Discussion: Trick Controls

Ouch. 12 people punched one of the trick controls, 4 punched both (10 disqualified). As well as detracting from the enjoyment of those people it made the job of uploading the splits b****y hard as well. Let's see no more of those, please?

Loading file issues: For some reason the file had no header - had to copy one from a previous race.
I had to remove the entry for each of the trick controls; find the last control (117) and delete the entries for controls after that.
Then I had to change the "Course controls" column to 22 instead of 23 or 24.
For ease of finding the issues I had the file open in notepad for editing and saving; with a copy open in Excel for viewing. You can't use Excel only as it doesn't save csv files in a way that AP can read them.

Stop press: the lack of a header in the splits file has caused my edited version to leave out yesterdays winner - Andrew Brown. I'm seeking help to fix.

OK, done (Thanks again, Ken). Turns out that, despite appearances, Microsoft Notepad is NOT a text editor. So I downloaded Notepad++, which is.

I know in SportSoftware's OE products (OE2003 and OE2010), there are tools in the software to delete a "bad" control from the results. (Use of it is widely discouraged, however. We use it occasionally to remove the time to cross a road, with punches on either side of the road. It's in the "Evaluate Chips" area.

These were flags+ SI units placed ~ 30m from the course controls, on similar features. They weren't part of any other course. The intention was, I think, purely to draw people off route and if they didn't check the code then punish with a "mispunch". Some kind of dastardly "Education Process"?

I use Excel to edit the csv's when necessary. It helps to export them with commas rather than semicolons, so you can click on them and just have excel open the file (semicolons won't work without "importing the data"). You also must specify "Excel Time Format". The trick for me is to do the edits, then save it as csv---Then you have to negotiate the various questions excel asks you. It's a weird question, like, "Do you want to leave the file in this format that removes excel functionality?" (I don't have excel on this computer so I can't verify the exact wording.) Once you save the edited file, verify that it is okay by opening the file in notepad to verify it's just comma separated and doesn't have a lot of quotes around the text.

I don't think our club would do that unless it was advertised at the start. One of our setters has put out false stands with flags, but without electronic or pin punching. They may have had no stand number as well. These were well inside 30m---more like 10m. And I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in the course notes (that I didn't read), but it actually was interesting.

I was happy enough with the trick controls. People should learn to read the map properly. The trick controls were in locations that if you were in the right spot going to the real controls you wouldn't have even noticed.

The best solution if you're going to do this is to just have flags with no SI units.

btw apparently there was a 3rd trick control between no.10 and 11.

Trick controls shouldn´t be necessary, but what if they had actually been real controls on another course? Should we feel sorry for the mispunchers then...?

The point was there was no other course: it was round 9 of the Sydney Sprint Series, which has only one course.

I never even saw one so from my perspective there was no problem.

Once on the Prolog-Chase course back in the 1990s at the Colorado 1000-Day, the next to last control was surrounded by lots of extra flags, basically on all available features. They were just flags, with no codes or punches. People thought it was very amusing. The next year, the same thing happened (somewhere in the course), but with punches, and a number of people mispunched. That was not well received.

Yeah I never saw any of them either. Where were they?

Didn't see any of these, but if they were there and not on a course, surely it is introducing an element of unfairness to the event. I cannot even see the map at sprint speeds let alone read control numbers..as a wise woman once said. 'Ain't nobody got time for dat'

Doesn't IOF state you can't have another control within 60m on a similar feature or within 30m on any other feature?

30m and 15m respectively for map scales of 1:4000 or 1:5000. The map for our event next Sunday is 1:3000 so no sure what the distances should be.

I never saw them either but apparently:

#4 - staircase 40m to the southwest
#9 - tree 30m to the north
#11 - staircase 30m to the northwest

The only one you'd run past on a normal route is the one to no.4.

For a "real" event, rather than a training exercise, "trick" controls are rather bad form I think. I wouldn't be happy, even if (a) I'd known about it beforehand and (b) even if I completed the course without mp-ing. If I had done it and mp'd because of trick controls, I'd be livid. It's not really part of orienteering. Even more so since you said they were on very similar features very close to real controls.

Sprint orienteering should be about speed at reading the map and executing the best route choice. The only 'tricks' should be inside/outside corners of fences etc to make sure people read control descriptions. If they don't, then they lose time having to go round. That's the penalty, not being dq'd for punching a trick control that's inside the control circle on the map on the same feature as the real control.

I had one mp last year on an urban event that still has me annoyed - 2 controls within 20m on the ground, one on a "hedge" (in reality a line of small trees next to the path) and one on a path (in reality on a tree next to a path). I punched the wrong one, but because the features were so similar, I didn't realise until download. I was a bit annoyed - fair enough it was my fault, but the controller claimed they were "totally different features" when I pointed out how close they were to each other - on the ground they weren't and could be easily confused. And these weren't "trick" controls, so I can quite understand if people are miffed by trick controls.

