20s World Records

This publication talks a lot about records. There’s a few reasons for that: records make for nice storylines, the author is very numbers-oriented, and unfortunately article word counts can’t be filled with discussions of TV rights deals, beer sponsorships, and million dollar contracts (yet).

One such record commonly mentioned here is that of 20s. Most notably it was first mentioned when Justin Slater knocked in 142 at the 2012 World Championships, and then bested that feat at the 2018 Golden Horseshoe tournament with 160 in 11 games (adjusts to 145 over 10 games).

Now talking about 20s records is a little silly. To paraphrase Ab Leitch, “We aren’t playing 20s, we’re playing crokinole.” The only reason 20s are even tabulated on the scoresheet is because the World Championships set the precedent in 1999 to use the 20s score as a tiebreaker, and nearly every tournament ever since has followed along. 

(This is a discussion for another day, but using 20s as tiebreaker is definitely less than ideal right? It’s super easy and convenient to use to break ties, but that’s the only reason to use it. Surely something like a short playoff would be a better representation of who’s more deserving to move on.)

So 20s records shouldn’t be taken too seriously, it should just be fun. And this author’s idea of fun is taking something relatively meaningless, and treating it as seriously as possible (hence the existence of CrokinoleCentre in the first place). So if that sounds fun to you, read on for some serious over analysis.

What Makes a 20s World Record?

A few stipulations need to be set. Head-to-head playoff games aren’t going to be considered eligible for the “honour” world record classification. There are two big reasons for this. First, data of 20s scored is quite sparse for playoff games due to the fact that they aren’t a separate determining factor for who wins the match. And secondly, players commonly don’t even shoot inconsequential shots at the end of the round, because padding one’s 20 score is unnecessary.

Additionally, for today, only singles events in the adult competitive fingers categories will be considered.

So only round robin play will be considered here, but there are still other factors to be considered:

• Number of games in the round robin: Even after the 20s score is normalized for the number of games played (the “10 Game Adjusted 20s Score” will be referenced many times in this piece) it’s still necessary to consider greater/fewer games being played. A short round robin presents a greater opportunity to score a high amount of 20s, because one can ride a hot streak over a short window, while a longer round robin presents a greater challenge to maintain elite performance.
• Quality of competition: It is commonly known that it is easy to score more 20s against strong opponents. So it is prudent to consider whether a particular 20s score occurred during the preliminary round, or during the second round in Pool A.
• The tournament: Are certain boards used in tournaments more/less favourable for 20s scoring? (The answer is yes, and there’s a reason this is being written before the Golden Horseshoe event.)

It is possible to adjust for all of these factors and create separate categories of records, but that does beg the question of which of these records is the most prestigious?

The Data

The dataset used for all of this analysis has been cobbled together to include every available NCA and WCC event, as well as a few additional tournaments along the way. This totals up to 81 different crokinole tournaments, but is reduced to 73 that contain valid 20s data. Once championship finals games are removed, what remains is 4,651 records of a player’s 20 score in a particular tournament and round robin.

For those interested, the dataset is available upon request.

Disclaimer: Every attempt has been made to ensure the accuracy of the records that follow, but mistakes can easily be made. Corrections to the information below is welcome.

The Records

Unadjusted 20s

This category represents the most 20s ever scored in a single “stage” of any tournament, and is clearly biased by the number of games involved in the round robin.

Rank	Player	Year	Tournament	Stage	Games	20s
1	Brian Cook	2011	Owen Sound	Preliminary	19	201
2	Quin Erzinger	2015	Quin Erzinger Classic	Preliminary	17	174
3	Eric Miltenburg	2011	Owen Sound	Preliminary	19	168
4	Joe Arnup	2011	Owen Sound	Preliminary	19	166
5	Justin Slater	2018	Golden Horseshoe	Round 2 - Pool A	11	160

Most will agree it’s best to refer to a game-adjusted 20 count (the preference here is to use the 10-game adjusted score), so that records aren’t dominated by something as trivial as the size of the round robin.

