I think that a well balance fish with an exceptional tail is almost as difficult to find as a perfect carat or a D IF diamond. An overall picture of the fish is also most important. It is very easy to try to pick a part a fish from its imperfection, but one must also pay close attention and learn to also appreciat the part of the fish that are exceptional, even in bad fish. I think that swimming action is very important for competition in Japan since there are so many perfect gems in competition there. Almost all the fish are perfect. For competition outside of Japan, it is very important to realize that the overall quality of all the fish varies a great deal. If you judge solely on swimming action without the sideview consideration, you may miss quite a lot from the overall picture of the TVRs. Competitions in Thailand always gets high turn out of fish that are worth from a few thousand baht all the way to fish that are worth a few hundred thousand baht. Most of the Japanese judges told me that it's much easier to judge competitions that the quality varies a lot. They only have to concentrate on the fish that has the least faults to deduct points from. However, I have to also say that different judges often like different sort of ranchu as well.

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