Score first
Of the 22,597 senior IJF contests where the data records who scored first, that athlete went on to win 92.3% of them. It is the plainest thing this data says, and it holds everywhere: across all 14 senior divisions the rate runs from 90.2% in men's -100 to 95.1% in women's -52.
The later it lands, the more it is worth
A lead taken in the first minute has three minutes to be answered. One taken in the fourth has seconds. The data separates the two cleanly.
First minute88.9%
Second minute91%
Third minute94.2%
Fourth minute98%
Golden score, excluded: this figure is a rule rather than a tendency100%
Bars start at 85%, not at zero, because every rate here sits between 88.9% and 98% and a full axis would draw five identical bars. Golden score is greyed and left out of the headline: its 100% is the rulebook rather than a tendency, because the first score in golden score ends the contest.
Contests behind each row: first minute 6,725, second minute 6,860, third minute 5,222, fourth minute 3,790.
It holds in every division
A finding that appears in one weight class and not the next is usually an artefact. This one is in all 14, within 4.9 points end to end.
| Division | Win rate | Contests |
|---|---|---|
| women's -48 | 92.9% | 1,338 |
| women's -52 | 95.1% | 1,298 |
| women's -57 | 93.8% | 1,458 |
| women's -63 | 92.7% | 1,518 |
| women's -70 | 92.7% | 1,465 |
| women's -78 | 93.8% | 1,267 |
| women's +78 | 93.3% | 1,088 |
| men's -60 | 91.9% | 1,742 |
| men's -66 | 91.6% | 1,969 |
| men's -73 | 91.9% | 2,232 |
| men's -81 | 90.6% | 2,157 |
| men's -90 | 91.2% | 1,842 |
| men's -100 | 90.2% | 1,763 |
| men's +100 | 93.3% | 1,460 |
Coming back is rare
The same data seen from the other end. Four scores in five are made when the scoreboard is level, because most contests only ever have one score. Of the scores made when somebody was already ahead, roughly one in five came from the athlete who was behind.
That is as far as this can honestly be taken. Which techniques rescue a losing contest is a genuinely useful question and the data cannot answer it: only five techniques have as many as a hundred scores made off level, which is far too thin to rank. A list would look authoritative and be noise, so there is not one.
Senior IJF competition, 2020 to 2026, from 73,099 contests. The order of scoring is only known where the IJF tagged the events, which is why the contest count here is lower than the crawl total. See what wins in your category for the techniques behind these scores.