Quarantine got me bored, so let’s take a look at how competitive yoyo players choose their yoyos to compete with.
I’ve chosen the Pro Finals of Scales Open Vol. 3, held on february 15th, 2020. Scales Open 4 just happened and I would have loved to use it for my analysis (since the number of players on finals was almost the double of Vol. 3), but the VOD seems to have disappeared from Youtube sadly.
Disclaimer: I’m not any expert in statistics and this is in no way scientific, so if anything from here is wrong I beg your pardon. This is just for fun and the interest of studying yoyo on the context of competitive yoyo players.
Let’s start with the main data table.
Disclaimer: The player placing on this table is not congruent with the official placing of the contest, as I had to take out two players (Ahmad Kharisma and Devin Jones) from the table due to being unable to identify what yoyos they were using, and one of them being made of plastic. The placing on this table is according on the technical evaluation (clicks) of the players remaining.
Let’s take a look at some graphs.
Observations:
- SF was the most used brand with 6 players choosing their yoyos, followed by Duncan with 4, and YoyoFactory with 2.
- The most used yoyo on the contest was the SF Statement.
Observations:
- Most players decided to use bimetal yoyos, including the contest winner. 2nd place, on the other hand, decided to use a Monometal.
Observations:
- Around 65 grams seems to be the preferred weight choice by most players, although there some yoyos that are a whole 1 - 2 grams above and below this standard. 66 grams is the heaviest yoyo on the contest, 63.2 grams is the lightest.
Observations:
- Around 46 mm is the preferred width of most players. An interesting thing to note is that the contest winner used a notably narrow yoyo, at 42 mm wide. 47.36 mm is the widest yoyo used in the contest.
- There’s way too much variance to make any kind of relation between yoyo width and placing, which is interesting considering that a common argument used by people who prefer wide yoyos is that it helps them to land their tricks easier.
This was fun. If Scales Open 4 becomes available again, I will do this for that contest.