Why is there a 100 point rating scale for cigars?


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@Cigar Surgeon hates the 100 point scale and uses a 10 point scale with decimals  Why you gotta pick on me?  

My scale goes to 11 . . .

I think that's called a 10 point scale 

I don’t rate with numbers myself, I’m never thinking about a number while I’m smoking.  For me it’s much like Pres mentioned above. Bad, Decent, Good, Great, and Amazing.  I don’t have multiple grades for or levels for bad.  If it’s bad, who cares how bad?  Just my thoughts. 

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Just now, mprach024 said:

I don’t rate with numbers myself, I’m never thinking about a number while I’m smoking.  For me it’s much like Pres mentioned above. Bad, Decent, Good, Great, and Amazing.  I don’t have multiple grades for or levels for bad.  If it’s bad, who cares how bad?  Just my thoughts. 

That's basically my system, except I call them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

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2 minutes ago, Bijan said:

That's basically my system, except I call them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Hard part with numbers is 3/5 is a 60% score mentally, when in fact for me that’s a good cigar.  60% seems unfair as a representation as I’m quite happy with a good cigar.  To me that’s an every day, solid Monte 2 or BBF for example.  If I used numbers, 95% of my cigars would score 80% and higher.  Making the first 3 numbers kind of irrelevant.    

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56 minutes ago, mprach024 said:

Hard part with numbers is 3/5 is a 60% score mentally, when in fact for me that’s a good cigar.  60% seems unfair as a representation as I’m quite happy with a good cigar.  To me that’s an every day, solid Monte 2 or BBF for example.  If I used numbers, 95% of my cigars would score 80% and higher.  Making the first 3 numbers kind of irrelevant.    

Yeah definitely it's more of a movie stars ranking to me than a percentage or ratio, and why I like 1-5 more than 1-10 even if I end up using half points for long reviews, which makes it a 10 point scale in that case.

I'm at 3% 1s, 9% 2s, 32% 3s, 48% 4s, and 8% 5s.

Edit: Interesting that my average is very close to 3.5 or 70%.

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8 hours ago, Bijan said:

I don't have terrible luck with cigars that often. If I used that system I'd say yes/1 90% of the time. I'm really interested in avoiding the bottom 5% that are 0s, and even more interested in increasing the share of the top 5% 5/5 cigars which would be 2.

I need more than 5, so I suppose I could do 10, but I really just use 13 to keep it on the 100 point scale. My zero would be 86-87. Anything worse, I wouldn't be able to get through it, ergo I couldn't really score it anyway.

So 87 is zero, and I suppose 92-93 would be my 5. That would be the pass/fail as to whether I'd buy again. I'd call a 92-93 a very good cigar. 

94-96 would be an outstanding cigar, or an 8 on the 10 scale. I smoke maybe a handful of those a year.

97-99 is a legendary smoke. Been so long I can't recall one. 100, the mythical unicorn. May not exist, but we keep searching.

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3 hours ago, mprach024 said:

 Bad, Decent, Good, Great, and Amazing. 

Interesting; for me, I would think 80% of my population would be between Decent and Good, so between a "2" and a "3" on an equivalent 5 point scale. 

Personally I use a 100 point scale, but in reality most of my cigars are rated between 80-90.
Below 70 would generally be failing, and I wouldn't smoke again even if free.
70-79 would be "not gonna ruin me, but I don't really like it. Will not have another unless given free"
80 would probably equate to Decent, while 90 would probably equate to Great.
91+ are handed out to Exceptional/Amazing smokes, those that make you open your eyes and go .. wow... I allow myself several levels of "mind-blown". Highest score that I gave was a 98 for a 1966, while second (97) was 2 separate HdM Grand Epicures (2013). 

Another thing for me is that I try not to mark down a cigar based on my personal preferences. E.g. after smoking many Punch Punch / after trying the Punch SdP, I actually don't like the taste profile. But, in the case of the most recent SdP, I would say it was deserving of a high 80s score because everything was impeccable - that is, if you like that Punch spice flavour (which I dislike).