Adjusted 20s (No Game Minimum)

This category adjusts all 20s scores for the number of games played, and ranks based on the pace that would have been achieved should the round have contained 10 games.

Rank	Player	Year	Tournament	Stage	Games	20s	10 Game Adj 20s
1	Brian Cook	2010	Hamilton	Final 3	2	38	190.0
2	Justin Slater	2014	Owen Sound	Final 4	3	55	183.3
3	Justin Slater	2015	WCC	Final 4	3	46	153.3

The earlier point about the number of games played becomes clear now. Some ludicrous 20s scores that have never been anywhere close to being achieved in an actual 10-game round are posted in round robins of 3 games or less.

While there are some players who would enjoy being found at the top of this list, it’s definitely not the most prestigious territory of 20s records; having achieved the mark with such a limited round robin.

Adjusted 20s (Minimum 12 games)

Rank	Player	Year	Tournament	Stage	Games	20s	10 Game Adj 20s
1	Attila Berzlánovich	2018	Europe	Preliminary	12	128	106.67
2	Ray Beierling	2014	Turtle Island	Preliminary	12	127	105.83
3	Brian Cook	2011	Owen Sound	Preliminary	19	201	105.79
4	Kristián Berzlánovich	2018	Europe	Preliminary	12	123	102.5
5	Gáspár Létay	2018	Europe	Preliminary	12	110	91.67
T6	István Kádár	2018	Europe	Preliminary	12	107	89.17
T6	Tamás Zámbo	2018	Europe	Preliminary	12	107	89.17
8	Eric Miltenburg	2011	Owen Sound	Preliminary	19	168	88.42
9	Joe Arnup	2011	Owen Sound	Preliminary	19	166	87.37
10	Paul Brubacher	2011	Owen Sound	Preliminary	18	156	86.67

The big learning point here is that very rarely do tournaments have round robins that extend past 12 games, given that only 3 events are represented among the top 10. Clearly restricting for such a high number of round robin games played doesn’t sufficiently serve those hungry for world record status.

Adjusted 20s (4 Game Minimum)

And now for the big reveal of the most marquee category of them all, and the one that this publication expects will be generally accepted as the most prestigious for the purposes of World Record tracking.

Rank	Player	Year	Tournament	Stage	Games	20s	10 Game Adj 20s
1	Brian Cook	2011	Hamilton	Round 2 - Pool A	9	138	153.33
2	Justin Slater	2018	Hamilton	Round 2 - Pool A	11	160	145.45
3	Justin Slater	2012	WCC	Preliminary	10	142	142
4	Ray Beierling	2012	Owen Sound	Round 2 - Pool A	6	84	140
5	Ray Beierling	2018	Hamilton	Round 2 - Pool A	11	152	138.18
6	Nathan Walsh	2013	St. Jacobs	Round 2 - Pool B	10	138	138
7	Ray Beierling	2018	Hamilton	Round 1 - Pool D	10	137	137
T8	Justin Slater	2010	Hamilton	Round 2 - Pool A	9	122	135.56
T8	Justin Slater	2018	St. Jacobs	Round 2 - Pool A	9	122	135.56
10	Jason Beierling	2018	Hamilton	Round 2 - Pool A	11	149	135.45
11	Ray Beierling	2015	Hamilton	Round 2 - Pool A	10	135	135
12	Justin Slater	2014	WCC	Round of 16 - Pool B	7	94	134.29
13	Justin Slater	2014	Owen Sound	Round 2 - Pool A	8	107	133.75
14	Brian Cook	2014	St. Jacobs	Round 2 - Pool A	10	133	133
15	Andrew Hutchinson	2018	Hamilton	Round 2 - Pool A	11	146	132.73
16	Nathan Walsh	2013	Owen Sound	Round 2 - Pool A	5	66	132
17	Jason Beierling	2018	Belleville	Round 2 - Pool A	9	118	131.11
18	Ray Beierling	2014	St. Jacobs	Round 2 - Pool A	10	131	131
19	Ray Beierling	2014	WCC	Preliminary	10	131	131
20	Ray Beierling	2009	WCC	Round of 16 - Pool B	7	91	130

STAT CORRECTION ALERT!

