but now he can't repeat one of them and has to do a 3A or 3Lz instead. Whereas someone who could do 4T and 4S only would only lose out on a repetition of on 4S or 4T for a 3A or 3Lz--not as much of a drop in BV as losing a 4F or 4Lz. I did an analysis on the original quad repetition rule here, and even though that rule didn't pass, the conclusion should be more or less the same, just less drastic. To be honest, the idea that the quad rep rule hurts people with fewer quads doesn't make any sense to me. Edit: at least insofar as we're talking about how easy it is for lower quad skaters being able to make up the difference in BV with higher quad skaters through GOE. This will definitely be easier post quad repetition rule--BV difference go down between people with high value quads and people with only 4S and 4T. But people with fewer quads are hurt with respect to people with no quads. The quad repetition rule narrows the BV difference between someone who isn't jumping quads at all and someone who is jumping only 4S and/or 4T. Basically, the quad repetition rule makes it easier in general for someone with a lower number of quads to beat someone with more quads. Also note that this is mostly hypothetical, because even skaters with multiple quads tend to only repeat one. Most skaters, including Yuzu except during Olys, choose to repeat 3A instead. The only skater who repeats 2 quads regularly is Nathan (and maybe Vincent? Don't remember much about his layout). Looking at it that way, the quad rep rule is really 'targeted' at Nathan.

Eh, I disagree with the idea that the ISU is trying to target Yuzu with rule changes. Most of the changes implemented help him. GOEs being worth more is a massive benefit to him. If anything, the rule changes are targeting Nathan, since what the rule changes essentially did was nerf the BV pumping strategy that he relies on (I...may play too many video games) by reweighing GOE versus BV in favor of GOE and also limiting how many quads he could do. The only anti-Yuzu thing is the 4A base value, but that's hypothetical right now since we haven't even seen footage of anyone landing one in practice yet, let alone in competition.

Well, if it makes you feel better, both 3Lz3ASeq and 3F3ASeq have higher BV than 3Lz3Lo/3F3Lo. Also, I'm not 100% sure about this, but the GOEs for the sequence *should* be calculated off the full base value of the 3A? If the GOE rules for sequences follow the +REP rules (calculate based on the original value of the jump) rather than the underrotation/edge call rules (calculate off the reduced BV of the jump), then 3A sequences also have significantly higher potential for GOE points than 3Lo/3T combos do (assuming judges don't take off points in GOE for being a sequence). Since Lze and Lz< are separate entries in the new SOV table from Lz, but +SEQ is not, it seems more likely that +SEQ GOE calculation rules follow +REP rules. Also, I think of all active male skaters, only Yuzu is likely to have a good enough 3A to take advantage of this quirk of BV math. Hence...maybe him practicing 3A sequences isn't just him showing off.

Yeah, 3F3ASeq would be a good way to avoid having to give up jumping the flip altogether, possible edge issues on a half loop combo, and learning 4F while still maximizing BV. Actually, in general skaters are better off trying to replace the 2T combo with a triple than they are repeating 3A. It takes a GOE of 4 for 3A2T to be superior to 3Lz3T (assuming same GOE for both combos)--that's a GOE that only Yuzu, maaaybe, can reliably achieve. Hence why I have Nathan jumping 3Lz3T instead of another 3A combo--his 3As aren't very good and he'll almost certainly be better off with 3Lz3T instead, as would most skaters. The only wrinkle is that judges seem more generous with GOEs on harder jumps, so it might be easier to get high GOEs with 3A2T than 3Lz3T, assuming someone who is equally competent at both. However, Yuzu has the option of replacing 2T with...3A. The sequence will take a BV hit for being a sequence, but overall, he comes out ahead by a few points in BV for doing a 3A seq rather than a 2T. Again, the only wrinkle is GOE judging. If judges are stingier on GOEs for sequences than they are for 3A2T, then it might not be worth it. Still, it takes a pretty significant difference in GOE for 3A2T to be better than 3Lz3Aseq or 3F3Aseq

The Seq replaces a combo, at least going off Gabby Daleman's protocols. 3Lz3ASeq (or 3F3ASeq) is still worth more than 3A2T in terms of BV--the only issue is what kind of GOEs he'd be able to get on it vs 3A2T. (And if he goes for the 3F variant it would be a good way to keep all 6 types of jumps without sacrificing much BV.)

Oh, also, Olys scores if Judges Chen and Parker's scores are dropped and the rest averaged: Free Skate Nathan: 215.08 -> 214.15 Yuzu: 206.17 -> 206.65 Shoma: 202.73 -> 203.61 Javi: 197.66 -> 198.6 Boyang: 194.45 -> 193.79 Vincent: 192.16 -> 191.40 SP (Parker did not judge the SP) Yuzu: 111.68 -> 111.52 Javi: 107.58 -> 107.96 Shoma: 104.17 -> 104.49 Boyang: 103.32 -> 102.09 Nathan: 82.27 -> 82.41 Vincent: 84.53 -> 84.32 Totals Yuzu: 317.85 -> 318.17 Shoma: 306.9 -> 308.10 Javi: 305.24 -> 306.56 Nathan: 297.35 -> 296.56 (moves from 5th to 4th) Boyang: 297.77 -> 295.88 (moves from 4th to 5th) Vincent: 276.69 -> 275.72 As you can see, no podium changes, though Nathan and Boyang do swap places right beneath it. Interestingly, Chen doesn't seem to under-score Yuzu and Nathan the way she under-scores Shoma and Javi. Imo, the top 6 order should have been: Yuzu, Javi, Shoma, Boyang, Nathan, Vincent, but divergences between the actual order, the order minus Parker and Chen, and the ideal order have to do with other judging issues.

Not sure. If I remember the wording of the jump repetition rule correctly, one of the jumps has to be in combination, therefore if he wanted to do a 3A sequence, his other 3A would have to be in combination. I think that's more optimal for him anyway (he should backload his reliable 3A combination in order to maximize backloading points while still minimizing risk), plus his 3As are usually all in combination in his LP, so either way I'd expect his other 3A to be in combination if he decides to do a 3A sequence.