How the Selector Works

What the finder does

The StrangeBoard Selector scrapes snowboard catalogs from a handful of retailers every day, pulls the official spec sheets from each manufacturer's own website, and then scores every board against your body and riding style. You tell it what you weigh, what boots you wear, and what kind of riding you want to do, and it ranks the boards from best fit to worst fit inside each riding category.

It is not a ranking of which board is "best" in general. It is a ranking of which boards are best for you.

What you tell it

Your weight

The biggest single input. Every snowboard has a rider weight range the manufacturer thinks will work well on it. Boards that don't cover your weight get docked a lot of points, and boards that cover it right in the middle of their range score full credit.

Your boot size

Used to pick a target waist width. If a board is too narrow for your boot, your toes and heels will drag in carves; if it is way too wide, turns feel sluggish. The finder rewards boards whose waist width at the size you'd ride lines up with your boot.

Gender

Filters out men's boards for women, women's boards for men, and kids' boards for adults (unless you pick "all").

Ability level

Optional. When you set it, boards whose advertised level matches yours get a small bonus. Leave it on "any" to skip that factor.

Your boots and bindings (optional)

If you pick specific gear, the finder reads its flex rating and nudges the ideal board-flex target in the direction of your gear. Soft boots and bindings shift the target softer; stiff ones shift it stiffer. That's the only thing your gear choice changes — the finder does not filter boards by binding mount type, because every mount system has adapters.

The six riding categories

Every board gets scored against all six categories. That way the same board can be the best freeride pick and a mediocre park pick, which reflects reality. You can pick a single category on the finder form, or leave it on "all" to see every category's top results.

• ALL-MOUNTAIN — versatile, groomers to sidecountry
• FREERIDE — big mountain, steep lines, powder, speed
• FREESTYLE/PARK — jumps, rails, halfpipe, tricks
• POWDER — deep snow, float, surfy turns
• CARVING — edge-to-edge, hardpack precision, GS turns
• PLAYFUL/BUTTER — presses, jibs, creative, surfy

How the score is built

Every board starts at zero and earns points across several factors. The top of the card shows the total as a percentage of the maximum possible score for your query.

In quick summary: weight fit and waist fit together make up more than half the total score, because they are the two factors most likely to make a board physically wrong for a rider. Flex, length, profile, and the category-specific factors sort the boards that already pass the physical fit test.

Reading a result card

• The colored ring and percentage — how close this board came to the maximum possible score for your query. Green means an excellent match, blue/snow is a solid match, yellow is workable, and gray is a stretch.
• The small amber badge — appears when one or more factors couldn't be scored because the data was missing for that board (e.g., the manufacturer didn't publish an effective-edge length). Hover it to see which factors fell back.
• The "reasons" line — the good things the finder found.
• The "penalties" line — the things that cost this board points. Both lines are written in the same plain terms the scoring uses internally.
• Out-of-stock boards appear faded. The finder still scores them in case the size you want comes back in stock, or in case you want to shop the board somewhere else.

Customizing the weights

If you disagree with how heavily the finder weighs something — say, you want waist width to matter twice as much because you have big feet, or you want to ignore terrain tags entirely — head to Setup. Each factor has a slider. Setting a slider to zero removes that factor from your personal ranking without affecting anyone else.

Your settings save to your browser, not to an account — clearing your site data will reset them to defaults.