Ahh, but these two points are not exactly the same. SCHRS has effectively gotten rid of the rounding off error indeed (hadn't noticed that) but you can still design a boat to "optimize" it to the handicap rule. These two things are different from eachother. When design a boat to best fit the rule you look for mathematical inconsistancies in the way the rating is calculated and try to get more performance in that the will be reflected in the rating number. I know where such "loop holes" exist in both systems (= older SCHRS) but won't disclose these publically.

But one is public knowlegde already so I can use that as an example : Removing the jib from a spinnaker boat produced a much larger reduction in the rating then the actually performance decreased. I do suspect however that the new SCHRS system will address this issue as Texel has done a few years back.

However, by ending the rounding practise a large portion of the gains that could be had will is lost.

Wouter