Help — clay shooting
Ties and tie-breaks
Two athletes finish on the same number of clays. What happens — and what the club has to decide before the match.
The order of things
The system settles a tie in three steps, always in this order. It only goes down a step when the one above did not settle it.
- Total targets — whoever broke more, wins. It is the main criterion and settles almost everything.
- Count-back — the match strip is read backwards until the difference shows up. It needs nobody: the system does it on its own, right away.
- Shoot-off — a field tie-break, with the athletes back on the stand. It is the only step that costs people and time, which is why it usually applies to the podium only.
A tie that survives all three shows as a shared place — both athletes in the same position.
Count-back: how the system settles it on its own
Tied on the total, the system goes back over the strip looking for the first difference, backwards. There are two ways of doing that count, and both are in real rulebooks — which is why the club picks the one that applies.
| Option | How it counts | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Clay by clay | Reads every shot backwards — clay 50, 49, 48… — and the first of the tied athletes who missed loses. | Club rulebook (the system default). |
| By round | Compares the last round total first; if tied, the one before; and only goes down to clay by clay if every round is tied. | ISSF (international federation). |
Shoot-off: the field tie-break
When not even the count-back settles it, the tied athletes go back to the stand. The usual format is 5 doubles — ten clays — on the station and with the trajectories the organisers set at the time. Whoever breaks more, wins.
If they are still tied, sudden death takes over: one double at a time, and the first to miss loses. The system accepts as many rounds as needed.
Who keeps shooting: knockout or the full series
With more than two tied, the tie-break is not "everyone shoots everything". The club picks between two readings — and both are in the rulebooks.
| Option | How it works | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Knockout | On the launch where an athlete falls behind the others, they are out — and THEIR remaining doubles do not happen. It is what the field does: nobody shoots the four remaining doubles already eliminated. | Club rulebook and FITASC (the system default). |
| Full series | Everyone shoots all five doubles to the end and only then the round total is compared. Sudden death comes after that, if the tie holds. | Literal reading of the club rulebook ("5 simultaneous doubles"). |
The rule is copied into the tie-break the moment it is opened: changing the match setting afterwards does not rewrite how an already shot tie-break was judged.
Format: doubles or single clays
The format is also a choice of whoever opens the tie-break, because the rulebooks disagree: doubles (5 doubles = 10 clays) is the club one; singles covers the FITASC series of 25 and the ISSF clay per station. In singles, each clay is one launch — nothing turns into a fake double.
The open-shoot-off screen offers the four formats as presets, defaulting to the match modality: Rulebook (5 doubles and sudden death), ISSF Skeet (double on station 4), ISSF Trap (single clay, sudden death from the first one) and FITASC (series of 25 singles). Everything remains editable before opening — a preset is a starting point, not a rail.
Team ties
Tied teams also break the tie, in the same place and with the same format. What changes is who disputes it: the line belongs to the team, and the result reorders the team ranking without touching the individual one.
When someone does not show up
- One athlete does not show up: the other wins by walkover. Just mark them absent on the screen.
- Neither shows up: the older one wins — the system uses the date of birth on file.
- Nobody showed up and the profile has no date of birth: then there is no way to say who is older, and the system does not close the tie-break. Add the date to the profile, or mark who was on the stand.
How to turn it on and use it
- Turn the shoot-off on in Edit match → Tie-break, or on the championship, to apply to every leg. It is born off: without it, a tie simply shares the place.
- Choose down to which place a tie-break applies. The usual is 3 — the podium only; from fourth place down the tie stays recorded as a tie.
- During the match, open Operation → Shoot-off. The system already lists the ties awaiting a shoot-off, overall or inside each class and category.
- Pick the athletes, how many doubles and the station, and open the tie-break.
- Mark clay by clay, as in the field. Every tap saves on its own.
- Close it. Only then does the ranking settle — while sudden death is running, the screen keeps showing the shared place, which is the truth at that moment.
The tie-break shows in its own block on the ranking, on the printable sheet and in the exported file, with each athlete strip and the reason for the result. It also has its own broadcast link, so the shoot-off can go on the big screen or into OBS.
The match overview keeps a quiet notice while there is a podium tie with no tie-break resolved — it is the screen where the match is closed and published, and the tie only showed up under Results.
To check later: Scores has a Tie-breaks tab with the state of each one and the signatures, and Audit has a tab with the full trail — every mark, PIN, exception, closing, reopening and removal, with the strip as it was and who did it.
Who marks, who signs and who closes
- The manager assigns the tie-break judge, and from then on he sees the shoot-off on his own screen — nobody in the field sees the match office screen.
- Marking belongs to the judge; closing belongs to the match office. Closing is a jury decision, not a note — the same split the module already makes between marking the round and signing it.
- With athlete signature turned on for the match, each one confirms their own strip with the PIN right there on the stand, before closing. An athlete who already left does not hold up the awards: the staff records the exception with a reason.
- Correcting the strip after the PIN drops that signature — whoever signed accepted a different strip, and the athlete confirms again.
- Reopening drops every signature and takes the tie-break out of the ranking until it is finished again. Removing asks for a reason, and only after reopening: a finished tie-break is on the podium.
Doubles: two clays, one release
In a double, two clays come out for the same shooter, who has two shots. Each clay counts on its own: the double can end 0, 1 or 2. There is no "broke the double" — there is broke the first, the second, or both.
| Type | When the second clay is released | If it has to be re-shot |
|---|---|---|
| Simultaneous | Together with the first one, at the shooter call. | The whole double is re-shot — both clays again. |
| On report | At the sound of the shot at the first clay. | The first clay result already stands and is not re-shot; only the second comes back. |
That is why the double type is a setting of the round, and not an annotation detail: it is what says what happens when the machine fails or the cartridge does not fire.
How to set it up on the round
On each station you say how many of the releases are doubles. Singles come first and doubles at the end, as in the compak menu:
- 5 clays, no doubles: five single shots.
- 5 clays, 1 double: three singles and one double (clays 4 and 5).
- 5 clays, 2 doubles: one single and two doubles.
The type — simultaneous or on report — applies to the whole round: within one lap, the double works the same way on every station.