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What should be fair cutoffs for competitions.

Mike Hughey

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So where do their results go?
On the WCA website, along with everyone else's. Here's an example of someone who never completed an average:

As you can see, he has full records, and a national, continental, and world ranking by single. He just lacks an average ranking because he never completed an average.
 

PetrusQuber

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On the WCA website, along with everyone else's. Here's an example of someone who never completed an average:

As you can see, he has full records, and a national, continental, and world ranking by single. He just lacks an average ranking because he never completed an average.
Thanks! I guess not a lot of people will fail the cutoff.
 

kadabrium

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Even with cutoffs as high as theyre now ( close to 40 kinch rank), the majority of comps can still justify time constraint as a reason not to hold 6x6 and 7x7.

Or take a look at megaminx too. This is a puzzle in between 4x4 and 5x5 in absolute size. its cutoff is one of the lowest out of all the events (<<30 kinch rank), usually numerically equal to that of 5x5. however it is only held <80% as often as the latter.
 

One Wheel

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But it is an option for everyone, unless you're in an area with no delegates
Not everyone lives in an area with delegates, and even if you have delegates around they have to agree to help you. I’ve had good experiences with my local delegates, but as I’ve mentioned before it took some convincing to get them to agree to let me organize a competition. It’s not as simple as “I want to organize a competition.”
 

Parke187

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Not everyone lives in an area with delegates, and even if you have delegates around they have to agree to help you. I’ve had good experiences with my local delegates, but as I’ve mentioned before it took some convincing to get them to agree to let me organize a competition. It’s not as simple as “I want to organize a competition.”
I literally said unless you live in an area with no delegates.
Organizing is pretty easy, I'm in the process of doing it now in fact.
 
U

Underwatercuber

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Not everyone lives in an area with delegates, and even if you have delegates around they have to agree to help you. I’ve had good experiences with my local delegates, but as I’ve mentioned before it took some convincing to get them to agree to let me organize a competition. It’s not as simple as “I want to organize a competition.”
Delegates can travel and the WCA even has funds to help pay for delegates to travel to new areas where competition fees cannot cover travel cost.

In most cases Delegates help people organize their first competition but sometimes they may expect you to put some work in before reaching out to them. Make a rough draft of a schedule, ready out to venues and figure out cost and availability, etc. There are plenty of people online who would be willing to help you out as well.

if you have been to a competition and not had to drive 8+ hours or fly to it then odds are you can hold a competition, you can co-organize with whoever held the competition, use the same venue, etc. This may not always work but I would guess it would work a pretty good amount of the time.
 

One Wheel

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I literally said unless you live in an area with no delegates.
Organizing is pretty easy, I'm in the process of doing it now in fact.
You’re right, it’s not that hard, but it’s not an option for everybody. Even if it was, think of somebody who’s just starting out, and wants to compete in 4x4. If they average 2:30 and cutoffs are 1:30, then are they going to try organizing a competition with more generous cutoffs, or are they just going to assume they suck and not bother? If it was me I would be inclined to just believe I suck. I went to a competition, read a lot, watched a lot of videos, and decided that I want to compete anyway, so I put in the effort to organize a competition. I wanted to encourage people who are slower to go ahead and compete (with myself squarely in that category) so I argued for, and got the delegates who were helping me to agree, to pretty lenient cutoffs (8:00 7x7, 5:00 6x6, etc.). I’m just arguing that because not everybody will organize a competition the people who do should think about slow cubers at least as much as about fast cubers.
 
U

Underwatercuber

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You’re right, it’s not that hard, but it’s not an option for everybody. Even if it was, think of somebody who’s just starting out, and wants to compete in 4x4. If they average 2:30 and cutoffs are 1:30, then are they going to try organizing a competition with more generous cutoffs, or are they just going to assume they suck and not bother? If it was me I would be inclined to just believe I suck. I went to a competition, read a lot, watched a lot of videos, and decided that I want to compete anyway, so I put in the effort to organize a competition. I wanted to encourage people who are slower to go ahead and compete (with myself squarely in that category) so I argued for, and got the delegates who were helping me to agree, to pretty lenient cutoffs (8:00 7x7, 5:00 6x6, etc.). I’m just arguing that because not everybody will organize a competition the people who do should think about slow cubers at least as much as about fast cubers.
If they are just starting out then they could also just not get an average their first competition and put the work in to make cutoffs at a latter competition.

Having fast cutoffs isn’t “not thinking” about slow competitors, in fact most competitions have very lenient cutoffs or none at all for 3x3 and some begginer events. Catering to new competitors is cool and all but it would be pretty frustrating for all the returning/fast competitors to only have a few rounds of a few events every local competition especially when 70% of the new competitors won’t compete anymore after 1-3 competitions.
 

cubeshepherd

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So after the recent competition I organized and having talked to some of the competitors and delegate, I am a bit more for stricter cutoff times for competitions. And here are some reasons (most of which the delegate mentioned) but that make sense. Also, these ideas are not fully mine, but rather just me relaying them to this thread.

1. It gets people to actually practice and try to get better (to make cutoff(, then just the mind set of "I am already sub 30 on Pyraminx, so I don't need to practice it much for the comp". But if the competitor sees that the cutoff for Pyraminx is 15 seconds, and he is averaging 17 then he might practice a little more to get sub cutoff.
In essence the point of this is to get people that are serious at getting better to get better and create a more competitive event(s), rather then just having the expected people make it to the finals like they do most of the time (and I am referring to local/smaller comps and not major one). HOWEVER, I do understand that some people have a harder time getting sub X on a certain event and just want to get a average so I don't have a issues if a organizer wants that, but as a whole I am more for harder cutoff's at comps, then making sure that everyone gets a average (without practicing much).

2. (And this feeds off of 1), but having easier cutoffs at competitions, will not allow you to have either has many events or as many rounds of the events you already have, which is fine if you as the organizer wants that, but again if you want to have more rounds/more events then having stricter cutoff times would be the best way to go.
 
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