Proposal: allow a move limit for FMC

[Pedro]

But I ask of you: Why have cut-offs for any other event? Is it really to keep a competition on track? It would be simple enough to allot more time to each event and let everyone get a full average.

Yeah, it would be simple enough. Let's have 5-day competitions with 3 rounds of everything and no time limit at all

Simple, yet sadly not possible. So that's why we have time limits. Not the case for FMC, so I think your proposal shouldn't be implemented.

 

[Dene]

@Erik Perhaps it wasn't entirely clear from my original post, but I certainly more than cleared it up in my response to "goodatthis".

@AvG, Erik, Pedro Why do we need cut-offs to keep a competition on track? You can simply have less events and let everyone get a full average. And yes Pedro sometimes there are practical reasons, such as hosting every event, or "themed" competitions like Melbourne Cube Day, but in most cases this isn't relevant.

 

[ajayd]

Why do we need cut-offs to keep a competition on track? You can simply have less events and let everyone get a full average.

Why have less events when you can host all of them if you enforce a relatively mild cutoff?

 

[Tim Major]

Why have less events when you can host all of them if you enforce a relatively mild cutoff?

I can't make our 7x7 cutoffs because I've never practiced 7x7. (And we don't have the harshest of cutoffs)

I'm ok with this. If I spent a weekend practicing I could make the cutoff. If a 20 second solver who spends 5 mins getting a 70 move DNF practiced they could easily get 50 move successes. You can set very mild cutoffs and still weed out those who obviously do NOT care about FMC in the slightest

 

[BaMiao]

I see nothing wrong with this proposal because it allows organizers to decide whether or not to implement the move limit. I imagine most competitions would not use it.

I understand that move limits do nothing to change how long the event actually takes, but it does affect how many staff hours are required to check the solutions. People here have been saying "just get some trusted competitors to help out", but that may not always be possible. Maybe all the most trusted staff are busy scrambling/judging elsewhere during the competition, and checking FMC solutions is really the only thing that can be put off. Such a situation may not be that common, but that's the reason we'd leave it to organizers to make the call, since they're the ones who know the schedule best.

Perhaps I can offer a compromise that I don't think has been mentioned (it's a long thread, so sorry if it has). Maybe for competitions offering multiple attempts, you can implement a "soft cutoff" equivalent, where the first attempt must be under a certain number of moves for the next attempts. I imagine the burden on staff can be pretty high if every competitor suddenly wants a mean. A soft cutoff reduces this burden for the second two attempts, and might allow more competitions to offer the opportunity at a mean.

 

[Methuselah96]

I see nothing wrong with this proposal because it allows organizers to decide whether or not to implement the move limit. I imagine most competitions would not use it.

I understand that move limits do nothing to change how long the event actually takes, but it does affect how many staff hours are required to check the solutions. People here have been saying "just get some trusted competitors to help out", but that may not always be possible. Maybe all the most trusted staff are busy scrambling/judging elsewhere during the competition, and checking FMC solutions is really the only thing that can be put off. Such a situation may not be that common, but that's the reason we'd leave it to organizers to make the call, since they're the ones who know the schedule best.

Perhaps I can offer a compromise that I don't think has been mentioned (it's a long thread, so sorry if it has). Maybe for competitions offering multiple attempts, you can implement a "soft cutoff" equivalent, where the first attempt must be under a certain number of moves for the next attempts. I imagine the burden on staff can be pretty high if every competitor suddenly wants a mean. A soft cutoff reduces this burden for the second two attempts, and might allow more competitions to offer the opportunity at a mean.

Australia comps never have more than one round of FMC, so one of the organizers who would use this (Dene) would have no use for this regulation if they continued only giving one attempt.

 

[kcl]

@Erik Perhaps it wasn't entirely clear from my original post, but I certainly more than cleared it up in my response to "goodatthis".

@AvG, Erik, Pedro Why do we need cut-offs to keep a competition on track? You can simply have less events and let everyone get a full average. And yes Pedro sometimes there are practical reasons, such as hosting every event, or "themed" competitions like Melbourne Cube Day, but in most cases this isn't relevant.

Look. We don't want less rounds of stuff. We want as many rounds of as many things as possible while allowing as many people to get a result. Got it?

There's a fine line between saving time and restricting people from an event. You don't save any time doing this for FMC, so what's the big issue?

