Fencing Lab
Can you predict who wins a fencing bout?
Student project in progress · Started July 2026 · Updated as the dataset and analysis grow
I started this project because I kept wondering how predictable fencing really is. How much does tournament seeding actually tell us about where someone will finish? And what can individual bout results tell us that rankings don't?
I'm collecting results from national Cadet Men's Sabre competitions and using Excel and Python to look for patterns. I'll keep adding tournaments and updating the analysis as the dataset grows. I'm a 14-year-old learning this as I go - the tools, the methods, and the questions are all evolving together.
Questions I'm exploring
What I started out wondering
These are the questions I had before I collected any data. Some have been answered — at least partially. Others are still in progress.
1
If one fencer has a higher strength rating, how often do they actually win?
FencingTracker publishes strength ratings based on bout results — separate from USA Fencing's national ranking. I wanted to know whether those ratings actually predict who wins on the strip, or whether a single fencing bout has too much variability for any rating to matter.
2
Does pre-tournament seeding predict where a fencer finishes?
Seeding is based on national ranking points. I wanted to know how well it predicts final placement and whether FencingTracker's strength rating does the same job better or worse.
3
Do pool results predict how far a fencer goes in DEs?
A fencer who goes 5–1 in pools doesn't always advance far in the bracket. Is pool performance a useful leading indicator or are DEs essentially a separate story?
4
Can you predict tournament outcomes before they happen?
The long-term question. If the earlier patterns hold up as the dataset grows, is it possible to take a draw sheet and current ratings and produce meaningful probability estimates? This is where I'd like the project to eventually go.
A data source worth knowing
FencingTracker — and why their data matters here
Before I could test whether stronger fencers win, I needed a way to put a number on "strength." USA Fencing's ranking points aren't designed for head-to-head comparison. FencingTracker gave me a way to do that — and raised an interesting question about whether their rating and official seeding tell the same story.
Fencingtracker.com
FencingTracker is an independent site that tracks results and publishes its own strength ratings for competitive fencers. Their ratings are calculated from actual bout outcomes, which makes them useful as a predictor variable in a way that qualification points aren't.
One of the things I specifically wanted to understand was whether their strength metric and USA Fencing's official seeding tell the same story — or whether they diverge in interesting ways. That comparison turned out to be one of the more useful parts of the analysis.
All data I'm using is publicly available on their site. I'm not republishing their ratings here — I'm using them as an input to my own analysis and crediting them as the source.
The data set
What I am working with
Narrow scope on purpose — one event type, one weapon, one gender category — so I'm comparing like with like. The dataset grows as more events happen.
5
National Cadet's Men Saber events
4,800+
Bouts with both fencers' ratings
1,290
Fencer-event records for placement analysis
Pool + DE
Both rounds tracked separately
A note on data and privacy: All results come from publicly available sources — USA Fencing published results and FencingTracker. I'm not republishing individual names or personal data. Any findings reflect aggregated patterns, not individual athletes. 13 fencer-event records had inconsistent data across their bouts and were noted in the analysis.
What I've found so far
Three hypotheses — with real numbers
These are the actual results from the dataset as it stands. I'm treating these as early findings that need more data to confirm — five events is a start, not a conclusion.
Hypothesis 1: Strength Rating vs. Bout Outcome
Does the fencer with the higher strength rating win more often?
I matched each fencer's FencingTracker strength rating before each bout against the actual result. Simple question: does higher-rated mean higher chance of winning?
69.5%
The higher-rated fencer won 69.5% of bouts. That's meaningfully above 50% — but also means the lower-rated fencer still wins nearly one in three times. A single fencing bout has a lot of variability built in.
I did the initial analysis in Excel, then rebuilt it in Python to learn how to do it programmatically. The results were consistent between both, which was a good check. The analysis excluded bouts where both fencers had identical ratings.
How I tested it
For each bout: calculated strength gap (Fencer A − Fencer B). Identified who was stronger. Checked whether the stronger fencer won. Calculated overall win percentage, then broke it down by gap size. Also compared against FencingTracker's own win_chance estimates as a sanity check — the direction matched.
