The Competition is held at 8 rounds, but your final result is based on your 6 best rounds. This means you can miss two rounds, or have a couple of poor rounds, and still stand a chance of an overall good position.
Your monthly score is the sum of all the votes for each of your three images so you need to enter three images in each round to stand a chance of a good overall score.
Now the difficult (but fair) bit! Although the scoreboard shows cumulative scores it is not these totals which determine the final positions at the end of the competition. This is because the scores for each round are dependent on the number of people voting.
For example, you may have three brilliant images in one round for which everyone scores them 5 each – but as there were only 10 voters, your total score is 150 (3 x 5 x 10). The next round you don’t do so well, but as this time there are 25 voters anyone who scores only 2 from everyone for each of their images will equal the 150 you scored in the previous round (3 x 2 x 25).
To correct this situation it is the percentage scores which are used to calculate the actual positions. It works like this. Your total score is divided by the score you could have got with all fives – i.e. 3 x 5 x the number of voters. So in the first example the percentage score would be 100% – 150/150, in the second example (scoring all twos) the percentage would be 40% – i.e. the score of 150 divided by the possible 375 (3 x 5 x 25 voters).
Corrections are also made to a member’s score if they enter images but don’t attend on the evening to vote. This is necessary because they are receiving other member’s votes, but those members do not benefit from their votes.
I hope this is all clear – but if not please ask.
Kevin