I don't really smoke many Cubans that are actually really poor, aside from draw/construction issues, or the Open series, hence it is very rare that I give a score below 80. 

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7 hours ago, djrey said:

Just playing devils advocate but where does a C equal average? Certainly not in my schooling. 

In every school I went to:

90-100 A=Exceptional, 80-89 B=Above Average, 70-79 C=Average, 60-69 D=Below Average, Below 60 F=Unacceptable (Non Passing)

Granted, most teachers didn't rigidly grade on a curve but their exams were generally designed to distribute the grades to a bell curve where very few failed and very few got A's.  If everyone in the class got 90 or higher on an exam, you can bet they were changing that exam for the next class.  

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Personally I do 1/3/5 with 2 and 4 only to be used in dire emergencies. It forces me to make a clear decision in my mind as to crap/ good enough / amazeballs. Otherwise everything ends up as a 3.8 and what’s the use in that?
I’m of the opinion that other factors play no small part in my enjoyment, so how precise can I be on the cigar itself?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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9 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I need more than 5, so I suppose I could do 10, but I really just use 13 to keep it on the 100 point scale. My zero would be 86-87. Anything worse, I wouldn't be able to get through it, ergo I couldn't really score it anyway.

So 87 is zero, and I suppose 92-93 would be my 5. That would be the pass/fail as to whether I'd buy again. I'd call a 92-93 a very good cigar. 

94-96 would be an outstanding cigar, or an 8 on the 10 scale. I smoke maybe a handful of those a year.

97-99 is a legendary smoke. Been so long I can't recall one. 100, the mythical unicorn. May not exist, but we keep searching.

See you actually described only 4-5 categories. 87 = 0, 92-93 = 5, 94-96=8, 97-99 legendary (9?), and I suppose 100 = mythical (10?).

You do lose all resolution as to ranking between cigars in the same category when using 5 points, but the categories are more or less intact.

I think for me that would resolve to approximately the following <87=0, 87-89= 1, 90-91 = 2, 92-93 = 3, 94-96 = 4, 97-99 = 5, not sure I would need a category for 100 as I'm sure I won't forget it.

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I tend to rate off the school system A+, A, A-, B+, etc system that I'll convert into the 100 point system. My expectations with high quality regular production Cubans are for them to be on average a B+ to A-, or 87 to 92 points. If I was smoking lower quality cheap and cheerful Cubans, I'd expect them to be B- to C. High quality NC's would be in that same B- to C range as well. A C rating is an average cigar in general, not what is average in my collection. 

Looking at my smoking diary on CCW, my average score for regular production does fall between 87 and 93 points. (Lots in the 91-93 points with how good recent production has been) 8% of what I've smoked have been above 95, and about 10% have been 80 points are under (typically these have been cigars that have tunneled horribly, fire proof wrappers, or the incredibly bland D4 I had last month.)

I do not take appearance or any of the NC rating criteria into how I rate. I purely rate off of flavor and experience. Construction only comes into play if it's detrimental to the enjoyment of the cigar. Having to relight a wrapper a few times shouldnt knock off points with CC's. You CANNOT rate Cubans like NC's, they're just different products. Ugly looking CC's in the eyes of a NC reviewer can be an amazing cigar that the NC reviewer would have to knock points off for...for example Halfwheel giving their ridiculous ratings on CC's as they use a criteria that makes ZERO sense with CC's. 

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2 minutes ago, Kaptain Karl said:

I do not take appearance or any of the NC rating criteria into how I rate. I purely rate off of flavor and experience. Construction only comes into play if it's detrimental to the enjoyment of the cigar. Having to relight a wrapper a few times shouldnt knock off points with CC's. You CANNOT rate Cubans like NC's, they're just different products. Ugly looking CC's in the eyes of a NC reviewer can be an amazing cigar that the NC reviewer would have to knock points off for...for example Halfwheel giving their ridiculous ratings on CC's as they use a criteria that makes ZERO sense with CC's. 