 

[AvGalen]

I see nothing wrong with this proposal because it allows organizers to decide whether or not to implement the move limit. I imagine most competitions would not use it.

I understand that move limits do nothing to change how long the event actually takes, but it does affect how many staff hours are required to check the solutions. People here have been saying "just get some trusted competitors to help out", but that may not always be possible. Maybe all the most trusted staff are busy scrambling/judging elsewhere during the competition, and checking FMC solutions is really the only thing that can be put off. Such a situation may not be that common, but that's the reason we'd leave it to organizers to make the call, since they're the ones who know the schedule best.

Perhaps I can offer a compromise that I don't think has been mentioned (it's a long thread, so sorry if it has). Maybe for competitions offering multiple attempts, you can implement a "soft cutoff" equivalent, where the first attempt must be under a certain number of moves for the next attempts. I imagine the burden on staff can be pretty high if every competitor suddenly wants a mean. A soft cutoff reduces this burden for the second two attempts, and might allow more competitions to offer the opportunity at a mean.

Actually, it affects how many staff minutes are required to check the solutions and having a soft-cutoff is already possible and has been used in the past. You can simply say "to do 3 solves your first solve should be under 40 moves". This isn't used often because it doesn't affect the duration of the competition but this is surely possible

 

[Ranzha]

Look. We don't want less rounds of stuff. We want as many rounds of as many things as possible while allowing as many people to get a result. Got it?

There's a fine line between saving time and restricting people from an event. You don't save any time doing this for FMC, so what's the big issue?

This may be your idea of what competitions should be, but you can't assume it's everyone's.

My philosophy is "Motivate competitors to try excelling at a variety of events." I try using cut-offs, multiple rounds, and advancement rates in an attempt to have this happen each time I submit a schedule for consideration for a BASC competition.

 

[Erik]

@AvG, Erik, Pedro Why do we need cut-offs to keep a competition on track? You can simply have less events and let everyone get a full average. And yes Pedro sometimes there are practical reasons, such as hosting every event, or "themed" competitions like Melbourne Cube Day, but in most cases this isn't relevant.

Why have less events when you can host all of them if you enforce a relatively mild cutoff?

Roughly this, though I'd replace "all of them" with "more of them". Of course it's up to the organisers to come up with a well balanced schedule by setting clever limits.

 

[Dene]

Why have less events when you can host all of them if you enforce a relatively mild cutoff?

What is "relatively mild"? Sounds pretty vague, and I doubt we have the same idea of "relatively mild" cut-offs if you think you can fit in a lot of events by using them.

Look. We don't want less rounds of stuff. We want as many rounds of as many things as possible while allowing as many people to get a result. Got it?

That's lovely, and we all want that, but in reality it isn't practical at all. In the end, you have to decide what's more important: lots of people getting a full average in a small range of events, or a small group of people getting lots of full averages in a larger range of events (and a lot of people only getting one or two solves).

Just throwing out an example. At Ausnats we had 55 people registered for 4x4. We had very limited time so I was using relatively hard cut-offs, with 1 minute 20s, and a 2 minute hard limit. This took around an hour to get through with competent scramblers (think Feliks, Jay) and 12 solving stations. In the end 11 people didn't compete (a few probably didn't show up at all, the rest would have pulled out knowing they couldn't reach the cut-off). Five couldn't get under 2 minutes, and 10 couldn't reach the cutoff. Ultimately 29 got a full average (which in my opinion, looking back on it now, struck a really good balance). However had we allowed everyone a full average, I suspect the time spent on 4x4 would have almost doubled to two hours (bearing in mind that would probably be about 20 more people, the majority over 2 minutes).


Anyway, there isn't a "big issue" with FMC, nor does the "issue" have anything to do with time (as I have repeatedly said). It's about applying the same mentality to FMC as we do to most other events. That is, be good enough or miss out. (Put in a very blunt way).

 

[Erik]

What is "relatively mild"? Sounds pretty vague, and I doubt we have the same idea of "relatively mild" cut-offs if you think you can fit in a lot of events by using them.

Isn't that what it's all about? An organiser can decide for himself if he wants to have a competition with many people doing a few events and many rounds, or a competition for the broader audience with all events and less rounds and easier limits. Of course setting strict limits will not get you many registrations ;-)

Anyway, there isn't a "big issue" with FMC, nor does the "issue" have anything to do with time (as I have repeatedly said). It's about applying the same mentality to FMC as we do to most other events. That is, be good enough or miss out. (Put in a very blunt way).

