Possible 2011 WCA Regulations Changes

It's been said many times (though not in this thread) but I believe magic could be a really good event/puzzle if it was to solve it from scambled, I don't understand why this was never the case.
 
Godmil said:
It's been said many times (though not in this thread) but I believe magic could be a really good event/puzzle if it was to solve it from scambled, I don't understand why this was never the case.
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It would not be a good event. The amount to cases that would be lucky and skew the results would be way worse than 2x2 is now.
 
5x5 no just takes too long and even with vcubes its ****
4x4 yes thats funny. i think sub1:30 avg is not so hard. but it will probably become an event just like feet that nobody does srsly.
2x2 stupid. but i think thats not part of this discussion.

edit: this is about other cubes OH btw. the threads got merged.
 
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after US nationals last year I was pretty frustrated with the current FMC format. right now, the way FMC is done rewards luck far more than it does skill. anyone can hop into the event, get lucky, and set a record regardless of how good they are at solving the cube efficiently. I suggest that the format be changed. I have already thought of a pretty good way to do it that will reward skilled solvers and will minimize the luck most people relay on to win.

my idea is that each competitor is given TWO scrambles and then, within one hour, must find TWO solutions. then their score is the average of both solutions. first, since it's an average it makes FMC more like the rest of the events. imagine how bad 3x3 would be if we only based your score off of one solve no matter how lucky or unlucky you were. finding two solutions in one hour also decreases the amount luck needed to win. now that there is less time to work on a single solve you have less time to find the lucky cases. if someone DNFs one of the solutions there score will be DNF. there is no excuse to have a DNF in FMC. you are given so much time to carefully check your solution and make sure it works. getting one solution in 30 minutes is also not very hard since more people can solve in <20 seconds.

the scores and move counts people get from this format will be larger than the ones people get today but I'd rather have bad scores where the better solvers win than good scores where lucky solvers win.

what do you guys think?
 
ErikJ said:
after US nationals last year I was pretty frustrated with the current FMC format. right now, the way FMC is done rewards luck far more than it does skill. anyone can hop into the event, get lucky, and set a record regardless of how good they are at solving the cube efficiently. I suggest that the format be changed. I have already thought of a pretty good way to do it that will reward skilled solvers and will minimize the luck most people relay on to win.

my idea is that each competitor is given TWO scrambles and then, within one hour, must find TWO solutions. then their score is the average of both solutions. first, since it's an average it makes FMC more like the rest of the events. imagine how bad 3x3 would be if we only based your score off of one solve no matter how lucky or unlucky you were. finding two solutions in one hour also decreases the amount luck needed to win. now that there is less time to work on a single solve you have less time to find the lucky cases. if someone DNFs one of the solutions there score will be DNF. there is no excuse to have a DNF in FMC. you are given so much time to carefully check your solution and make sure it works. getting one solution in 30 minutes is also not very hard since more people can solve in <20 seconds.

the scores and move counts people get from this format will be larger than the ones people get today but I'd rather have bad scores where the better solvers win than good scores where lucky solvers win.

what do you guys think?
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When I first read your idea, I thought it sounds quite good.
But when thinking about it, doesn't that make the current/past records kind of unequal compared to possible new ones?

A possible solution to that problem could be to have single AND average (mean of 2) for FMC and the average would decide on the rankings at competitions.
Pro: It would make the event less luck-based
Con: The really good FMCers even have problems with finding a solution, that they are happy with, within the given hour.
I think many people would just try to get a good solution for one scramble and just don't care about the other one at all.
 
Yes said:
But when thinking about it, doesn't that make the current/past records kind of unequal compared to possible new ones?
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yes it does. just like when they changed multi BLD.

Yes said:
The really good FMCers even have problems with finding a solution, that they are happy with, within the given hour.
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this is exactly the problem with the current format though. most of the people who get good move counts just try over and over and over again doing steps of the solve differently until they get something lucky. that's all FMC is right now. who ever can find the luckiest thing wins. it has nothing to do with skill at all.

have you ever heard someone say "I couldn't find anything" after a round of FMC? does this mean they couldn't solve the scramble? or does it mean that they couldn't find anything lucky?
 
ErikJ said:
yes it does. just like when they changed multi BLD.
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Just because an unfair thing happened once, it shouldn't happen a second time.
Also, the multi BLD sence made more sence (IMO ofc) than this would.

ErikJ said:
this is exactly the problem with the current format though. most of the people who get good move counts just try over and over and over again doing steps of the solve differently until they get something lucky. that's all FMC is right now. who ever can find the luckiest thing wins. it has nothing to do with skill at all.

have you ever heard someone say "I couldn't find anything" after a round of FMC? does this mean they couldn't solve the scramble? or does it mean that they couldn't find anything lucky?
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So? What's the problem with that? Everyone has the same conditions.
Srsly, who doesn't search for lucky stuff on FMC?
Imho, finding e.g. a sub-30 moves solution with a skip is still a good effort. But that might be just me.
 
Yes said:
So? What's the problem with that? Everyone has the same conditions.
Srsly, who doesn't search for lucky stuff on FMC?
Imho, finding e.g. a sub-30 moves solution with a skip is still a good effort. But that might be just me.
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I think you think that I'm frustrated I didn't win FMC at natinonals. I'm not. but I do think other people should have won. look at the results the top several people either have DNFs or VERY inconsistent move counts. should they be rewarded for their luck in one solve?

you can still search for lucky stuff. I'm not saying it's not allowed. it's just going to be harder to do given a shorter time.

it's not about the effort. it's about skill. it takes no skill to get a PLL skip.
 