I agree 110% with this.

If you take appearance into account you get a bit of an apples vs oranges situation. Let's say one cigar is a perfect 100 with an ugly wrapper and gets 97. And another is perfect wrapper but flavour is less and it also gets 97. I'd much rather have the ugly wrapper gem. But rating for appearance I'd have one 97 that is way better than the other 97.

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39 minutes ago, Kaptain Karl said:

I do not take appearance or any of the NC rating criteria into how I rate. I purely rate off of flavor and experience. Construction only comes into play if it's detrimental to the enjoyment of the cigar. Having to relight a wrapper a few times shouldnt knock off points with CC's. You CANNOT rate Cubans like NC's, they're just different products. Ugly looking CC's in the eyes of a NC reviewer can be an amazing cigar that the NC reviewer would have to knock points off for...for example Halfwheel giving their ridiculous ratings on CC's as they use a criteria that makes ZERO sense with CC's. 

Yeah we feel the same way. Appearances are a big part of purchasing decision, but they provide 0% towards scoring.

As far as NCs versus CCs, we designed our point system to be as country agnostic as possible. So you'll definitely get 5.5 average CCs, but just the other day I smoked an 8-9-8 Asia Pacific for myself and it almost certainly would have landed in the mid 7s.

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6 hours ago, Bijan said:

See you actually described only 4-5 categories. 87 = 0, 92-93 = 5, 94-96=8, 97-99 legendary (9?), and I suppose 100 = mythical (10?).

It's at least 6:

 87-89, 90-91, 92-93, 94-96, 97-99, 100. 

So I could go as low as 7 including a <87 fail, but again, that would be too broad. I 87-100 is enough for me to classify with exact numbers. IOW, I can determine a 92 from a 93. Any more than 13 places and specificity becomes unrealistic. I'm not that good and few are. 

 

3 hours ago, Bijan said:

If you take appearance into account you get a bit of an apples vs oranges situation. Let's say one cigar is a perfect 100 with an ugly wrapper and gets 97. And another is perfect wrapper but flavour is less and it also gets 97. I'd much rather have the ugly wrapper gem. But rating for appearance I'd have one 97 that is way better than the other 97.

I've struggled with the concept of "overall" rating. I try to rate on flavor and experience, meaning if construction compromises the experience I deduct for that. Appearance is irrelevant to smoking experience. At best, a pre-light note. Who would honestly give points to a nice-looking, bad tasting cigar? Is a Ferrari that doesn't run of any use? 

 

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I really like the method put forward by the Dr. Joe show.    Man I miss that guy!    I really wish there was more content with a educational/historical slant like that now (Big ups to you, @JohnS!).   With the scoring system, you divide a cigar into distinct measures that you can independently focus on.   The total is 10 points with each measure having quarter point increments.  Flavor is the most heavily weighted as it should be.  

The acronym is ABCD, FF, ABC.    Simple.

Appearance (1 point- 0.25/0.5/0.75 or 1)

Burn (1 point)

Construction (1 point)

Draw (1 point)

Flavor- predraw (1 point)

Flavor- overall (2 points)

Aroma (1 point)

Balance (1 point)

Complexity (1 point)

0=terrible, horrible.  0.25=acceptable but needs help, 0.5=average/good, 0.75=above average/great, 1=excellent/impressive.

For example, burn:  0=constantly goes out/canoes etc, 0.5=occasional touch ups, doesn't kill enjoyment, 1= no touch ups needed.   

 

RASS from this AM (my first!)