Exactly, the whole time limit thing is not applicable for FMC since the event is an hour anyway. There is no reason to apply the same mentality to FMC (at least not in the form of a move limit), since there is no effect to the competition time. So why propose it?

If you would want to properly apply the same mentality that has an effect on competition time, you'd have to shorten the 60 minutes (which of course nobody is suggesting afaik).

 

[Pedro]

Anyway, there isn't a "big issue" with FMC, nor does the "issue" have anything to do with time (as I have repeatedly said). It's about applying the same mentality to FMC as we do to most other events. That is, be good enough or miss out. (Put in a very blunt way).

Well, I feel like I'm repeating myself, but the nature of events is very different. In your example, you'd stop people at the 2 minutes mark and say "sorry, time's up".
For FMC, what would be the procedure? Let the person sit there and work his mind for an hour, only to tell him afterwards "sorry, solution is too long...DNF". That sounds pretty mean to me.

It's not just "about applying the same mentality to FMC as we do to most other events", because that's not even possible.
We often have a cutoff of 1:30 for 4x4, but a 3 min hard limit, to allow people who are not very fast (for whatever reason) to at least get a valid result, and not take too much time from our schedule. I just don't see how this could be applied to FMC. There is already a hard limit of 80, and since most events have best of 1 for FMC, I don't see the point of having a cutoff at all.

Someone said already that a cutoff for a mean/best of 3 round is possible and appliable as of now, so I (repeating myself) don't think we should allow a lower hard limit for organizers, since it poses no practical advantage, as Dene already said many times.

 

[Dene]

Isn't that what it's all about? An organiser can decide for himself if he wants to have a competition with many people doing a few events and many rounds, or a competition for the broader audience with all events and less rounds and easier limits. Of course setting strict limits will not get you many registrations ;-)

Lol tell that to all the people that registered for ausnats . Then again, we put up the schedule once registration is finished >.<

Exactly, the whole time limit thing is not applicable for FMC since the event is an hour anyway. There is no reason to apply the same mentality to FMC (at least not in the form of a move limit), since there is no effect to the competition time. So why propose it?

Well as it seems, not many people agree with me, but I still stand by my view that FMC should be treated as an "advanced" event, only for "advanced" competitors. Given all the opposition, it's obvious this isn't going to go through. However discussion in the delegate e-mail thread has been a bit more constructive, suggesting a modification of A1c is worthwhile. So at least this hasn't been a complete waste of time ^_^

 

[AvGalen]

Well as it seems, not many people agree with me, but I still stand by my view that FMC should be treated as an "advanced" event, only for "advanced" competitors. Given all the opposition, it's obvious this isn't going to go through. However discussion in the delegate e-mail thread has been a bit more constructive, suggesting a modification of A1c is worthwhile. So at least this hasn't been a complete waste of time ^_^

That is a pretty bad attitude, given that you are a WCA delegate and the WCA doesn't make a distinction in "advanced events for advanced competitors". Quite the opposite actually: The goal of the World Cube Association is to have more competitions in more countries with more people and more fun, under fair and equal conditions.
The spirit of the World Cube Association is that
people from all over the world have fun together in a friendly atmosphere, help each other and behave sportsmanlike.

I would also say that this thread has been very constructive, just not supporting your view. I checked A1c and that is horrible! "A competitor competing with expectation of a DNF result may be disqualified from the event, at the discretion of the WCA Delegate.". I never noticed that before although it happened a long time ago and it means that basically everyone can now be banned from blind and FMC events because 2/3 of the time a blind solve ends in a DNF and almost nobody has an FMC mean of 3! Has this rule ever been enforced? Again, I would like to point out that my first ever succesful blind was a 2/2 during multiblind and that was NR! If somebody had enforced this rule they could have said "I am the delegate and I expect you to DNF multiblind because you have never done single blind"

 

[Torch]

That is a pretty bad attitude, given that you are a WCA delegate and the WCA doesn't make a distinction in "advanced events for advanced competitors". Quite the opposite actually: The goal of the World Cube Association is to have more competitions in more countries with more people and more fun, under fair and equal conditions.
The spirit of the World Cube Association is that
people from all over the world have fun together in a friendly atmosphere, help each other and behave sportsmanlike.

