What is the Easiest Event to Become World Class in?

[Isaac Lai]

I vaguely remember how he did the first one, and I remember the ending he had for the second. I'll ask around and try to reconstruct.

That would be great. Also, he couldn't have used OLL and PLL right? Or did he get LL skips

 

[not_kevin]

That would be great. Also, he couldn't have used OLL and PLL right? Or did he get LL skips

He fished for LL skips - for the 22 and 23, he managed to catch them See my original post for the 22 reconstruction - the 23 is a lot harder to reconstruct for me, because I don't remember nearly as much about it. From what I remember, he had found a 29 on the third by finding a PLL skip, but didn't have time to write it or something (he was pretty frustrated with himself for not cleanly beating the WR at the time).

 

[Stefan]

Vincent's 22 is also here and [post=1003341]here[/post] along with comment and sheet by Vincent.

 

[Sajwo]

I would say that you can call yourself world class, if your average (optionally single) is ~120% of WR or less. For example, top50 in 7x7 is over one minute slower than the WR average... :/

 

[YouCubing]

Clock is lol. I got a DNF average at my only Clock-including comp because Clock regs suck, and my single is still ~150th in the US.

 

[Ronxu]

I would say that you can call yourself world class, if your average (optionally single) is ~120% of WR or less. For example, top50 in 7x7 is over one minute slower than the WR average... :/

What about MBLD?

 

[leeo]

I would imagine that after a generation of competition there is no more "low hanging fruit". Perhaps the 5x5x5 BLD is the "ironman" of the cubing world: just executing a non-DNF puts you in world-class territory.

 

[Ordway Persyn]

I would say that you can call yourself world class, if your average (optionally single) is ~120% of WR or less. For example, top50 in 7x7 is over one minute slower than the WR average... :/

I disagree. If the best speed cuber in the world had an average of 4.84 and a single of 3.91 and the second best in the world had an 7.33 average and a 6.18 single, than by your definition the second best In the world would not be considered world class which is pretty absurd Imo. I'd go with top 100 averages.

 

[Sajwo]

I disagree. If the best speed cuber in the world had an average of 4.84 and a single of 3.91 and the second best in the world had an 7.33 average and a 6.18 single, than by your definition the second best In the world would not be considered world class which is pretty absurd Imo. I'd go with top 100 averages.

Do you really consider 8 points in MBLD (41 WR), 3:50 7x7 average, 5.10 skewb average or 19.80 sq1 average as world class level? Don't be silly. And your example is simply stupid, because such a times are archievable only in 2x2 and skewb (maybe also in 3x3 and clock). And all of those events has a faster #2 average than 7.33

 

[Ninja Storm]

Rankings don't really detail what world-class is for an event. IMO, there's only a single world class person for Square-1, and that's Bingliang Li. His times are undisputed the best in the world, and nobody can touch him.

For OH, there are four world class cubers, as their times are all relatively close(Antoine's times are closer to everyone else's, that one average was an outlier,) and then the next person is significantly slower. Sorry Pavement </3

The line is blurred a little more for other events, but those two are clear examples of what the definition of "world class" should be, imo.

 

[Ordway Persyn]

top 20 or 10 might work better, of course those were hypothetical examples but if your the 20th best solver in the world out of dozens of thousands of speed cubers than I would easily consider that world class. Really though I guess that the line between world class and Advanced can be pretty Fuzzy at times as there is no good definition of world class. World class may also be defined as In someone who has a decent chance to break single or average world record. I'd say 135% of the time is more what I would consider world class If we were defining it by time.
we could also combine both and say that If you're Only 20% slower than world class or top 10 In average/single than you could be considered world class.

 

[shadowslice e]

I would say that the term "World Class" is not in itself a very useful term and would think that some other way to refer to the upper echelons of the cubing community would be very helpful. This is mostly because (as seen above) there is no cleat boundary to where world class begins and end but mostly just a progression of cubers instead whereas "sub-x" in my opinion is much better as it is not a fuzzy, undefined concept but a firm, easily quantifiable idea that would be much more useful for setting up groups in the community.

