New Ideas for 2010 WCA Regulations?

[eliner]

I was just curious if people had any new ideas of new puzzles or new rules that should be in the 2010 WCA regulations.

i don't have many dramatically ideal

but team work and pratice

 

[PhillipEspinoza]

360 is gonna be made official in 2010 right? Also, as long as Magic remains a legitimate/official puzzle, there's no reason why Snake shouldn't be official (not that I practice either Snake or 360). Wasn't there a thread somewhere where people discussed removing Magic from the official events?

I'm also for the head-to-head event and avg of 5 for megaminx.

Does anyone wanna see 6x6/7x7 BLD as an official event?

 

[idpapro]

Does anyone wanna see 6x6/7x7 BLD as an official event?

i think the wr would be inbetween mike hughey, or chris hardwick

 

[Gunnar]

I think this regulation should be made clearer, and a notice should be sent to every delegate explaining this. I did not realize this was so common. I had heard of a Polish competition where there was a 1 move 2x2x2, but that 1 move was the inverse of the final move of the scramble, and the competitors were not allowed to use it. I had thought this was an isolated incident otherwise I would have mentioned something sooner.

Similar thing has happen in a Finnish a competition, but I think it was a 3-move 2x2x2 and the first move of the solution canceled the last move of the scramble so you couldn't use the block. Sure you could use the block and try to leave just 3 corners left and make the insertion before the first move though

That's bad judgement by the delegate/main judge. The rules must of course be there to prevent a competitor to just write down the scramble backwards. In suspicious cases the competitor would be asked to explain his reasoning behind his solution's start. A 3-move 2x2x2-block is often a quite obvious start, which the judge should realize if he knows anything about FMC.

 

[Slash]

I don't really understand why the cubes with not 100% smooth stickers aren't allowed for BLD. I don't think if the stickers are a bit damaged it shuold be a problem. there's no difference between bit-damaged and bit-damaged stickers. and of course, the judge must pay attention if the competitor tries to distinguish the pieces by touching its stickers. and if there's only one piece with damaged stickers, the cube is not allowed.
I think the delegate/main judge should decide whether the cube has different stickers. We can't avoid damaging stickers because we have those nails on our fingers.
btw, I have damaged stickers on some of my cubes, on a little bit they're different, but I would never try to distinguish the pieces by touching them. And if I see this in a competition as a judge, I will stop the competitor.

 

[Mike Hughey]

Does anyone wanna see 6x6/7x7 BLD as an official event?

i think the wr would be inbetween mike hughey, or chris hardwick

Of course I would! But I admit it's not practical, and I'm not about to push it. There are too many people who would like to remove 5x5x5 BLD as an official event, and I'd rather just leave it alone so we can at least keep 5x5x5 BLD.

 

[Tomk]

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I found this on the internet, prehaps they should be banned in competitions even though i have never heard of anyone using them.

 

[Slash]

Does anyone wanna see 6x6/7x7 BLD as an official event?

i think the wr would be inbetween mike hughey, or chris hardwick

Of course I would! But I admit it's not practical, and I'm not about to push it. There are too many people who would like to remove 5x5x5 BLD as an official event, and I'd rather just leave it alone so we can at least keep 5x5x5 BLD.

I knew you would
By the way, I think 5x5 BLD is enough. For example, at the Hungarian Open 2008 and at the HO 2009 was only 2 5x5 BLD competitors - in 2008 István+Balázs, I mean Pitzu and Zava and in 2009 István+I - and only István solved the cube, so he was standing alone on the podium both times.


and I give +1 for "megaminx average of 5", the reasons are the common reasons you can see earlier in this thread.

 

[CharlieCooper]

I agree that megaminx should be an average of 5. It doesn't take that long to do and if there is really no time in the schedule then the limit for an average can be decreased.

I think that although +2 does prove to be more of a disadvantage in certain events than others, it's the best way of dealing with the situation. Calculating percentages after each solve with a penalty is simply impractical and overcomplicated. It would also allow so much more room for error, particularly with inexperienced judges.