I would also say that this thread has been very constructive, just not supporting your view. I checked A1c and that is horrible! "A competitor competing with expectation of a DNF result may be disqualified from the event, at the discretion of the WCA Delegate.". I never noticed that before although it happened a long time ago and it means that basically everyone can now be banned from blind and FMC events because 2/3 of the time a blind solve ends in a DNF and almost nobody has an FMC mean of 3! Has this rule ever been enforced? Again, I would like to point out that my first ever succesful blind was a 2/2 during multiblind and that was NR! If somebody had enforced this rule they could have said "I am the delegate and I expect you to DNF multiblind because you have never done single blind"

I think it means the expectation of a DNF by the competitor, not by anyone else.

 

[cubizh]

I still stand by my view that FMC should be treated as an "advanced" event, only for "advanced" competitors.

Suspending my disbelief for a moment that you actually not only said that but actually believe that, it would be cool to know what was the criteria that you have used to award the "advanced" status to this particular event, and what other events do you consider "advanced" or "behind".

I checked A1c and that is horrible! "A competitor competing with expectation of a DNF result may be disqualified from the event, at the discretion of the WCA Delegate.". I never noticed that before although it happened a long time ago and it means that basically everyone can now be banned from blind and FMC events because 2/3 of the time a blind solve ends in a DNF and almost nobody has an FMC mean of 3!

I do not think this is the spirit of this regulation, but to allow delegate's discretion to disqualify someone that just sits at the solving station for 5 minutes and refuses to pick the puzzle up or do any effort to attempt to solve it, only being there for the photo opp and/or so that people can look at them, in a clear effort to waste people's time, which I don't recall ever happening, but I may be wrong.

 

[Dene]

@AvG I'm fully aware of all of that. But I keep saying, and everyone seems to keep avoiding, the fact that this is pretty much what is done anyway. At least my attitude is consistent...

@cubizh I already gave some examples earlier in the thread.

The way I look at things in general, and how I tend to structure competitions and cut-offs, is that there are the "core" events, or "beginner" events of 2x2, 3x3, and OH (and magic in the past). Then there are intermediate events like bld, 4x4 and 5x5. Then there are more advanced events, like multibld, 6x6/7x7, and FMC. (Obviously not a complete list).

 

[TMOY]

"A competitor competing with expectation of a DNF result may be disqualified from the event, at the discretion of the WCA Delegate.". I never noticed that before although it happened a long time ago and it means that basically everyone can now be banned from blind and FMC events because 2/3 of the time a blind solve ends in a DNF and almost nobody has an FMC mean of 3! Has this rule ever been enforced? Again, I would like to point out that my first ever succesful blind was a 2/2 during multiblind and that was NR! If somebody had enforced this rule they could have said "I am the delegate and I expect you to DNF multiblind because you have never done single blind"[/FONT][/COLOR]

I don't think any serious competitor has ever been disqualified because of that rule and I hope this will never happen. t is aimed at competitors who try to compete in an event without alctuallyknowing how to solve their puzzle: if the delegate notices someone who's just doing random stuff with his puzzle instead of actually trying to solve it, he may decide to stop the attempt before the hard limit is reached, just to save time.

And speaking about BLD, even if the final result is a massive DNF it is usually pretty easy to tell whether the competitor is actually applying a BLD method or if he's just doing random moves, so this should not be a problem.

 

[AvGalen]

@AvG I'm fully aware of all of that. But I keep saying, and everyone seems to keep avoiding, the fact that this is pretty much what is done anyway. At least my attitude is consistent...

@cubizh I already gave some examples earlier in the thread.

I don't know what you mean with " the fact that this is pretty much what is done anyway".
And having a consistent attitude sounds nice, but not when that attitude is wrong.
Also, your distinction in having 3oh as a beginners event and 444 is an intermediate is not supported by the amount of people that have succesfully participated in that event.

I see that people that tried to explain rule A1c all gave a different explanation about it, so it makes me happy that this rule never seems to have been enforced. Of course there should be a "don't behave badly" rule, but I thought that was already covered by

• 2f) Competitors must obey venue rules and conduct themselves in a considerate manner

...and similar regulations in https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/regulations/#article-2-competitors