BOTY Central Europe

B-Boy Spin, GBR, won the final against B-Boy Dosu, USA, at the Battle of the Year (BOTY) Central Europe, which was held as a BOTY qualifier in Zurich on 23 September. This made it Spin's second consecutive win of the event. What was new this year: the battles were decided with the "Trivium Value System," a tablet-based judging system that was developed for the upcoming YOG Qualifiers and the YOG by Storm and Renegade.

WDSF Project Coordinator Géraldine Zahnd, aka B-Girl GeGe, reported from Zurich: "Everything went well with the judging system. Judges handled it easily, and it’s easy comprehensible for the public to understand. It was just important to explain how the ranking works with the rounds and votes."

Trivium in a nutshell: the system considers both breakers as equals at the start of a battle, regardless of their seeding or results in previous battles, but as soon as the first breaker moves, the evaluation commences and both performances are compared until the battle is over. 

While comparing the performances of the breakers competing in real time, the balance between them may shift constantly. By using the scales of six crossfaders, the judges can avoid making "black and white" judgments, allowing their assessments in to be closer to the reality of a more gradual decision. The key feature of the Trivium is the crossfader, enabling subtle differentiation in a judge’s assessment of all six criteria that are judged.

For each of these six criteria the judges have an allocated fader on their hand-held Trivium device. 

Published on 27 September 2017