Here is a short "article" I wrote on FPSB a few days ago, I thought it could be interesting so I post it here because I think structure really is a concept that is not taken in consideration enough when judging a combo. Enjoy your reading !
(Thanks to Ivabra and Chozo for the translation)"Structure is a concept which is not about the consistency of the combo itself, but rather the construction. This transverse concept is related to all the “criteria” of the current judging (and that’s why I think they are irrelevant). We can distinguish several dimensions to structure :
The aesthetic aspect : how harmoniously tricks are linked togeteher, which makes a trick or a linkage beautiful not just because it is beautiful in itself but because « it’s placed here ». We can obviously think about s777 but also about the old Koreans (this is one of the only reasons that makes me like what they usually do), and we can feel it by how they place their fingers (so it’s also about the execution). This aspect is obviously the most subjective so I’m not gonna talk about it more than that.
The difficulty aspect : that’s a flaw which is encountered very often in many spinners’ combos. Let’s consider a tournament combo : everybody knows that it usually takes a long time to construct and record these kinds of combos (for example it took Ivabra 30 hours for his WC R4 combo). In that case if a trick or a linkage which is extremely hard is executed at the beginning of a combo, it becomes less valued than a trick or a linkage which is put at the end ; if you already spent hours to record a combo you know that you better start with the hardest parts and then do the easiest things at the end so that you get more chances to manage to film it quickly.
So we can define a « difficulty coefficient » of a trick put in a combo, which becomes harder if put later in a combo.
For example we can think about the japs who used to start their combos with bust continuous x5 (which used to be hard back then) and then continue their combo then. We can also talk about Eagle’s combo for WT13 R2, the first trick is actually very good but it’s easier since it’s executed at the beginning of the combo. However the finisher which is a charge t1 rev > back is clearly a lack of difficulty, while the finisher is the moment of the combo where the « difficulty coeffecient » grows significantly. This is the reason why during the WT09 Spinnerpeem revolutionized the notion of difficulty because of his finishers that we had never seen before.
An other theory from Eriror & i.suk (I think) during our debates actually state the opposite : when you actually execute a hard part of a combo this makes it harder to put hard things right afterwards because of the difficulty of the first part. As far as I’m concerned I don’t agree with this vision : not that I deny the thing but this aspect seems less important than the coefficient of difficulty. (But still, difficulty is actually related to structure).
Another thing that must be considered : when you do a really hard finish, it can be considered easier than what it is, because you can catch it pretty much as you want, as you don’t have to continue your combo after it
The originality aspect : This is where the construction of a combo becomes important. Indeed when you judge the originality of a combo you can’t consider the tricks one by one, you also have to judge how the tricks are linked together, if the way you link them is logical, this is a proof that the combo has been planned as a whole combo and not as several parts that you linked together.
-First, the originality can be in the fact that the tricks are linked in a certain way. Let’s take one of Key3’s combo as an example, in a combo he executes a : TA>middleback>TA rev>IA" (clic), the tricks are actually easy but the way they’re linked defines what I call « the structure originality » (moreover it’s really hard and it requires a perfect execution : we can see that difficulty, execution, originality and structure are linked, so nowadays criteria can’t really judge a combo)
-An other dimension of the « structure originality » is the concept of « filling in »/spamming, and that’s the main reason why I criticize some spinners such as Sutomo & A13x (except for the R5), and that’s why I think they both don’t deserve to be in the finals of the WT13. This is IMO particuliarly obvious in the 4th combo of sutomo, there are obviously some really hard & really original things, but between these things there are some things that suck compared to the hard things, such as the demon sonic that a13x did in his 3rd round, or the whole part from 0 :02 to 0 :15 of sutomo (still round 4) which is kinda useless. This proves that the combo has been thought part by part, by “highlights” and not as a whole combo, so our vision is based on the ability to impress people.
On the other hand I’ll take any combo by F2F as an example of the complete opposite of Sutomo & A13x because none of the tricks are useless, just like RPD, even though he still needs to improve. It makes no doubt that F2F is the best in that category and I guarantee you that penspinning is likely to go towards that direction.
IMO, the most important thing that f2f brought is not just creative tricks, it’s a whole new way to construct combos.
So we can notice that the notion of structure is, in penspinning nowadays, absolutely decisive to judge a combo : the time when we could judge combos by how they looked and trick by trick or linkage by linkage is over.
We need to begin a new reflexion to totally revolutionize the criteria so that they can integrate new subtleties of current penspinning : not only the structure as a transverse concept but also the strong links between difficulty and execution, or different aspects of “originality”.
UPSB-post: http://forum.upsb.info/showthread.php?t=15038
FPSB-post: http://www.thefpsb.com/t1574-la-structu ... ombo#35149