How to read fencing pool results: V, V/M, the indicator and the seeding

What a pool sheet shows

A pool sheet is a grid with one row and one column for each fencer in the pool. Each row holds what that fencer scored against each opponent, so every bout appears twice, once in each fencer's row, and the shaded diagonal is where a fencer would meet themselves. The columns on the right add each row up: victories, hits scored, hits received, the indicator and the place in the pool.

What goes in a box follows the FIE Technical Rules (t.38). A fencer who wins by reaching 5 hits gets V; the loser's box shows the hits they scored. A bout that runs out of time is written with its real score, so a 3-2 win at time is V3 in the winner's box and 2 in the loser's. A bout level at time goes to one extra minute, with the priority drawn by lot before it starts, and is still written with the real score: a bout won on priority at 2-2 reads V2 against 2, and a 0-0 bout reads V0 against 0.

The sheet above is a foil pool of six. Fencer 4 won the bout against fencer 2 on priority at 4-4, so it reads V4 in row 4 and 4 in row 2; fencer 5 beat fencer 3 at time, 3-2. Every other bout was won at five hits.

The FIE rules write HS and HR; the US pool sheet, as fencer.com's guide to it shows, prints TS and TR, touches scored and received, which are the same numbers. On that sheet every fencer signs by their name at the end of the pool to certify it, which is the moment to catch a wrong box (see the checks).

How a pool is made up and fenced

A pool is a small round robin in which everyone fences everyone once. Under the FIE Organisation Rules of August 2026, pools have 7 fencers if the entry divides by 7, otherwise 7 and 6, and never fewer than 6 (o.67). They are filled from the initial seeding in a serpentine: the top three seeds head pools A, B and C, seeds 4 to 6 go back the other way, C, B, A, and so on, with fencers of the same nationality spread across pools where possible (o.68). The order of names on the sheet is drawn by lot, and "the pools must be fenced up to the last bout".

A pool bout ends at 5 hits or after 3 minutes of fencing time (t.38), and a fencer gets three minutes' rest between two consecutive bouts (o.71). The order of the bouts is fixed by the rules so that nobody fences twice in a row:

A pool of six has 15 bouts and a pool of seven has 21, and each list holds every pairing exactly once. When fencers from one country share a pool, the rules move them so that they fence each other first (o.70), which is why a sheet sometimes shows a different order.

How the indicator is worked out

The indicator is hits scored minus hits received, added up over every bout a fencer fenced in the pool. The rules call it the second index, HS - HR (o.73.2d). Fencer 5 in the sheet above scored 22 and received 14, so the indicator is +8; fencer 6 scored 13 and received 25, so it is -12.

Three things about it are worth knowing before checking a result:

• Bouts at time count at their real score. A V3 adds 3 to the winner's hits scored, not 5, and a bout won on priority at 0-0 adds nothing to either fencer's indicator.
• It has a ceiling. No pool bout can be won by more than 5, so the indicator can never be more than +5 a bout: +25 in a pool of six, +30 in a pool of seven.
• A pool's indicators add up to zero. Every hit one fencer scores is a hit another receives, so the column always totals 0. In the sheet above, +6, +1, -1, -2, +8 and -12 make 0; if a sheet does not, a box is wrong.

Fencer 2 beat fencer 3, but that is not why fencer 2 is fourth: both won two bouts, and the indicator, +1 against -1, decides it. Fencer 2 scored 21 hits while losing three bouts, and the indicator counts the hits scored in bouts that were lost as fully as those in bouts that were won.

How the ranking after the pools is decided

After the pools, every fencer from every pool goes into one general ranking, ordered "successively" by V/M, then HS - HR, then HS (FIE o.73.1). If two fencers are equal on all three, their order is decided by drawing lots. USA Fencing's Rules for Competition print the same rule in the same words, with touches for hits.

