Again, people are getting in a bit of a knot tonight about supposed overmarking. Now, in essence I agree that some dances tonight were marked too highly if you consider them as an individual performance.

BUT that's not what the judges are doing. They give their marks for the first dance and then mark other people accordingly. If people were getting a certain number of points based upon their mark then it would make a difference but since it only decides upon order and, imo, the order tonight was correct (as it is most night's) then I really can't find myself getting as irate as some do about Rachel getting 4 10's etc...

It's the positions that are important, not the individual scores.

Yes the couples get marked with points scored but what are the judges going to do when people improve even more.. get some 11's?!

The failure to point out mistakes made by one dancer when everyone else has their mistakes highlighted, sometimes quite rudely, means the overmarking sticks in peoples' throats.

As far as perfect 40, yes it does matter, as a certain prestige is attached to 40 dances in this show. Otherwise, not so much.

To me it does yes because there are certain couples that never benefit from it- including whoever goes first or second and how often have Rachel and Vincent been first or second?

They are always penultimate or last- well always is just about correct probably one week thats not true?- so its easy to overmark them.

Also if the marks don't matter why mark them- why not let them all dance and then rank them? And why mark some of them so much lower why not mark them 40- 34?

For me it grates because they are clearly trying tosave Rachel from the dance off- and possibly Tom- which means that some more of the publics favourites will be out sooner rather than later.

Just MO- but in our house tonight their were howls when they scored both Tom and Rachel so its not going down well with some of the viewers at least

That I can agree with. I think it would have been better for Rachel to get 39 to avoid the fuss. Trouble is if the judges don't know what the other's are going to give as marks then they can't hold back on the basis of 'well the other three will give them 10's and I'll therefore give a 9 because it wasn't 40/40'.

And, yes, as someone said they easily could rank them instead of giving a score. I think a score adds a bit more drama and a bit less souring to the show - they're not openly saying 'you should be bottom tonight!' if you get what I mean.

Because it's complicated to combine scores that way, and difficult to understand some of the things that happen.

Fugure skating tried something like that at one point. The judges gave marks out of 6, but they were turned into rankings before combining them with the other judge's marks (unlike SCD where they're combined first). And a mightily tricky system it was too.


If they were trying to save her from the dance-off, there was no need for 4 10s. They could have done 3 like last week, for example, or even lower scores.


It was entirely predictable that 4 10s for Rachel would rile some viewers, no matter how well she danced.

Imo, the judges must have known that.

Yes, I think it does as people are less likely to vote for someone they think is getting marks they don't deserve, especially when it comes to 10's. Look at the backlash Alesha got in some quarters last year for too many 10's, even though she often deserved to be top anyway. And the way some people reacted to poor Kelly after Bruno's idiot 10.

In the same vein, I also think undermarking matters just as much as it's more likely to galvanise people to vote if they feel someone's being treated unfairly.

Yep I think it matters, but having said that, I don't think Rachel was over-marked. People forget how subtle a Foxtrot is. It was never going to grab your attention like a Jive or a Cha Cha, but it doesn't mean it can't be perfect.

I think the only person who was over-marked all series was Cherie. I'm so glad she's gone. Her scores were making a farce of Strictly.

I argee - the rest is just stats which don't really mean much in the grand scheme of things since they don't affect the competition.