89% wasted

If you've got a range of scores from 0 to 100 in HAHN scoring, why do you not use all 101 scores rather than restricting yourself to just multiples of 10. You might as well have a score from 0 to 10 if you're going to do that.

Why not use megapoints instead if you want higher scores?

I don't know which I'd prefer, but I do see value in the Hahn compromise encompassing significant thresholds and proportionality.

Certainly having more than a binary result is useful. The only problem is that it forces games to be drawn out longer whilst the precise margin is decided, rather than just the win/loss predicate. In a long game such as 19x19, that might be significant in slowing tournaments down. (Though not necesasrily, as the slowest players seem to be those who don't come to the conclusion that they've lost no matter how long it's been obvious.)

But there's never been a good reason for just sticking a '0' at the end of every score.

Oh, I had an economic board game as a child where the smallest bill was 5000 Dollars. That was good training in doing calculations with large numbers!

So I agree about sticking one 0 at the end is senseless. Use at least 3 zeros!

The only thing I disagree is the estimate of waste: 89%. I'd argue it is 50%.

The way of scoring has a historical reason. In Korea they use to play go for money. Each 10 points earns a fixed amount of money, at the end the looser pay the difference in units of 10 points.

More on this here.

It's just like those good, old pinball-games - you'd score several million points, but the last three digits in your score were always "0". I agree with FatPhil - there's never been a good reason for just sticking a "0" at the end of every score.

And it's done so many other places too, like in bridge, for example...

Indeed, pinball is the ultimate example (after goo-goo-scrabble, that is). I've noticed the televised poker always seems to be in terms of hundreds of dollars/euros too, sometimes thousands. I'm sure there are many examples. (And of course tennis throws out all logic by counting to 4 using steps of 15, 15, and 10.)

My favourite strategy game, tiddlywinks, suffers from the opposite problem. Initially designed to have integer scores, draws would occasionally cause halves to appear, and 3-way draws could cause thirds to appear. So sixths were not uncommon at the end of the day. However, there's no temptation to change to rules to hand out multiple of 6 instead.

(Of course, handicap transfers could bump that up to 24ths, but those aren't used in the deadly serious competitions.)

(And I won't even mention tournament formats that permit you to stay in the pub after lunch and miss a round or two, and therefore need to be ranked by PPG, thus introducing even hairier fractions, such as the 33rds that I'm particularly proud of.)

My goodness, Phil, I haven't seen that many fractions since the stock market went to decimal.