IPSC Handgun Caliber

wasrupzuk said:
My guess would be that the difference between 8 or 10 in classic is a 20% advantage. Much like revolver although it will be 6 and 8 which is a 33% advantage.
In an unregulated magazine the percentage of advantage is small and negated by multiple opportunities to reload (only 9 from one place).
As for the OP; 9mm.
As a new shooter you need to send rounds down range to acquire greater skill so cost is very relivent. It doesn't take very long for the cost difference of ammo (between 9mm and a different caliber) to eclipse the purchase price of your gun.
Unless you have deep pockets, a good back (to pick brass) and a burning desire to shoot a larger caliber...
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Excellent point, thank you
 
Born Under a Bad Sign said:
If that were true, why is it (in jurisdictions where magazine capacity isn't limited by law as in here in Canada) that the same doesn't apply in Standard/Limited?
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At the higher round capacities - the increased capacity advantage is negated by the ability to do reloads when you choose (as opposed to the gun choosing for you) within the stage. Better to take the major scoring. Wasrupzuk is on to it.
 
ivan said:
I've been a diehard Major proponent, but a 500 round match in Minor could be educational.
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Ok: I shot the Area 1 (500 round match) shooting Minor. My shooting buddy Tim (who is typically neck and neck with me) shot Major. I've analyzed the results. Looked at time to shoot. Looked at A count percentages. Looked at points lost shooting Minor.

... and the result of all this: I still don't know which is better.

Tim was ahead of me at the end of the match: but that was more my doing with too many misses (but the good news is that a Miss in Minor is not penalized anymore than a miss in Major).

There were a LOT of 8 round positions, and having extra rounds meant I could shoot them more comfortably (ie: faster?) knowing that I had spare ammo should I require it... but if you are going to do well on a stage, you MUST shoot the 8 round positions in 8 rounds, so if I took extra shots that simply meant I was shooting poorly to begin with. Perhaps you could read into this that Minor will help a shooter whose skills are not yet sufficient to win.

Tim says he shot more conservatively because he knew he didn't have shots to spare, and this could be why my total time was 7% less than his. However even though our A count was almost identical (Tim: 76.1% A's, Ivan: 76.5% A's) our similar B,C and D count meant that I dropped 99 points (4.2% of available points) because of shooting minor.

This match was also NOT indicative of a typical IPSC match. This was USPSA with 18 stages. 14 of which were 30 rounds and above. The small 3 stages were 16 rounds each. This is nothing like an IPSC match with a 3,2,1 ration of small, medium, large stages. Clearly if an IPSC match whose Small stages are predominantly 10 or 11 rounds with little movement: an 8 round gun is a serious disadvantage.

However: even though I'm a decent shooter, I'm still getting less than 80% A's. Therefore with Minor I'm losing 7 points on every 32 round stage. If I don't save a minimum of 1 standing reload on each large stage Minor doesn't help me. Similarly I would need to save one standing reload on roughly every 3rd small stage to break even.

Basically what I've learned is that Minor and Major are very evenly balanced. Both appear to work well in the typical match.

You should still read the match copy ahead of time very carefully to see if it's biased one way or another, but in the long run on average for many matches both should work equally well.

Therefore either through good luck or good management those who came up with the rules for the 8/10 split for IPSC in Classic did an excellent job.

-ivan-
 
... and a quick clarifying point for those who think 80% A's is not terribly good.

80% A's with no D's and no Misses means you are getting 96% of the points (in Major).

Once you can shoot 80% A's the next question is "how bad is the remaining 20%?" 20% C's is excellent, but push that out to D's and Misses and then it starts to suck.

-ivan-
 
love my STI Trojan that I got from FOC( who I assume got it from FV). I don't think ill ever get rid of it. never had a single jam or issue that was due to the gun. :) Classic division I think is the most fun out of all of them right now.
 
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