Why it is V/M, not the number of wins

The first criterion is a ratio because pools are not the same size. A fencer in a pool of seven fences six bouts, one more than a fencer in a pool of six, so counting wins would hand the larger pools an extra chance. Dividing by the bouts fenced puts everyone on one scale:

B and C both won four bouts, but B lost one bout and C lost two, so B ranks above C before the indicator is even looked at. Read a results list by V/M first; the win count alone misleads whenever pools of six and seven are mixed.

What the ranking ignores

The general ranking does not look at the bout between two tied fencers, at which pool they were in, or at their seeding before the pools. Fencer 1 in the sheet beat fencer 5 and still places below fencer 5, because both won four bouts and fencer 5 has the better indicator. The bout between them is in the sheet only as one victory for fencer 1 and one defeat for fencer 5, and that is all the ranking takes from it.

Ties at the cut, and when there is a barrage

The number of fencers eliminated after the pools is decided and announced before the competition starts (o.72). At senior World Championships, World Cups and Grand Prix events, 20% to 30% of the fencers are eliminated on the general ranking, and Grand Prix events must cut 30% (o.86.1). At USA Fencing's veteran championships nobody is eliminated after the pools.

When fencers are exactly level for the last qualifying place, the general rule is generous: "there is no barrage, and the fencers with equal indicators are all qualified, even if they are in excess of the number decided on" (o.73.3). A barrage, a fence-off, is used in one place instead: at World Cups and Grand Prix events the 16 fencers ranked highest after the pools skip the preliminary table, and a tie for 16th place is settled by a barrage for 5 hits (o.86.2). Lower down that preliminary table, fencers level on the indices are separated by drawing lots (o.86.3).

Withdrawals and exclusions

A pool can lose a fencer three ways, and the FIE rules treat each one differently (o.74):

An exclusion is the one that changes everyone else's numbers. Once a fencer's results are annulled, the bouts their pool-mates won or lost against them disappear from those pool-mates' V, M, hits and indicator, which is one more reason the ranking uses V/M: the pool-mates are left with one bout fewer. USA Fencing's January 2023 rulebook has the "Did Not Start" and "Excluded" rules but no separate rule for a fencer who abandons.

From the ranking to the direct elimination table

The direct elimination table is drawn from the general ranking after the pools (o.76), and it is drawn so that the highest seeds meet as late as possible. USA Fencing's official table of 32 (Figure 7 of its Rules for Competition) pairs the seeds like this:

Every pair adds up to 33, seeds 1 and 2 are at opposite ends and can only meet in the final, and seed 1 can meet seed 4 or 5 at the earliest in the semi-final. When fewer fencers qualify than the table holds, the missing numbers are empty places and the fencers drawn against them go through without fencing: with 27 fencers in a table of 32, places 28 to 32 are empty, so seeds 1 to 5 start in the table of 16.

The pool ranking keeps mattering after that. Fencers knocked out in the same round of the table are placed among themselves by their ranking after the pools (o.82.4), so two fencers who both lose in the table of 32 finish in the order of their pool results, and fencers eliminated in the pools are placed after everyone who qualified (o.82.5). The two losing semi-finalists are placed equal third unless a bout for third place is needed (o.82.2-3).

Checking a pool sheet before you sign it

Four checks catch almost every mistake on a pool sheet, and each takes seconds:

1. Each bout appears twice and agrees with itself. If row 4 says V4 against fencer 2, row 2 must say 4 against fencer 4, and exactly one of the two boxes has a V.
2. The victories add up to the number of bouts. A complete pool of six has 15 victories in total and a pool of seven has 21.
3. Hits scored equal hits received. The HS column and the HR column have the same total; in the sheet above both are 111.
4. The indicators add up to zero. If they do not, a box was copied wrong or a sum was slipped.

A sheet that passes all four can still be wrong if the referee wrote the wrong score, which is why each fencer checks their own row against what they remember of each bout. A scorer who wants a second record keeps the bouts on a counter as they are fenced and compares the two at the end.