This report began by referencing two separate high 20 scoring affairs by Justin Slater. Both of those achievements were reported as world records at the time, but some new evidence has come to light that proves that wasn’t the case. And it turns out these less-than-accurate reports could have been easily fact-checked all along by investigating the wealth of results available on the NCA tournament results page.

To set the record straight, it is the legendary Brian Cook who currently holds (and has held for 8 years) the 20s World Record, with a 10-Game-Adjusted score of 153.33 from the 2011 Hamilton event.

The top 20 chart does also reveal a few interesting items, such as: 

• there’s a lot of Justin Slater and Ray Beierling present
• many of the top 20s scores came against high quality competition, as demonstrated by the plethora of “Round 2 - Pool A” values in the table
• Hamilton certainly does good things to the 20 count, with 6 of the top 10 20s scores of all time coming via the Hamilton event.

It’s not surprising to see so many high 20s scores coming from Hamilton tournaments. It only takes a few moments when sitting down on one of the boards crafted by Jake Ruggi (these boards are only used at the Hamilton event) to realize the 20 hole can be extremely favourable to slightly less accurate 20 attempts.

Given this information, it would seem necessary to apply some sort of adjustment to these Hamilton 20s scores in the same way that 100m dash world records are not awarded if wind assistance is too strong. However, that could be controversial, and is probably best left for another day.

Some consideration was also given to separating the "minimum games" requirement further, possibly into buckets of min. 4 games, min. 8 games, and min. 12 games. That action may be necessary later, but for the time being, there aren't too many instances of high 20s scores coming from round robins of length 4-7 games.

Tournament Records - Adjusted 20s (4 Game Minimum)

Rather than adjusting 20s scores given the tournament in question, the differences in tournaments will be recognized here by showing the current record-holders at each respective tournament included in the analysis.

Tournament	Player	Year	Stage	Games	20s	10 Game Adj 20s
Hamilton	Brian Cook	2011	Round 2 - Pool A	9	138	153.33
WCC	Justin Slater	2012	Preliminary	10	142	142
Owen Sound	Ray Beierling	2012	Round 2 - Pool A	6	84	140
St. Jacobs	Nathan Walsh	2013	Round 2 - Pool B	10	138	138
Belleville	Jason Beierling	2018	Round 2 - Pool A	9	118	131.11
Europe	Gáspár Létay	2018	Round of 16 - Pool B	7	88	125.71
London	Ray Beierling	2013	Round 2 - Pool A	9	110	122.22
Turtle Island	Roger Vaillancourt	2015	Round 2 - Pool A	7	82	117.14
PEI	Wilfred Smith	2011	Preliminary	10	109	109
BC	Quin Erzinger	2012	Preliminary	10	108	108
Exeter*	Justin Slater	2009	Round 2 - Pool B	9	96	106.67
Quin Erzinger Classic*	Quin Erzinger	2015	Preliminary	17	174	102.35

*Non-annually-recurring event

20s World Record Timeline

And to further set the record straight, here’s the timeline throughout crokinole's recorded-history of 20s World Record holders, under the constraint of being played in a round robin of at least 4 games.

Year	Player	Tournament	Stage	Games	20s	10 Game Adj 20s
2000	Joe Fulop	WCC	Preliminary	10	101	101
2001	Joe Fulop	WCC	Round of 16	7	79	112.86
2009	Ray Beierling	WCC	Round of 16	7	91	130
2010	Justin Slater	Hamilton	Round 2 - Pool A	9	122	135.56
2011	Brian Cook	Hamilton	Round 2 - Pool A	9	138	153.33

This will wrap up the most numerically intensive feature this blog has ever had, but at least prior mistakes were corrected, and if the reader has made it this far, they'll know what targets to aim for in Hamilton to try to set a world record of their own.

These records will be tracked and updated our this page for future reference.

Do you have any more records that you believe should be tracked and held in high regard? Do you object to claims made in this post? Feel free to voice your concerns.