Erik, I think you are missing the goal for a lot of good FMCers. They do not care about getting a mediocre result. Finding a 33-35ish move solution is pretty simple for them, but instead they don't bother spending any time on something like that because it doesn't get a good result. Its the same in speedsolving (somewhat). I can easily get a 2 minute 5x5 solve, but if I don't get something close to what I am aiming to get, there's really no point in me finishing a solve (obviously this doesn't happen in speedsolving too often).
 
masterofthebass said:
Erik, I think you are missing the goal for a lot of good FMCers. They do not care about getting a mediocre result. Finding a 33-35ish move solution is pretty simple for them, but instead they don't bother spending any time on something like that because it doesn't get a good result. Its the same in speedsolving (somewhat). I can easily get a 2 minute 5x5 solve, but if I don't get something close to what I am aiming to get, there's really no point in me finishing a solve (obviously this doesn't happen in speedsolving too often).
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5x5 is an event where the scores are calculated with averages. if 5x5 was based on single solve and I got a PLL skip and beat you (ha) would you feel like I deserved to win? that's what FMC is like. it should be done as an average somehow. the problem is that making fmc a two hour event for 2 solves would make it hard to do in competition.
 
Kewl, now people get to chose between 4BLD and 5DLB or 4OH and 5OH, if theres any other competitor of course.
whauk said:
5x5 no just takes too long and even with vcubes its ****
4x4 yes thats funny. i think sub1:30 avg is not so hard. but it will probably become an event just like feet that nobody does srsly.
2x2 stupid. but i think thats not part of this discussion.
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I got the double the lolz with your sig, cool solve btw.
 
Erik, when I read your proposal, I thought, "Gee, someone wants to make it easier for me to do well at FMC!" Then I looked at your WCA results and realized your stats are almost exactly like mine. You have a slightly lower move count average than me, but I don't have any DNFs, where you have one. :p And in fairness to me, for a couple of my attempts, I was doing two events at once - perhaps big cubes BLD and fewest moves - and so I had just 15 to 20 minutes to come up with solutions a couple of times, which explains some of my high numbers. (My 39 move first place was one of those where I only spent 15 to 20 minutes on the solution - if I recall correctly, I did that and the 10/10 multiBLD in a total of about 1 hour and 10 minutes.)

But honestly, the level at which you and I are competing is simply not as good as what the experts do. Like Dan says, an expert can always get 33 to 35 moves, which is a decent solution for you and I. But the expert won't even bother with those solutions, because they want a good one, which by definition is sub-30. The fact that we're not sub-30 yet shows that we're really not good enough to be choosing rules for this event, in my opinion.
 
Mike Hughey said:
But the expert won't even bother with those solutions, because they want a good one, which by definition is sub-30.
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when they keep looking for better solutions all they are doing is trying to find the luckiest case. i have had several sub 30 solves back in the day of dan's FMC
most of which were lucky.

I don't understand why no one sees what I'm saying: in a competitive environment winners should be selected by skill not a dice roll or coin toss (luck). there is no way to totally remove luck from any event including FMC. but there are ways to reduce it such as doing averages of 5 where the best and worst solves are taken out. the format I have suggested will not prevent the better solvers from winning. they will win. and they will do it with skill instead of luck.

the winners of nationals in 09 both had OLL skips. they won because they got lucky. I personally feel that chris hardwick should have won FMC last year because of his consistency. all of the competitors above him had one really good solve and a really bad one or DNF.

back in armonk in 2008 bob beat me by 5 moves because he had the 6 move OLL and a PLL skip while I did a fancy petrus trick to cancel moves with COLL. he won because he was lucky not because he was better than me.
 
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ErikJ said:
I personally feel that chris hardwick should have won FMC last year because of his consistency. all of the competitors above him had one really good solve and a really bad one or DNF.
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Yeah, but Clément had exactly the same average as Chris; I think it's pretty safe to say that even with your perspective, Clément should have beaten Chris, since they had the exact same average and Clément had the better single. (And Clément is pretty consistently decent at fewest moves; he's a very deserving winner.)

I do understand what you're saying; I'm just not sure it really helps a lot. If it acts as a motivator to guarantee the experts will always get a success and never DNF, I suppose that's a nice result. But that assumes the experts actually care; most of them now seem to want to go for the really great solve instead of going for nice averages.

The way I look at it is that there are really only a handful of real fewest move experts out there; the rest of us just have fun with it.
 
I would prefer to replace FMC with a mean of 3 than a mean of 2. It's even better as far as consistency and rewarding blockbuilding/FMC skill over pure luck. And because mean of 3 is already an established average-type format, the single solve would remain in the rankings.

Here's the catch in my proposal: like Erik's setup, instead of 3 sequential solves, this would be a single event. We could choose a time limit such as one hour (20 minutes per cube) or 1.5 hours (30 minutes per cube) but the point is that you can choose how to spend your time on the 3 scrambles. You can ignore the average and spend all the time on the easiest-feeling scramble; you can jot down quick blockbuilding solutions and improve the worst ones first; and so on. There would be a lot of new strategy and it would be a much more interesting event.

The current ranking would NOT be removed because it would be converted into a single solve ranking, with a new average ranking being created. So the ranking in a competition would be average first, then best single for those with 1-2 DNFs. People doing the new event are actually not disadvantaged in the single solve ranking, so we don't need to wipe it. If you want to go for single solve, you can still spend a full hour on one scramble (and you get to choose the easiest of the 3, too), but if you spend time on each of the scrambles you basically get 3 attempts at a good single.
 
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