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Welcome Thay Cambridge 2015

illius

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Apr 20, 2015
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Yeah, people should practise for half an hour instead of asking for cutoffs to be changed. 1:30 on sq-1 is stupidly slow imo (no offence intended). It's like 30-40 twists to solve with 5 algs.

I was joking about the cutoff change. However, 'half-an-hour' is not really a fair thing to say. I have only practiced Sq-1 for the past week. I have done 350 solves. I have spent hours just today, and I am still slow. I guess that the fact is that some improve faster than others, and I do not improve very quickly at Sq-1. On the other hand, I am getting the QiYi soon, which hopefully will bring me under the cutoff.
 

BillyRain

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When I was affected by cuts I guess I used to complain a bit too.. but then it just gave me motivation to find out why I wasn't improving. Then, instead of raw practice I started to look at example solves and learned how to be more efficient. That was the key.

That said, saying "half an hour" was a little condescending lol...
 

illius

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I really had to work hard to get sub cut at 5x5, but SQ-1 cut is relatively easy to get.

For me, the 5x5x5 cut is impossible to beat, because my AoChuang lies in pieces (cubes just love to explode with me). Luckily, I might buy a YuXin. My SS is quite bad.

I think that Sq-1 should be easier than it is. I reckon that it is the easiest event to be world-class in, thanks to the (supposedly amazing) QiYi. When I buy it soon, I shall probably be sub-60.
 

Kev43

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What is harsh about soft cuts is that they are a barrier to registering an official average at all, even a slow one. What's more, it's inconsistent between countries and events. There are plenty of people slower than me with official 5x5 averages.

Since I started 5x5 I have done 600 timed solves at an overall average of 3:18, which allowing time for scrambling and inspection is about 50 hours of practice, maybe 60-70 with untimed solves and other practice. I know there are people who put in much more, but that's a significant investment born from genuine interest and enthusiasm, not just "half an hour". I'm now at about 2:45, so closing in on the cut, but it will take a lot more effort to get there.
At WGC in May I got annoyed because the 5x5 cutoff was always 2:30 and my average was 2:30. Not making the cut is frustrating so I decided to solve 5 cubes a day every day. Sometimes 12 on week-ends. After 123 days of this I think I'd cut around 20 seconds off my average, so now I'm confident I'll make the cut next time.

I might do that for 6x6 as well. It takes very little effort really, just the will to solve your cubes every day :)
 

mark49152

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I really had to work hard to get sub cut at 5x5

When I was affected by cuts I guess I used to complain a bit too.. but then it just gave me motivation to find out why I wasn't improving. Then, instead of raw practice I started to look at example solves and learned how to be more efficient. That was the key.

Yeah, as a Hoya/AvG user, I know I'm trading off some efficiency for easier lookahead. What I don't know is how inefficient it really is. 10% more moves than Yau/Freeslice? Or 50%? Have a look at this, would be great to see what you guys think: Efficiency of 5x5 edges methods

At WGC in May I got annoyed because the 5x5 cutoff was always 2:30 and my average was 2:30. Not making the cut is frustrating so I decided to solve 5 cubes a day every day. Sometimes 12 on week-ends. After 123 days of this I think I'd cut around 20 seconds off my average, so now I'm confident I'll make the cut next time.
Generally I do 12 solves per session for 5x5, maybe 1-2 sessions per week. What I've found recently is kind of the opposite of what you say - frequent short sessions are OK for sustaining my level, but it's when I find time to do longer sessions of 20-30 or more that I start to see bursts of improvement. Unfortunately finding that much practice time isn't easy :).
 

RicardoRix

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Jul 29, 2013
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2013LEIS01
This is the address:
110 Fulbourn Rd, Cambridge, Cambridge CB1 9NJ, United Kingdom

It's on the outskirts of cherry hinton, towards Fulbourn.
From Cambridge town, you are very likely just to take Cherry Hinton Road (turns into Fulbourn road) all the way to the venue. Still about 1-2 miles though, cherry hinton road is loooong.
At town end of cherry hinton road there is Travel lodge in the middle of loads of stuff like restaurants, cafes and a cinema. I think that's the closest and the most convenient.
 

joey

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Sent an e-mail, megaminx has been added. Please reply to that e-mail if you want to be added, I won't be looking here for people asking to be added.

