Changing Multi BLD format?

[Pedro]

There is some discussion going on between the delegates about changing multi bld format, lowering the limit (which is 60 min today).

What is your opinion about this? Should the format be changed from 60 min max to a lower time? If so, what would be a good limit?

Please vote.

 

[Username]

I vote for either Change to unlimited time (for fun xD, i know 60 minutes is maximum) or to change it to 45 minutes

 

[applemobile]

Perhaps if a lesser time limit was avaliable for the delegates of certain competitions to choose. I.e they could run either the standard 60min option, or if it was a smaller competition that could not afford the time, they could run a 20min limit. Both of these would be perceived as completely different events, and world records/stats would be recorded accordingly. This way you will not disturb previous records, and if a lesser time restraint was avaliable, then some smaller competitions may be able to offer multi-blind where they previously wold not be able too.

 

[Goosly]

There are two 10-minute-options in the poll.

Should not be changed imo. But applemobile's idea could be a good alternative for small competitions.

 

[Pedro]

I vote for either Change to unlimited time (for fun xD, i know 60 minutes is maximum) or to change it to 45 minutes

It was unlimited in the past (http://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_World_Records/Old_Multi), but that was obviously very troublesome, so a limit was adopted. I don't think a reduction to 45 minutes would be enough, considering the purpose, which is making the event easier to hold.

Perhaps if a lesser time limit was avaliable for the delegates of certain competitions to choose. I.e they could run either the standard 60min option, or if it was a smaller competition that could not afford the time, they could run a 20min limit. Both of these would be perceived as completely different events, and world records/stats would be recorded accordingly. This way you will not disturb previous records, and if a lesser time restraint was avaliable, then some smaller competitions may be able to offer multi-blind where they previously wold not be able too.

It would be weird to have two types of events both existing at the same time. I'm not sure what would happen to current results if the change is made, but it would probably become an obsolete category, and everything would start over from scratch.

There are two 10-minute-options in the poll.

Should not be changed imo. But applemobile's idea could be a good alternative for small competitions.

Yeah, can a mod please correct it?

 

[Mike Hughey]

I should probably respond to this, since I was the crazy person who initially made the suggestion to change it to 10 minutes on the delegates' list (I suggested it a few months ago).

For all fans of big multi attempts, I hope you'll forgive me - I feel a little like a traitor even suggesting it. And I have to admit I really doubt it's time to take my suggestion yet - I feel like we need more time before we really do it - I doubt we're ready yet as a community. But I thought I'd at least give my reasons for such a crazy suggestion.

1. Multi is causing logistical problems of various sorts. People who travel to competitions find it hard to bring enough cubes, which is apparently causing a number of top people to abandon multi. It is certainly a challenge to organizers to handle competitors with large numbers of cubes. An hour is a very long time to have to judge a single attempt. Keeping the cubes covered with so many cubes is a challenge. And there are certainly other issues I'm not thinking of right now.
2. Multi is the only event that's weird in that, despite our being a speedcubing community, the event takes longer to do as you get better at it. That feels very uncomfortable to me, and makes it feel like it doesn't really belong as an event as well as the other events do. A ten minute limit would give the feel of a speed event, even at world-class levels.
3. The best people at multi are capable of quite a few cubes at 10 minutes. I strongly suspect the world record would be 10+ within a couple of years of our adopting such a limit. It's amazing, but people really are that good.
4. It would go along with the other suggestion I made at the time, which was to do away with stopwatches for timing solves at competitions. We could always use a stackmat. The stackmat would be the limit - it would be a nice clean breaking point. It would also give justification for never allowing 6x6x6 BLD as an official event, unless someone gets good enough to do one in under 10 minutes.
5. It could become a standard format (hopefully the preferred format) to hold multiBLD as a best of 3 event. I probably like this part most about the idea.

There are of course some very good arguments against this crazy proposal of mine. To be honest, I'm not sold on it myself - it was just a suggestion. Here are some of the problems:
1. Very very few people are capable of 5x5x5 BLD in under 10 minutes, which makes my suggestion in reason (4) above not such a good idea. My hope is that this will eventually no longer be the case (I really hope I'm sub-10 at 5x5x5 BLD someday - I'm working to try to get there someday), but we're certainly not there yet.
2. It completely changes the character of the event, invalidating some previous amazing results. I would hope that even if we do ever adopt this rule, we'd leave old results around archivally so that they're not lost forever.
3. The event currently is used by some as a way to get more than 10 minutes for a 3x3x3 BLD attempt; this would take that away. I guess I feel that 10 minutes is still sufficiently reasonable for most people to make it, and I don't think we need this extra option, but I know that some people disagree.
4. A number of people who can currently solve 2 cubes in under 20 minutes would no longer be able to reach the requirement of 10 minutes under such a new rule. I do have some sympathy for this perspective.

As you can tell, I'm not exactly a salesman pushing my idea, but I do think it has some merit.

One thing I'd like to point out now, though, is that the rules are currently such that, by applying a time limit to the attempt, an organizer could currently legally hold the multiBLD event under my proposed rules. If I have another Indiana competition this year, it's multiBLD year this year - I'm considering doing exactly this: ten minute time limit per attempt, best of 3 event. I think it's a nice format, and it will be interesting to see what kind of results we get.