Appearance (1, excellent color/oily wrapper), Burn (1, no touch ups needed), Construction (1, tight visible seams, no veins), Draw (1, flawless), Flavor-predraw (0.75, leather and earth but didn't blow me away), Flavor-overall (1.75,  excellent leather, earth, cuban twang.   Nice transitions, faint cocoa.   Easy and delicious on the retro), Aroma (1, fantastic), Balance (1, great mix of flavors.  Kept me captivated.), Complexity (0.75, quite a lot going on.   Med-full body for me)

Overall:  9.25.    Great stick!   Enjoyed with black coffee on a beautiful sunny morning.  I look forward to including these in my consistent rotation.    

 

 

 

 

IMG_3456 2.JPG

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I do cigar ratings/reviews in my cigar log which is an Excel spreadsheet. The log has my whole cigar collection and I update it as I smoke and acquire cigars. I rate cigars on a scale of 1-5 and I can use halves e.g. 3.5 stars. So I guess it's really a 10-point scale but I think of it as "out of 5 (stars)". You can simply convert a 3.5/5 to 7/10 ofc.

I used to review cigars in a more complex way and I could give them not only halves but also quarters. Like 6.75/10 and such. I also gave separate ratings for different attributes. Now I just do "Cigar/Score/Burntime/Date/Tasting notes" (maybe I should also include cigar age?). So far I have 2 with 3 stars and 4 with 4 stars. I wouldn't buy a 3-star cigar again unless I wanted to give it another go, but I wouldn't mind smoking it. 4-stars is probably where "box-worthy" cigars start. Idk if that makes sense but that's how I do it.

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On 3/19/2021 at 11:12 AM, Silverstix said:


Yeah I like the 5 point system too and the way they classify it on CCW. Definitely good if you wanna get a little more detailed than a simple thumbs up or down. Ideally I’d like all my cigars to be 98s or 5/5! Hah but realistically I’ll smoke anything that is consistently a 3/5 or above. I find myself using the 1/0 for my own notes cause all I really care about is did I like it or not. But I will use the 5 points system for a public review because 1/0 doesn’t really give the reader much information at all.

The CCW system (for those who don't know) is that individuals rate the cigars 1-5 in 6 categories (elegance, strength, balance, complexity, aftertaste, overall), and choose tasting notes from a list or add their own. 

They can use the ratings for their own reference, but as far as CCW is concerned the purpose of the reviews is that they contribute to a global rating. The idea was that CCW is an objective reference website so it doesn't show ratings biased by individual tastes... whenever the scores are displayed to the public it is an average of all ratings to two decimal places, and then a list of tasting notes with the number of people who chose that note.

So you can get an idea if a cigar has an average of 4.95 from 30 reviews then probably this is a very good cigar, and better than one that has 4.2 from 50 reviews.

I had a vague plan that when there were 'enough' reviews in there I would do a search engine based on taste, so you can see the highest ranked cigars in terms of elegance or strength or whatever matters most to you, or which cigar people most consistently say tastes of "walnut". I think this would be more useful that just looking at a 91 vs a 94, as it lets you seek out cigars that match your taste rather than what a reviewer likes.

Strength seems to be a bit problematic as I have observed some cigars that I don't consider to be especially strong getting consistently high strength ratings. My idea was that strength would be a measure of how strong the cigar was - a light cigar might score a 1 in strength but a 5 overall. Some people however appear to interpret it as a light cigar having 5/5 strength because the strength was just perfect.

On my blog - which is very openly not a serious cigar review website - I use a comparative system, where I smoke special editions of a single brand and rank them vs each other and vs the most basic regular production cigar in their brand.

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On 3/18/2021 at 1:45 PM, Cigar Surgeon said:

I believe the origins of the 100 point scale are attributed to Wine Spectator magazine. 

There are many, many failings of a 100 point scale when it comes to a cigar. The site I write for uses a 10 point scale with decimals, and we use the whole scale range.

Edit: the successful way we've been able to explain the system is like a satisfaction survey with 0 being completely unsatisfied, 5 being neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, and 10 being completely satisfied. 

The Developing Palates rating scale is the only useful cigar rating scale used. 