I was one of the stupidos. I saw the NOT 9 on the way to 8, so even though I read enough detail to make a route choice to 9, I had had wrong picture in my head of what I was looking for at the end of the leg and did not think I needed to check the description as I thought I'd already seen the control. At the time, I thought it was a bit dumb to be able to spot 9 on the way to 8, and afterwards it did not occur to me that I'd mis-punched even though I was a bit confused by my location heading to 10. It never occurred to me that it was a dummy control.

The mis-punch didn't bother me, it was a bad run anyway.

"The only 'tricks' should be inside/outside corners of fences etc to make sure people read control descriptions. "

Part of control descriptions being the code, and knowing you're in the right place. If these other controls had been on another course, rather than just dummy ones at a one course event, this thread wouldn't exist. Don't really see the problem, you're testing proper race skills by encouraging punching the correct controls rather than every control you see.

If the controls were on other courses, rather than being dummy ones, you wouldn't have 2 controls within 30m on similar features. This discussion is precisely why that rule exists.

Remember sprint events are won/lost by seconds - stopping to check a control code isn't always possible - if you navigate correctly and fast to the end of a wall and there's a control there, you're not going to stop, check etc, in case that's a trick control and the real control is 5m away on the end of another wall! Each time you stop, that's 10-15d lost - huge chunks of time in a 15min race.

30m and 15m respectively for map scales of 1:4000 or 1:5000.

Thanks, that gives me more scope for control placement on the next bush sprint event I'm setting.

Anyway I think its a pity that the discussion is about the trick controls instead of the excellent setting of the course itself:

Here is my analysis of the fastest choices which werent always obvious.
S-1 Right (I went left)
2 Left
3 Left
4 no choice
5 right
6 left
7 left and through the park
8 no choice
9 Don''t know. I went left. People who went right would have seen a trick control first.
10 left
11 left
12 left (I went right)
13 right and come at it from behind (I went left)
14 no choice
15 right, turning back towards 13 first (I went left)
16 right
17 right
18 right (I went up the ramp not the stairs)
19 no choice
20 right (I went left even though that wasn't an option)
21 no choice
22 right (I went left)
A very good course.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/104269529@N08/128935...

Agree good course.

I went round a second time going the 'other' option when I could, which was 80% of the course.

I went left to no.6 and lost 30 secs to the leaders. I went right 2nd time round which was much easier.

What exactly were the trick controls? Dummies with the same visible code as the real controls but a different internal SI code?

Stories like this (and I had to deal with this nonsense in my day, like a gleeful course setters exclaiming "got ya!", controls intentionally hidden or buried in greenbriar, maps intentionally printed with no trails at all, and no warnings of this fact, and on and on), are one of the reasons many athletes don't take orienteering seriously.

Try some sort of gimmick at mile 25 of a trail marathon that leads to disqualifications, and see what the reaction is. The most pronounced one will be zero attendance at your next event.

Cristina, it's mentioned above. They didn't have the same code as the real controls. If they did, I'm sure the course setter would have been lynched or had his or her setting privileges revoked for the rest of time.

@ O-ing: I'm not sure what software you are using, but based on tRicky's description, if you use OE2003 or OE2010, there is a button in "Evaluate Chips" that lets you replace an SI unit. Say control 10 is SI unit 60, and unit 60 fails. You can grab another SI unit, say 79, and put it on the stand (it's good to remove or cover the code). The software has a button that lets you allow either 60 or 79 as a valid punch. It's not the intended use, but it would work for this situation.

I'm not very familiar with the OE software so I'm trying to understand the issue without much experience. If someone punches an incorrect control in between correct ones, doesn't the software just ignore it? (Splits printouts always just tag them on to the end or add an asterisk or something.) Isn't this (people punching an additional wrong control) something that happens a lot, even without "trick" controls?

The way I read it, people punched the trick control instead of the correct control, so it is a regular mispunch.

Ah, re-reading the op I see the problem with uploading was that there were extra punches after the final punch. I see. I guess I'm surprised this isn't an issue that comes up so frequently that there wasn't an easy workaround already.

Cristina has it right - essentially these were extra controls and appeared at the end of the row for each person. The biggest problem I had was that I was using Microsoft Notepad not a real text editor, so taking out the extra controls was very fiddly and it couldn't deal with the missing header issue. I don't have access to the original OE / Or files, I'm just working on the csv exports. Yes, this does happen most times I load results, the "trick" controls just added lots more than usual.