As for group events such as Team BLD I think they should be included if there is a way of doing so. It would add a new element to competitions and a bit more team spirit! Lars and I would need to meet up far more frequently to practise this too, which can't be a bad thing! As for head to head, I'm not sure it really needs to be official, just seems a bit irrelevant to me anyway. It is very fun however!

Whoever said they wanted to know when they were going to be called up for events, this can easily be remedied by posting lists of groups on the wall at the beginning of the day. I have done that at competitions I have organised and it seems to have worked well, especially when the same people are in the same groups for different events. It also means that the organiser can consider beforehand how to distribute more experienced cubers so there are adequate judges and scramblers for each group. Although this is our way of doing it, others would find this annoying to organise and perhaps even unnecessary, so it shouldn't, in my opinion, have a place in the regulations.

One point I have discussed with a few of you already outside of this forum is the subject of scrambles for a competition. As it stands, anyone can organise a competition and as long as a delegate is present, it is recognised by the WCA. At the moment, the organiser (who may or may not be the delegate) provides the scrambles for the competition, which is obviously a very important part of the organisation process. Recently I had a few comments from people following a single solve I did in a competition that I happened to organise. As this was a very fast and considerably lucky solve for me several people made the suggestion that I had cheated in some way. While this was somewhat hurtful to me, for if you actually know me, you will be aware that I would never contemplate such a thing, it did bring a very important matter to light. Trust is essentially being placed in those that may not necessarily have earned it. What I would suggest is that the delegate is responsible for organising the scrambles for a competition. Although this creates more work for a delegate, it could be possible to work around this by only using the same delegate more than once a month if they agreed to it and/or having a few more delegates to share the work load. I hope I explained my point successfully, I feel quite strongly about this, especially after the hostility I encountered after my most recent competition. I think that as cubing is becoming more popular and more competitions are cropping up all over the place, issues like this need to be addressed.

 

[4Chan]

Perhaps a compromise of a "+1" for some events, instead of +2?

 

[gyc6001]

Perhaps a compromise of a "+1" for some events, instead of +2?

especially magic, I screwed terribly because of a +2.
and I got single NR for 2x2 because a friend of mine did +2.

 

[Bryan]

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I found this on the internet, prehaps they should be banned in competitions even though i have never heard of anyone using them.

There, I boiled down your long post as to why this is impractical.

The thing about head-to-head:

You can determine #1 and #2, but nothing else beyond that (without additional rounds)
It doesn't demand any new skill. It's just fast 3x3 solving.

 

[JBCM627]

What I would suggest is that the delegate is responsible for organising the scrambles for a competition. Although this creates more work for a delegate,

I'd actually like to see one program able to generate a PDF containing scrambles for an entire competition. I'm not sure how this would work with Cube Explorer, but this would certainly save a lot of time...

 

[Markus Pirzer]

(...)
I don't like the "two tiles" rule because it is a stupid measurement. For all other puzzles a turn is defined (90 degrees for a cube, 72 degrees for a megaminx) by the physical specifications of the puzzles. And a +2 is given when the puzzle is more than half a turn away from solved. In my opinion a turn on Magic is 180 degrees so everything more than 90 degrees off should be +2 and everything else should be ok. If it weren't for string friction/tightness a Magic that is > 90 degrees off would actually fall back and not be flat but piled up. And if it is <90 degrees it would fall down into the solved position. And the most stupid thing is that currently 2 piled up tiles are +2, but 3 piled up tiles are DNF which actually promotes a particular type of solving for no benefit at all.
(...)

I totally agree with you. You perfectly explained what I have thought when I made the same suggestion about one year ago in the WCA forum: http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=506#p3473

 

[DavidWoner]

What I would suggest is that the delegate is responsible for organising the scrambles for a competition. Although this creates more work for a delegate,

I'd actually like to see one program able to generate a PDF containing scrambles for an entire competition. I'm not sure how this would work with Cube Explorer, but this would certainly save a lot of time...