Can you add me to 4x4 please? Just want to see if I can meet the Hard Cut as I'm fairly useless at it. Thanks.
Done. Everyone else wanting things changed, please e-mail me.

Could we have more info on the venue, please? There's more than one place called "ARM" in Cambridge, which one am I looking for? The only info you've provided is that it's the "same as last two years", which isn't that helpful to us newbies.

While we're at it, any hotel recommendations?

Sorry, forgot we had opened several new offices since then. As RicardoRix said.
 

kinch2002

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What is harsh about soft cuts is that they are a barrier to registering an official average at all, even a slow one. What's more, it's inconsistent between countries and events. There are plenty of people slower than me with official 5x5 averages.

Since I started 5x5 I have done 600 timed solves at an overall average of 3:18, which allowing time for scrambling and inspection is about 50 hours of practice, maybe 60-70 with untimed solves and other practice. I know there are people who put in much more, but that's a significant investment born from genuine interest and enthusiasm, not just "half an hour". I'm now at about 2:45, so closing in on the cut, but it will take a lot more effort to get there.

BTW, my question was in jest, and I'm not really complaining, just making an observation and giving the perspective of a competitor who's affected by the cut. I understand the practical reasons for needing harsher cuts on more time-consuming events, and I accept it. In a way it's good to have the cut as a goal rather than some arbitrary PB time, and without the cut I wouldn't ever have the motivation and gratification of beating it :D.

I was directing my comments at Sq-1 (addressed below) - sorry for the generalisation of my statement! Interesting insight about cuts though. 2:30 on 5x5 is certainly not an achievable target for 30 minutes of practise! Indeed some people will have to work for months or even a year or 2 to get there, but as you've stated, time constraints make it difficult to justify increasing it. This formula probably doesn't work for other events, but a world class solver would take 5 minutes of solving time to finish an average - same as 2:30 x 2 solves :)

I'm not directing the following points at you specifically, but merely writing some random thoughts:

I don't have an issue with the existence of cuts. This is a competitive hobby, which mean I always like to draw comparisons to "real" sports: Rewarding faster people by letting them have more solves and medals should not be confused with elitism and does not necessarily mean we're not being inclusive enough. I like to think we're a lot more accommodating than most equivalent hobbies/sports actually.

I think different cuts in different competitions/countries is fine - again, that's perfectly normal for every other comparable activity. I wouldn't feel strongly against making them consistent though, but logistics and a wide variation in abilities across the world make a strong argument for the status quo.

I was joking about the cutoff change. However, 'half-an-hour' is not really a fair thing to say. I have only practiced Sq-1 for the past week. I have done 350 solves. I have spent hours just today, and I am still slow. I guess that the fact is that some improve faster than others, and I do not improve very quickly at Sq-1. On the other hand, I am getting the QiYi soon, which hopefully will bring me under the cutoff.

I thought by saying that you wanted 1:30 cutoff you meant that you were 1:30 or below already and if that is the case, I still believe that 30 minutes of practise can get you sub-1. Of course some people improve faster than others, but (no offence intended) maybe you haven't learnt the right things? Maybe I can help...using Vandenburgh, there is a set of 5 algs that can get you sub-30 fairly easily with some cubeshape knowledge and still sub-40 even with beginners cubeshape.
CP: Intuitive, average of 2 slice, max 3 slices.
EO: Opp-Opp (alg is M2) and single edge swap. Each case is max 2 of those algs.
CP: Double J. All cases can be done with 1 or 2 double Js (4 slices each alg)
EP: Adj-Adj (4 slices) until you reduce to Adj parity (long :p). Also you should know H perm already from 3x3 (M2 U M2 U2 M2 U M2) so you don't have to do 4 adj-adjs for that.
By the way, "M2" is 1,0/-1,-1/0,1

Maybe I should make a tutorial on this minimal-alg-but-still-fast method.
 
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