Welcome
Archery Geekery is an occasional blog about topics related to the mathematical, statistical aspects of archery, Everything from handicaps and classifications, to records and visualisation. This site was originally created as the development environment for the offcial ArcheryGB Handicap and Classification tables, and now hosts some tools for creating of handicap and classification tables, and a quick calculator, but more content and tools will appear all the time.
Recent Posts
- Handicap System Maths
- How Does the Olympic Archery Quota System Work?
- Modelling Archery Awards Ceremony Structures
- UK Indoor Archery Rounds – The Finer Details
- Overview of the New Indoor Handicap and Classification Systems
- Master Bowman Tier Classification Claim Validator
- Beginner’s Series: Part 3 – Outdoor Classifications
- Beginner’s Series: Part 2 – Handicaps
Recent Articles
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Handicap System Maths
Since the new UK handicap and classification systems were released last year, I’ve had a steady stream of enquiries from fellow archery geeks wanting to understand a bit more about the maths of how the system works. So, this will be the first article in a series that will explain all of this. The UK…
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How Does the Olympic Archery Quota System Work?
(I’m going to keep this article updated over the next 2 months as the quotas finalise) Lots of people have been requesting some explanation about how the quota system works for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The official policy, if you want to read it is here, but it’s a little bit tricky to digest,…
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Modelling Archery Awards Ceremony Structures
I have been to a lot of competitions, and sat through a lot of awards ceremonies. On one hand, those awards ceremonies are a great celebration of the achievements of the day, but on the other hand can be a tedious and time-consuming barrier between the end of the competition and an often long journey…
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UK Indoor Archery Rounds – The Finer Details
A while ago, I wrote a post about all about rounds – what they are, how they’re structured, all the different familys and formats. That covered the basics, but after seeing lots of lively discussions on social media recently, I thought I’d drill down into some of the finer details of the indoor rounds, which…
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Overview of the New Indoor Handicap and Classification Systems
(Quick links – Full indoor tables here, mobile-friendly tables here, and custom tables here) The indoor classification has been in need of some serious changes for a very long time, and finally, going into the 2023-24 indoor season those changes have been made. The old system was not very inclusive at all. The only categories…
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Master Bowman Tier Classification Claim Validator
This is just a very short post to announce the release of a new tool on the website to validate claims for Master Bowman, Grand Master Bowman, and Elite Master Bowman classifications. These awards require 36 dozen arrows to be shot at appropriate qualifying levels, depending on your category. This simple tool lets you enter…
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Beginner’s Series: Part 3 – Outdoor Classifications
(This article is aimed at novice archers. If you’re a club records officer who has to administer the system, there’s a more appropriate article here) Just like the coloured belts in karate, the classification system in UK Archery represents a set of 9 milestones on an archer’s journey for beginner to master. Instead of belts,…
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Beginner’s Series: Part 2 – Handicaps
Handicaps are an important concept used in UK archery, and some other countries too. They are not as well-used as they were in the past, but it’s a really useful idea to know about that can help you in numerous ways. What is a handicap? Just like in other sports, most notably in golf, a…
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Beginners Series: Part 1 – Rounds
Most of the articles on this site focus on the intricate details of archery data, rules and scoring, but by popular demand, this short series will focus on some of the basics, for archers who are new to the sport. First up is rounds. A round is just a shorthand way of describing what we’re…
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Accurate SVG Archery Target Images
I often need images of target faces for various projects and presentations, and it’s always frustrating trying to find images that are high-resolution, correctly proportioned, and the correct colours. So, I thought I’d fix this problem by making my own, and sharing them here. For this project, I’m producing the images in Scalable Vector Graphics…
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How to be an Archery Club Records Officer: Part 4 – Outdoor Classifications
Just like the coloured belts in karate, the classification system in UK Archery represents a set of 9 milestones on an archer’s journey for beginner to master. It is the job of the club records officer to track the classification level of each club member. As with all the articles in this series, I would…
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How to be an Archery Club Records Officer: Part 3 – Handicaps
One of the key roles of the records officer is to maintain a list of handicaps for the archers in the club. As with the other articles in this series, I would strongly recommend you use some records management software to do this as it can be quite time consuming to do it manually. However,…
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When’s the best time of year to run youth archery events in the UK?
Recently, someone mentioned to me how hard it was to get the best juniors to attend tournaments in the first few months of the outdoor season, and this immediately set me wondering why that would be. The answer, of course, is obvious – exams. The first months of the UK outdoor season, typically April and…
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How to be an Archery Club Records Officer: Part 2 – Club Records
One of the most fundamental duties of a Club Records Officer is to maintain a list of the Club Records. We need to be clear on terminology here though as the word “records” has two different meanings here – This article is all about the second of these, maintaining a list of the clubs best…
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How to be an Archery Club Records Officer: Part 1 – The Basics
I get lots of questions from people who are new to the role of Club Records Officer about what the role involves and how to do it, so I thought I’d write it all down into a multi-part guide. This first part will cover the basics of what the role involves, and then subsequent parts…
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Effects of New Age Group Definitions on Records
As I’ve written about before, in October 2023 ArcheryGB made some quite significant changes to the age groups for target archery in the UK. This included adding some new groups (50+, U21, and U15), and also crucially, changing the definition of how age groups are even defined. So, even for the age groups that don’t…
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Handicap Tools and Table Generation
The UK archery handicap system is one of the most underrated assets we have in this country. It provides a mathematically rigorous way of quantifying accuracy in archery, and then uses that to calculated expected scores on different rounds for that level of accuracy. The system was originally devise by the late David Lane, and…
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Mobile Friendly Classification Tables
The standard PDF classification tables are perfect for printing out and putting in your bowbag. You could even fold them down the middle and laminate it in an A5 pouch if you’re really keen. However, when you’re out on the field, the wide A4 Landscape format is not ideal for looking at on your phone.…
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What is in a (round) name? Why one person’s Albion is another’s Long Windsor
Note: This article previously featured the equivalency of Albions and Long Windsors prominently. After a recent AGB decision, Albion is now the preferred name for all categories of archer, so classification tables now reflect that. For now, both round names are still listed in the Rules of Shooting, but the reference has been removed from…
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Raw Data for the New Handicap and Classification Systems
This article is aimed at fellow archery geeks who are interested in the data behind the new handicap and classification systems. For non-geeks, this data is much more accessibly presented in the official tables, available from ArcheryGB, or from the links at the top of this page. One of the key principles of the new…