It's actually been a rather mixed bag for me. When I organized UPenn, Tyson had me generate the scrambles. But when I helped organize MO Open, Shelley provided the scrambles. I do think having the delegate do this would help prevent cheating, or at least prevent some accusations. Jim's idea does sound nice, although I don't really know how easy it would be to implement.

 

[shelley]

I would want a Head to Head Event to be added and to be official somehow.

Adam and I actually discussed this quite extensively. Head to head competitions are great for spectators, especially with an announcer who knows the competitors and can get the audience to root for people. It gets the audience involved and it's much more clear what's going on, rather than the usual competition scene of people walking around everywhere and solves happening at any time. For a non-cuber, watching a fast solve or two might be fun, but with all the chaos it's hard to focus on what's going on and they quickly get bored. If we want to spread awareness of cubing and increase chances of getting competition sponsorships, we should make cubing a more spectator friendly sport.

However, I have a lot of reservations about making head to head anything more than a fun unofficial event. The results are very unreliable for determining the best cuber if we are only comparing specific pairs of single times. In cubing, there is a very objective way to measure your performance against everybody else: your measured time. Why arbitrarily compare that time to only one other time? If you take the 16 competitors in the speedsolve final at Worlds and arrange them in a head to head bracket using their competition results (pairing up the top seed with the bottom seed in each round), you get some interesting outcomes. Piti Pichedpan, ranked 8th by average, actually comes out on top. Erik and Breandan get knocked out in their first and second matches.

Add that to the fact that unless we do a round robin structure (and then it would just be more efficient give everyone a five solve average the usual way) not everyone will be ranked (only 1st, 2nd and 3rd), and all the competitors will be getting different numbers of solves, which doesn't correspond to their skill. With our current system faster people usually get more solves, but with a round where a single bad solve can get you eliminated, this isn't true anymore. I think Adam's reason for wanting it to be official is in the event that a WR single is set during a head to head competition, but if we want to make this an official event, how would the results be entered in the WCA database? Head to head is certainly a fun event and it would be nice to see it more, but I really don't think any kind of WCA competition results (i.e. who advances to the next round or winners of a speedsolve event) should be decided based on it.

 

[qqwref]

I agree with Shelley. One solve isn't enough to decide who is better, but there isn't enough time to do 5 solves in every match, and any time you have two equally-skilled people running against each other it means that one of them won't get to advance while someone who is less skilled might be able to.

Perhaps, if we want to make our sport appeal more to the audience, we could have everyone do their 5 solves at one timing station in sequence for every event. This would create some extra overhead and not be as efficient, but it would be a lot easier to see how a particular person was doing, so it would be more exciting for people who are watching. They could even compute the average themselves, rather than having to remember the 5 times a particular person went up. Since the final results are based on averages, making the round more organized would let audience members figure out what various peoples' averages are with much less effort.

 

[CharlieCooper]

What I would suggest is that the delegate is responsible for organising the scrambles for a competition. Although this creates more work for a delegate,

I'd actually like to see one program able to generate a PDF containing scrambles for an entire competition. I'm not sure how this would work with Cube Explorer, but this would certainly save a lot of time...

It's actually been a rather mixed bag for me. When I organized UPenn, Tyson had me generate the scrambles. But when I helped organize MO Open, Shelley provided the scrambles. I do think having the delegate do this would help prevent cheating, or at least prevent some accusations. Jim's idea does sound nice, although I don't really know how easy it would be to implement.

I agree, a way of generating all the scrambles in one document with only having to input the events and rounds would certainly make this a lot easier. This would also make it so much easier for a delegate to provide the scrambles. I realise the organiser doesn't always generate scrambles, but I just figure it would be a way of ensuring fairness and maintaining the standards of the WCA.

 

[cubeflip]

I was just curious if people had any new ideas of new puzzles or new rules that should be in the 2010 WCA regulations.

they should have bandaged cube. or the Rubik's UFO. or gigaminx. I wonder what the world record would be for that!

 

[CitricAcid]

Not really a regulation,
but I think they should make team BLD solving an official event.
It's so much fun!

Really a regulation:
Transparent cubes LEGALIZED.