New 3x3x3 avg WR

[jcuber]

I would host a competition with every event except 3x3 + 2x2 (I don't like 2x2) and I am sure very few people would object to these events being withheld, especially with every other event to compete in. Perhaps when I'm a bit older (and have all of those other puzzles) I will host this. I can see it now- "Side Event Championships" won by no-one with no average"!


I'm dead serious, just as I am with my 7x7 average of 100, which I will do over the summer (or tomorrow, during spring break).

 

[Dene]

Firstly, as long as you can get the numbers I highly doubt anyone that matters would object. Secondly, an average of 100 on 7x7 is not a "crazy" idea or anything... I could easily fit it into a day.

 

[AvGalen]

I would host a competition with every event except 3x3 + 2x2 (I don't like 2x2) and I am sure very few people would object to these events being withheld, especially with every other event to compete in. Perhaps when I'm a bit older (and have all of those other puzzles) I will host this. I can see it now- "Side Event Championships" won by no-one with no average"!


I'm dead serious, just as I am with my 7x7 average of 100, which I will do over the summer (or tomorrow, during spring break).

I don't think the WCA would stand behind a tournament without 3x3x3. I also see no reason why a tournament should go out of it's way to avoid 3x3x3. If it hadn't been for 3x3x3 in the eighties, we wouldn't be having these tournaments now, would we?

And I completely agree with Shelley/Mike about the "3x3x3 winner is total winner is outdated"

I also agreed with qqref's idea about "best average in competition determines ranking, not best average in final". Then I thought about other sports and how qualification/finals work and now I don't know which system I prefer.

 

[TMOY]

The problem with "best average in competition determines ranking" is that if someone gets a really great average in the 1st or 2nd round, then he can DNF or not even show up in the final and still win the competition, and all other competitors are then fighting only for 2nd place, which makes the final lose part of its interest...

 

[SimonWestlund]

About the Olympics and Davis Cup and so on: in those scenarios it is understood that the athlete is representing their country. You would have to be one of the best in your country to get on the national team, and since that team represents the country it makes sense that the country would feel honored if their athlete does well or dishonored if their athlete does poorly. And when an athlete represents their country it's also understood that the country has helped them out - since the country has put some resources into making the athlete as skilled as they are, congratulating the country is a natural thing to do (although you should still congratulate the athlete of course!).

But for speedcubing, shellie's right on the dot: your country really does not affect your cubing potential or training, and furthermore you do not represent your country. It's not like each country chooses its best cubers to send to a given competition - there's no "Polish team" that trains together, just a bunch of really fast cubers who happen to be from Poland. Poland itself didn't do anything to help them along, and I agree that it's silly to cheer for the country when it put no effort or resources into making Tomasz a better cuber. I think if you do that you are just taking credit away from Tomasz for his amazing accomplishment.

So, congratulations Tomasz!

That would actually be pretty cool to have countries competing like that

 

[Lord Voldemort]

The problem with "best average in competition determines ranking" is that if someone gets a really great average in the 1st or 2nd round, then he can DNF or not even show up in the final and still win the competition, and all other competitors are then fighting only for 2nd place, which makes the final lose part of its interest...

Well, maybe a rule if you don't show up to all rounds you forfeit placing?
But with the DNF thing, if a really amazing average is obtained, they'd deserve to win, having already obtained a really good average.

Quoting Bryan
"For each event, give the first place person 100 points and then give the others (up to some limit), a fraction of 100 based on their time in comparision with the first place person. So if 1st place is 10 seconds, and 2nd place is 15, and 3rd is 20, they would get 100, 67, and 50 points each for that event. Do that for all events and then just sum the point totals. I've seen people suggesting something like this before, but they always do it by the last place person, which leads to problems, because if the last place person has a very high time, then small differences won't matter much (image a Magic with 1s, 2s, and 10minutes)."

This actually seems like a really good idea.
However, I think adjusting the amount of points awarded to first place based on number of competitors is in order. I can think of my getting 2nd at Twin Cities Cubing Classic out of a field of I think 5 people... vs getting 2nd place in the main 3x3x3 event.

 

[qqwref]

The problem with "best average in competition determines ranking" is that if someone gets a really great average in the 1st or 2nd round, then he can DNF or not even show up in the final and still win the competition, and all other competitors are then fighting only for 2nd place, which makes the final lose part of its interest...

But if they can get such a good average, don't they deserve to win anyway? The same situation can happen in a normal final (Erik or whoever goes up first, gets 11.xx avg, then the rest of people are fighting for 2nd place) but nobody complains about that. I think if someone gets an average you can't beat then they deserve to rank ahead of you.

 

[DavidWoner]

I don't think the WCA would stand behind a tournament without 3x3x3. I also see no reason why a tournament should go out of it's way to avoid 3x3x3.

Because it is an incredibly time-consuming event, and the organizers want to be able to have time for multiple rounds of other puzzles.

