720 vs 660 round comparison

At the Antalya World Cup stage in June 2025, a modified ranking round was trialled. This round is basically the same as a normal 720 round but the number of arrows shot drops from 72 to 60, and the X-ring now scores 11 points, giving a maximum possible score of 660.

This may seem like a relatively innoccuous change but the addition of an 11-ring does quite significantly change the nature of target archery. That will be the subject of a future post, but for now, I just wanted to share a brief comparison chart as people are struggling to equate old 720 scores with new 660 scores. It’s very difficult to answer the question “is that a good score” without a suitable comparison.

Handicap System to the Rescue

Luckily, we have a way to calculate this – the handicap system. This provides a mathematical model of how archer skill (as measured by group size distribution) equates to scores on a paticular target face. We can use the handicap score to find equivalent scores on two rounds – first we calculate the handicap of a score on round 1, and then we look at what score in roundd 2 has the same handicap. The tools that power archerygeekery.com do this very high accuracy (about 5 decimal places), so we can calculate a nice smooth curve showing the comparison.

There’s coincidentally a very satisfying and almost perfect match between the 120 multiples on the 720 round and the 100 multiples on the 660 round i.e. a score of 120 on a 720 equals 100 on a 660, 240 vs 200, 360 vs 300ish, 480 = 400ish etc, and this relationship makes it quite useful as a ule of thumb. This chart also shows the mens and womens 720 world records (702, 694) and what we would expect a similar level to be on the 660 round (603, 593).

The line is pretty straight for most of the range, although predictably turning upwards near the end reflecting the difficulty of getting very high scores by repeatedly hitting that tiny 11-ring.

This table shows the data for every 10 points (a 720 row table would have made this page too long). Full data available here as a CSV if you want it.