 

[PenguinsDontFly]

I would say that the term "World Class" is not in itself a very useful term and would think that some other way to refer to the upper echelons of the cubing community would be very helpful. This is mostly because (as seen above) there is no cleat boundary to where world class begins and end but mostly just a progression of cubers instead whereas "sub-x" in my opinion is much better as it is not a fuzzy, undefined concept but a firm, easily quantifiable idea that would be much more useful for setting up groups in the community.

maybe a top % of cubers?

 

[shadowslice e]

maybe a top % of cubers?

Perhaps but the thing is, (as stated above) you can still get cubers who are in a league of their own and the other cubers could not really compare themselves to say, the top 4 but to say there are only 4 "world-class cubers also just seems wrong to me...

But then, on the other hand, you have the event which are truly a nice exponential curve when it comes to number of cubers who have achieved such a time.

As a swimmer, I come across things like that a lot when coaches try to split people up by ability as the worst in one group would only be a very, very little bit faster than the fastest in the next group down and hence would still be able to give them a good race even though it would be a "national level swimmer" vs a "regional level swimmer" whuch seems to indicate there should be no competition at all.

Good parallels to this in nature are things like ring species and dialect continuums: in ring species, each has a distinct species which slowly changes the further you get away from the site of origin. With the ring species, you will eventually get to a point of difference where the two species cannot interbreed with the species at the point of origin so therefore they must be defined as seperate species. But the question then is: where does the new species actually start? There is no one point at which the populations are suddenly unable to interbreed (and there may be variation within individual populations as well). The dialect continuums, in the other hand, function in a very similar way except it is the question of where mutual intelligability ceases and the speaker could not understand each other (this happens a lot in Africa where each village can talk to the next across but not, say 4 villages across)

Anyway, my point is that it is never very easy to define the different classes of ability as it will usually be in a gradual change rather than sudden obvious ones.

 

[nalralz]

I would say 2x2.

 

[Ordway Persyn]

Maybe the term Elite speed solver could apply to the best of the best
for example on 3x3:
Elite <9
Advanced 9-15
Intermediate 15-30
Beginner 0

 

[joshsailscga]

I would say 2x2.

Nuh-uh no way

 

[not_kevin]

In a similar vein as the thoughts that went into KinchRanks, the problem with trying to use the same non-WR metric across all events is that the people who compete in each is very different. Whatever the metric ends up being, you have to make sure it takes into account extremely popular events (like 2x2 and 3x3), extremely unpopular events (like 5BLD), events with abnormally good competitors (Square-1 and MBLD), and events with abnormal weight on luck (particularly 2x2, Pyraminx, and Skewb).

As some examples, any top [n] ranking will make unpopular events look easier to be world-class in. For example, consider that the world record for 5BLD is nearly half the 20th person's time (5:35 to 10:37) - although I definitely think it takes great skill and dedication to get close to stackmatting a 5BLD, I think it takes significantly less skill than the amount of time it would take to get sub-8 average on 3x3.

Any top n% ranking will make popular events look easier to be world-class in. Again, considering 5BLD and 3x3, top 2% of 5BLD is... the top 3, so being sub-6:00. However, top 2% of 3x3 average is 11.50 - definitely good, but not something I would call world-class.

Anything that's a particular percentage of the world record will make events with extremely skilled solvers hard to be world-class in. Ninja Storm brought this up, as well - no one can really hold a candle to Marcin for MBLD or Bingliang for Square-1, so it's currently really a fight for second.

As an inverse, anything that's based on a percentage of the world record inversely makes events with high luck factors very easy to "accidentally" be world-class in - easy examples are 2x2/Pyra/Skewb single, FMC single, and Square-1 single. By only considering averages, this makes it a bit better (because then you have to have consistently high luck for this to work), but there are a lot of examples of people who accidentally get a sub-30 FMC single despite averaging high 30s (see: US Nats 2014 first scramble, US Nats 2015 third scramble, Tim Wong).

Of these three, I personally think percentage of world record makes the most sense, but that's only my opinion. You can see Daniel Sheppard's reasoning for it, which I largely agree with: https://sites.google.com/site/danielsheppardcuber/

 

[CubeDatCube]

Hah no one really has any interest in clock and if they did, they wouldn't train day and night to achieve the clock WR.