Tom's FT got 3 10's from judges who wanted him gone so it couldn't have been that poor.

Lisa and Rachel opitimise the crazy way 10's were flung about for nothing last year.

I agree that some of Lisa's dances were overmarked but strongly disagree that Rachel was overmarked.

It probably was techinically but it was a tad dull unlike theirs - I guess it depends on the criteria you use really. I don't think she'd have done so well on tour if she'd danced it there.
I think it got ridicolous in series six as the judges went into overdrive to protect their favs from the "stupid" public who voted for the Sarge and kept dumping them in the DO. Didn't work of course.

Alesha was over-marked on occasion too - her samba wasn't worth 10's and arguable some of Gethin's dances and Matt's waltz (the only good thing about the judges's incomprehensible 40 for Lisa's ccc is that it provoked even more outrage than Matt's waltz and would beat it hands down in a most overmarked dance EVAR poll if one were to be done now - which as a Mavian I'm quite glad about).

I agree

I've no idea why Lisa got such high marks - it's a mystery to me.

But I think Rachel was the best female dancer we've seen. It's difficult to argue she was overmarked.

Umm maybe because Lisa was a good dancer. Ok maybe she wasn't to your liking but there was no dispute about her dancing ability. The only dance of hers that I thought ws overmarked was possibly the Cha Cha Cha. However actually that was technically quite good but just lacked the 'wow' factor.

Rachel was also good, no argument there. But the best female? Well I guess it's all about opinions isn't it.

I would say Rachel is on the same level as Jill and Alesha, but you're right it's only opinion. I think that Lisa's Ballroom was excellent though.

I would agree with this.

Regardless of whether the number of dancers is relevant, it is very relevant that they're learning and dancing for twice as long.

The stats are useless without a correction for that, & it had better be a pretty big correction. Not clear that even a linear correction (like div by 2) will do.

On what grounds?

The judges assured us that Rachel's technique was almost flawless.

The rest boils down to personal taste. The judges along with people like myself thoroughly enjoyed Rachel's Foxtrot.

So why not four 10s if each judge thought it was well executed and was wowed by it?

Yes, that's a point that needs consideration if we're into in-depth analyis.

However, years ago when I was a young woman, I tried to make a relatively simple point. That is, does anyone really think that the better dancers in the earlier series were that much worse than those in the later ones despite the disparity in the number of tens? I shouldn't think so. Does a ten mean that much now? Not as much as it once did I don't think.

She was.

She just wasn't "better than Alesha and every other female dancer except Rachel" good.

I mean, 20? really? Come on...


I can remember Rachel's waltz, rumba and especially AT, vividly. Similarly, I can remember several of Alesha's dances.

But short of the bacofoil dance, which I remember for the wrong reasons, I can't visualise any of Lisa's dances.

Yeah. It's not clear whether you can even compare the first few series with the last few, for exactly that reason.

If you have 5 months training, you're obviously going to be better than if you have 10 weeks. But I don't know how such improvements can be measured.

Yes, you posed a couple of simple questions. Unfortunately they don't have simple answers.


To a point, yes I do think that.





A ten clearly means more than it did last year. But what do you mean by "mean"? Value?

Again, yes, it gets complicated...

So, I think that you've made a good case for saying that some top contestants now get 10s more frequently than some top contestants did a few years ago. And there may or may not be good reasons for that.

But I don't think you've made a case that the judges are throwing 10s around like confetti generally.

That's interesting. I think they're fairly comparable and from comments on here I'd have thought most other people did but we may all have rose coloured glasses on.

Certainly, Jill, Denise, Zoe and Colin (I'll admit to total bias with Colin - I thought he was great) come up frequently in discussions about the best dancers on the show.

I think the top dancers from the earlier series would hold their own with the later ones if they were pitted against each other. A Champions series has been suggested before and I'd like to see that. Maybe it would show that, actually those celebs I'm regarding so highly were significantly inferior to those who came after but I'd still be interested to find out.

And I still think that the proliferation of tens in the latter half of series 6 was excessive. I also think Alesha got a few more than she should have done too.

Probably is personal taste, I like Rachel's foxtrot and still enjoy watching it. It didn't wow me so I suppose I don't get how it wowed them, but isn't that the judgement we all make?

I think sometimes I'm underwhelmed by a lot of 10's because their given for the waltz, as a dance it bores me silly. The only one that got 10's that I like is Matt Dawson's, even celebs I like such as Alesha, Gethin and Tom, I don't like their waltz. Things like that can influence our judgement on whether a ten is desevered.