But if they can get such a good average, don't they deserve to win anyway? The same situation can happen in a normal final (Erik or whoever goes up first, gets 11.xx avg, then the rest of people are fighting for 2nd place) but nobody complains about that. I think if someone gets an average you can't beat then they deserve to rank ahead of you.

I think that's like saying the WR holder should automatically win the World Championships. I think that if you can't be the best when it counts, then you don't deserve it.

 

[qqwref]

Because it is an incredibly time-consuming event, and the organizers want to be able to have time for multiple rounds of other puzzles.

As someone who's organized a competition I totally agree with this. You would think that 3x3 wouldn't take too much time because it is short, but in America there are so many people who want to show up just to do their 3x3 solves that the first round ends up taking well over an hour. The sheer number of people is also a problem for judging, scrambling, and organization itself... I wouldn't be surprised if we could hold two or three additional events or rounds by eliminating 3x3.

But if they can get such a good average, don't they deserve to win anyway? The same situation can happen in a normal final (Erik or whoever goes up first, gets 11.xx avg, then the rest of people are fighting for 2nd place) but nobody complains about that. I think if someone gets an average you can't beat then they deserve to rank ahead of you.

I think that's like saying the WR holder should automatically win the World Championships. I think that if you can't be the best when it counts, then you don't deserve it.

Well, if you can set the WR at WC, I think you SHOULD be the world champion. Anyway, cubing really has a lot of luck involved in it, and it's a given that different people will get their best averages on different rounds. So why should we compare people on the final round when we know for a fact that some people will be disadvantaged, either by bad luck or by simply being tired after spending the entire day cubing [that's me], when we COULD rank them by their best performance? In most other sports the final is a direct head-to-head race, whereas in cubing it's an individual event, so I don't feel like ranking people based on their performance in the final is the only way to go.

 

[EmersonHerrmann]

Because it is an incredibly time-consuming event, and the organizers want to be able to have time for multiple rounds of other puzzles.

As someone who's organized a competition I totally agree with this. You would think that 3x3 wouldn't take too much time because it is short, but in America there are so many people who want to show up just to do their 3x3 solves that the first round ends up taking well over an hour. The sheer number of people is also a problem for judging, scrambling, and organization itself... I wouldn't be surprised if we could hold two or three additional events or rounds by eliminating 3x3.

Oh my God....remember the SF Open?

 

[qqwref]

yes D:

We would've had a lot less people without 3x3, but we probably could have done a lot more events. It was crazy... we had like three separate teams of judges/scramblers and timers.

 

[TobiasDaneels]

I think that it wouldn't be right to call the best average of the tournement the winner of the event.
In almost every competition I went to, premilary rounds are done in seperate groups, with other scrambles for each group. Therefore, someone could do a great average ebing a bit lucky with the scrambles while his/her main rival is in a group with harder scrambles.

 

[Pedro]

I think that it wouldn't be right to call the best average of the tournement the winner of the event.
In almost every competition I went to, premilary rounds are done in seperate groups, with other scrambles for each group. Therefore, someone could do a great average ebing a bit lucky with the scrambles while his/her main rival is in a group with harder scrambles.

agreed

most sports are playing against someone, while cubing is not

it's kinda like sprinting or racing (with cars)

they have qualification rounds, and the winner is the winner of the final


I agree that 3x3 winner =/= competition winner, though

 

[Bryan]

I think that it wouldn't be right to call the best average of the tournement the winner of the event.
In almost every competition I went to, premilary rounds are done in seperate groups, with other scrambles for each group. Therefore, someone could do a great average ebing a bit lucky with the scrambles while his/her main rival is in a group with harder scrambles.

There's nothing that says finals can't have different groups. I believe Ron even stated that in Worlds, finals had multiple groups.

 

[firefox109]

sorry to ask but whats a WR?

 

[byu]

WR = world record
CR = continental record
NR = national record

 

[Bryan]

WR = world record
CR = continental record
NR = national record

And also, CR is usually broken down to the specific continent, so most people won't talk about Dan Cohen regaining the CR, but they'll talk about him regaining the NAR (North American Record).

Other ones:

SAR - South America
ER - Europe
AfR - Africa
AsR - Asia
AuR - Austrailian

 

[Robert-Y]

Sorry if someone has already suggested this and/or if this is a stupid idea but, what if the winner was the person with the best overall 3x3x3 avg, calculated by taking into account every solve of each round (removing best and worst)?

 

[Pedro]

Sorry if someone has already suggested this and/or if this is a stupid idea but, what if the winner was the person with the best overall 3x3x3 avg, calculated by taking into account every solve of each round (removing best and worst)?

how would you deal with people who do only 1 or 2 averages, of 5 while other do 3 averages?

 

[Robert-Y]

Sorry if someone has already suggested this and/or if this is a stupid idea but, what if the winner was the person with the best overall 3x3x3 avg, calculated by taking into account every solve of each round (removing best and worst)?

how would you deal with people who do only 1 or 2 averages, of 5 while other do 3 averages?

The people who didn't make it to the final round can't win?