The New Iron Rank

For comparison with what we are doing, in the standard IFA rank progression the only shooting distance allowed is 10 meters and all games are six rounds of five darts. These are the IFA ranks with a column added to show the average points per dart at each rank:

To explain the need to change the requirements for the Iron rank, it has to do with adding the beginner ranks which are based on the "JSFA junior degree" rank as posted to the BGNW Player Group forum by Hironori Higuchi.

This message and information on his Web site

have been combined to build this table which shows the JSFA ranking system to the best of my knowledge. A column has been added to show the average points per dart needed to attain each rank.

They have different requirements for juniors, "Under high school people from 6 years old", and adults. The areas where they differ are highlighted in light green for adult and turquoise for junior. The USBA beginner ranks are an attempt to simplify their system while retaining the logical rank progression which can be seen by looking at the "Avg Score per Dart" column.

The French have done the same thing

and this is what their system looks like:

Their progression from Crystal/Level 6 to Steel/Level 7 looks logical until you realize they are only shooting 4 rounds (20 darts) at the Crystal level. If all French competitors shot 6 rounds of 5 darts it would look like:

They tried to preserve the IFA Iron level and it just doesn't work as can be seen by looking at the average points per dart column and especially their progression from Crystal to Steel level. Their Steel level makes absolutely no sense and should logically be thrown right out the window. My apologies to the French, but that is the reason the Iron rank in the USBA system has been changed to 150 points from 9 meters.