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24 minutes ago, Timothy556 said:

The Developing Palates rating scale is the only useful cigar rating scale used. 

I could see it being the most useful. But the others seem to be of some use no?

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On 3/19/2021 at 7:23 AM, BrightonCorgi said:

100 points is used in school grades, has a familiarity to it.

 

On 3/19/2021 at 4:45 AM, Cigar Surgeon said:

I believe the origins of the 100 point scale are attributed to Wine Spectator magazine. 

There are many, many failings of a 100 point scale when it comes to a cigar. The site I write for uses a 10 point scale with decimals, and we use the whole scale range.

Edit: the successful way we've been able to explain the system is like a satisfaction survey with 0 being completely unsatisfied, 5 being neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, and 10 being completely satisfied. 

there are all manner of systems and each as good as the next if it conveys what is intended.

i think the 100 point system for wines came from parker and not the wine speccy. i know he claims it and i have never seen wine spec challenge that. but, as someone says below, the american school system is based on 100 points and i gather that was what gave parker the idea. 

 

On 3/19/2021 at 11:27 AM, Bijan said:

I'm looking forward to your upcoming review of Ken's Monte Cs 😂🤣😂

if i ever give a monte C 42/100 then you'll know i am starting to like them. 

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On 3/19/2021 at 9:50 AM, Çnote said:

This is pretty much it. Robert Parker made the 100 point wine scale popular and it resonated with the 'educated' American buyer. I personally like the decanter's 20p system and at the end of the day use a 4 point system:

Would i buy more at fair market?

No / maybe? / sure I'd lineup / yes for sure

until the last decade or so, all australian wine shows, of which there are a great many and they are taken extremely seriously for a number of reasons, would judge out of 20 (the theory, but not the practice was 3 for colour, 7 for nose and 10 for palate).

we have swapped to the 100 point system. it makes more sense.

as for decanter, love the mag, but i would very strongly suggest that in sticking with 20/20 systems (and they have dabbled with 5/5 etc), there is a very large bit of 'we will never concede that an american has come up with a better system' and 'we didn't like parker anyway' in that. eventually they will go to 100 points.  

 

one of the issues as is obvious from this thread is that not all of us judge within the 100 point system the same way and that is always going to create confusion.

i am far more used to dealing with it for wines but the same there. we had a blind cabs of the world tasting a few years ago with the top aussie critics and a few others flown in - bob campbell from nz and jeannie cho lee and poh tiong from asia. so some serious people. and yet all our scores varied enormously at times. not just because of assessment of the wine but also because for someone's 96, someone else will give 88 and they think of them the same. i could name a high scorer or two but best not.

then you have richard Juhlin, famous champagne critic. richard has a great palate but he uses the 100 point scale in full, whereas parker et al never go below 50. so he can have champagnes at 25 for example. 

there is simply too much subjectivity in all this for cigars and wines for us to ever be completely precise. 

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7 hours ago, Ken Gargett said:

one of the issues as is obvious from this thread is that not all of us judge within the 100 point system the same way and that is always going to create confusion.

i am far more used to dealing with it for wines but the same there. we had a blind cabs of the world tasting a few years ago with the top aussie critics and a few others flown in - bob campbell from nz and jeannie cho lee and poh tiong from asia. so some serious people. and yet all our scores varied enormously at times. not just because of assessment of the wine but also because for someone's 96, someone else will give 88 and they think of them the same. i could name a high scorer or two but best not.

then you have richard Juhlin, famous champagne critic. richard has a great palate but he uses the 100 point scale in full, whereas parker et al never go below 50. so he can have champagnes at 25 for example. 

If I don't know a reviewers tastes based on common experiences, their specific rating of a cigar doesn't have a lot of meaning to me except that I learn which cigars a reviewer picks as better or worse on their scale in their experience.  The narrative of your written review, the look on each of your faces in video reviews, or the tone in your voices as you're each describing the smoking experience tells me so much more than the number.  So why put a number on it at all?  

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