On how earlier celebs would do. Surely if they were competing now Denise Lewis and Jill Halfpenny would be up there with Alesha, Rachel and Lisa?

I hear you!

If it helps, here's the average number of tens per dance for each dancer.

The number in brackets is the number of dances performed, and yes Ricky and Ali are up to 16 dances already.

Rachel Stevens 1.563 (16)
Alesha Dixon 1.1875 (16)
Lisa Snowdon 1.25 (16)
Ricky Whittle 1.00 (16)
Ali Bastian 0.75 (16)
Austin Healey 0.667 (12)
Matt Di Angelo 0.563 (16)
Zoe Ball 0.538 (13)
Gethin Jones 0.538 (13)
Jill Halfpenny 0.454 (11)
Mark Ramprakash 0.438 (16)
Colin Jackson 0.385 (13)
Tom Chambers 0.375 (16)
Emma Bunton 0.231 (13)
Matt Dawson 0.188 (16)
Denise Lewis 0.182 (11)
Kelly Brook 0.143 (7)
John Barnes 0.143 (7)
Louisa Lytton 0.091 (11)
Natasha Kaplinsky 0.083 (12)
Darren Gough 0.077 (13)

Oooh numbers

Still no easy way to factor in the extra time thing though...

That's a toughie for me to answer as I missed the first two series

I do generally agree that 10s are dished out too readily these days. The perfect score no longer holds the same prestige it once did. I guess I was nit-picking because I just didn't agree with the example you selected to illustrate your point!

I think that (with the exception of Craig) all the judges are too unwilling to use all the scores available to them. So often we hear someone say "best dance of the night" and then give it the same mark as another dance the same night! If they were prepared to use the full range from 1-10 I think we'd see fewer "unfair" marking issues.
I suspect that is why 10s appear sometimes when they shouldn't because the judges have already marked a poorer dance as a 9.
In a way though, it doesn't matter as long as the judges leader board is in the "correct" order as they see it, since points don't relate to the size of the differences between the marks.

I also think the judges (again apart from Craig) mark based on how good they think someone should be by a certain week so that to score say a 9 in the semi-final somone has to be better than to score a 9 in week 1. It makes comparing dancers' improvement across the series very difficult.

Something else I'd throw into the mix: there has always been a tendency for the judges to get more generous as the weeks go on. The "story" is that the contestants are getting better over time, and so a certain amount of inflation goes on. (For example, look at the two times Jill danced the jive, and decide whether the final was really worth 40 if the performance in week 3 was only worth 35).

Of course, now we've got almost double the number of weeks, if the inflation rate is too high, you get the situation where anything less than a 10 in the final is seen as a bad score. I really felt this happened in S6, hence Lisa getting that huge number of 10's.

This year the judges seem to have dodged that bullet. But I will be very curious to see how they mark Chris. I reckon they'll try to give him a 10, somewhere, whether he deserves it or not.

Unless something goes drastically wrong, he'll get at least one or two for his Charleston. They're not having a winner who never gets a 10. He might well get one or two for his foxtrot as well, if he can demonstrate improvement on the points they picked up the first time, as he didn't do in the rumba.


I think we'd get more. Especially at this end of the competition. If they spread their marks out more, we'd just get Chris getting 5s or 6s where he's currently getting 7s and 8s, and Ricky still getting 9s and 10s. And with the past load of series as precedent, people would lose their shit.

If you look at how human beings perceive scalar scores, they view 7 as an appropriate score for an average standard. It's not mathematically right, but it's how people perceive, and it's broadly consistent with how most of the judges actually score. You divert too much from that, people get antsy.

Does anyone know or can figure out how many 10's Craig has given and who too?

I think we're mostly agreed he's the one who doesn't shower them around, so I wouldn't mind seeing how those figures would look.

Jill's Jive
Mark's Salsa
Alesha's Waltz
Matt's Waltz
Rachel's Foxtrot (x2)
Lisa's Foxtrot
Lisa's Cha Cha Cha
Lisa's Quickstep
Austin's Paso
Ali's Viennese Waltz
Ali's American Smooth

I think that's it, outside of Xmas Specials.

I remember him NOT giving a ten to Rachel, for her At and Tango.

Whilst he seem to give them to Lisa with little trouble.

I like Craig, but he does have his crushes. I think Rachel deserved every single one.

But it is a complicated issue as DJ, and others have said.

This year the dancing is really, truly not as good as last year and the year before.

And even so, Ricky is well up there, as is Ali, according to QM interesting stats.

Thanks Monkseal

So in all the arguments over Lisa being overmarked, she tops Craig's list! Pass the can opener ...