Based on 4,800+ bouts across 5 events. The pattern is consistent but the dataset is still relatively small for drawing firm conclusions.
Hypothesis 2: Seeding vs. Final Placement
Does pre-tournament seeding predict where someone finishes?
This required a different dataset structure: one row per fencer per event, with their seed and final placement. I built a roster of 1,290 fencer-event records from the same five tournaments.
0.774
Correlation between seed and final place = 0.77. Where 1.0 would be a perfect prediction and 0.0 would mean no relationship. This is a genuinely strong result — seeding is doing real predictive work.
Seed Tier | Average Final Placement | Count |
|---|---|---|
Top 8 seeds | ~ 21st on average | 39 |
Seeds 9 - 16 | ~ 28th on average | 40 |
Seeds 17 - 32 | ~ 38th on average | 80 |
Seeds 33 - 64 | ~ 67th on average | 157 |
Seeds 65+ | ~ 165 on average | 974 |
Top seeds don't finish 1st through 8th. They average around 21st but they finish significantly better than everyone else.
The pattern is steady and clean from one tier to the next.
The large jump at Seeds 65+ reflects the size of the field: most entrants are in this group and most don't advance far, which is what you'd expect.
13 fencer-event records had inconsistent seed/placement values across their bouts. Likely data gaps from collecting the data. Small enough to not change the overall result.
Hypothesis 3: Strength vs. Seed as a predictor of placement
Which predicts final placement better — FencingTracker strength or official seed?
Having tested seeding, I wanted to compare it directly to strength rating. I used each fencer's strength from before their first pool bout — their true pre-tournament number — and tested how well it correlated with final placement.
Important methodology correction
An earlier version used an average of each fencer's strength across all their pool bouts. That was wrong. It let in-tournament performance leak into what was supposed to be a pre-tournament measurement and inflated the apparent predictive power. The corrected version uses only the strength value from before the first pool bout, verified against the raw data order.
0.774
Seed vs Final Placement
Higher = better prediction
0.736
Strength vs Final Placement
Seed wins by a modest margin. But the bigger finding might be this comparison:
What we're predicting | Strength | Seed | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
Final tournament placement | 0.736 correlation | 0.774 correlation | Seed |
Individual bout outcome | 76.3% accuracy | 74.7% accuracy | Strength |
Neither predictor decisively beats the other. Strength edges ahead on individual bouts; seed edges ahead on placement. Both gaps are small. And seed and strength agreed on the bout favorite 85.7% of the time — they're measuring largely overlapping information, which makes sense since both are ultimately estimating how good a fencer currently is.
Interesting footnote: FencingTracker's formula isn't publicly documented. The fact that two independently-calculated systems land this close to each other is itself a small piece of evidence that both are capturing something real — even without knowing exactly how either one works.
Research log
How this project has developed
This log matters as much as the findings section. It records how the questions evolved, what didn't work, and what I understood differently as I went. A new entry every time something meaningful happens
June 2026
Started collecting data — five events, 4,800+ bouts
Built the initial dataset in Excel from publicly available USA Fencing results. Pool results and DE bracket results from five national Cadet Men's Sabre events. Added FencingTracker strength ratings for each competitor before each bout.
"The first thing I ran into was that fencer names aren't consistent across events — different abbreviations, different spellings. Most of the early work was just cleaning that up so I could match the same person across tournaments. That part isn't glamorous but if you get it wrong, nothing else matters."
August 2026
Started testing my hypothesis
With my initial dataset I was able to test whether Strength is a good predictor of an individual bout outcome. I ran the analysis in Excel and then tried to rebuild in Python. Then I built a fencer-event dataset (1,290 records) to test whether seeding is a good predictor of the final tournament placement.
"When I compared strength and seeding as predictors for individual bout outcomes and final placement, the agreement between seed and strength was the most interesting part: they're measuring largely the same thing."
2026 - In progress
Expanding the dataset and testing whether combining predictors helps
I will be adding more events and expanding my dataset as more National Men Saber Cadet events occur in 2026. I plan to test more hypothesis or maybe combining existing predictors. I will be updating the log with my progress.
Follow the project as it develops
No spam — just recaps, tips, and referee notes when I publish them.