Yeah, can a mod please correct it?

I changed one of the options to 20 minutes.

 

[AlexByard]

Yeah, i can see the pros and cons of this. Mike, you gave a very good explanation and it has opened my eyes to alot of things, I personally would not like to see the Time limit changed, because of some of the great accomplishments people have made within this area.... But at the same time i would like to see it changed, because it would open up some amazing new opportunity's. I am going to practice with a 10 minute limit (Although i will most likely never attend a competition. So.... I believe it should be lowered to 10 minutes, although it will be upsetting to see it changed.

 

[Ollie]

I'm actually not as against Mike's idea as I thought I would be. I much prefer doing smaller attempts and a best of 3 format sounds appealing at a competition. Though I've yet to compete in an official Multi BLD, the idea that I would go into one for the majority of competitions with only one attempt is daunting, adds pressure and may put other people off doing bigger attempts. And while I would sympathise with the BLD solvers who could no longer try a 2/2, it's merely a motivator for them to get better and protects judges for waiting around only to see a 0/2 in 20:00.

My main worry would be reaching a 'maximum' number of cubes. This sounds silly since it's probably a long time before anyone will reach the limit of human memorization, but unless the 3-style solvers can execute in under 30s or even 20s then there will be a certain amount of cubes a person can execute in a certain time slot. The obvious answer to this is extend the time period, or have 10min multi BLD as a separate event.

The other is what we'd do with the final top 100 because it will contain some pretty damn impressive times and it would be a shame to place them to one side to gather dust in the archives.

 

[Mike Hughey]

My main worry would be reaching a 'maximum' number of cubes. This sounds silly since it's probably a long time before anyone will reach the limit of human memorization, but unless the 3-style solvers can execute in under 30s or even 20s then there will be a certain amount of cubes a person can execute in a certain time slot. The obvious answer to this is extend the time period, or have 10min multi BLD as a separate event.

I actually think getting close to this limit could create some excitement, occasionally. Imagine we've hit an apparent limit of, say, 18 cubes, and it just seems impossible for anyone to beat it, and we get stuck there for a number of years. Imagine the excitement when someone suddenly gets 19 at home, and there's video. Now all of a sudden there's this intense excitement every time they go to a competition - can they really get 19? And it's still true that the time counts as a tiebreaker, so a maximum number isn't really a problem.

And I do agree that some of the current results are amazing and I wouldn't want to lose them. Marcin, Marcell, and Zane's results right now (not to mention Tim Habermaas's old-style result) would be a shame to lose. I rather like the way the multi-blind old style results sort of got "promoted" to greater respectability when we discontinued magic and master magic - now they appear on the individual competitor's page again, even in the continental and world records section, which is really nice. I'd hope we'd do the same with any event we ever discontinue.

 

[Stefan]

One thing I'd like to point out now, though, is that the rules are currently such that, by applying a time limit to the attempt, an organizer could currently legally hold the multiBLD event under my proposed rules. If I have another Indiana competition this year, it's multiBLD year this year - I'm considering doing exactly this: ten minute time limit per attempt, best of 3 event.

H1b already defines the time limit:

"H1b) If he is attempting fewer than 6 puzzles, the competitor is allotted a time limit of 10 minutes times the number of puzzles in the attempt, else the time limit is 60 minutes."

 

[antoineccantin]

I actually think getting close to this limit could create some excitement, occasionally. Imagine we've hit an apparent limit of, say, 18 cubes, and it just seems impossible for anyone to beat it, and we get stuck there for a number of years. Imagine the excitement when someone suddenly gets 19 at home, and there's video. Now all of a sudden there's this intense excitement every time they go to a competition - can they really get 19? And it's still true that the time counts as a tiebreaker, so a maximum number isn't really a problem.

Isn't this kind of the reason Maskow had quit in the first place? Too much stress to get the WR in competition?

 

[BlueDevil]

H1b already defines the time limit:

"H1b) If he is attempting fewer than 6 puzzles, the competitor is allotted a time limit of 10 minutes times the number of puzzles in the attempt, else the time limit is 60 minutes."

I think Mike was arguing that since organizers can make cutoffs, one could do this for mbld, but i think you are correct because the mbld-specific regulations in article H trump any preceding regulations, right?

 

[ben1996123]

imo if it gets changed at all, then it should be 30 minutes, but 1 hour is fine.

 

[Maskow]

My official declaration: Please, don't do it. It will kill this event completely.
MBLD with 10 minutes limit is like extended single when you're going to do it as fast as you can. It isn't fun and I don't see anything special in solving ~8 cubes. MBLD is the only one event where your memory is more important than time of your solve (I did official 21/25 using only TuRBo for edges and only perm Y for corners ^^). Do we really need to change it?

 

[qqwref]

What? Why? If you do all multiBLD solves at once, best of 1, it's shorter than many other events. And it's the same length as FMC. Remember you can call up any competitor to judge and kick them from the competition if they refuse. If you want to hold two or three multiBLD or FMC solves, it's your job as organizer to plan enough time for that, and not something wrong with the event if you can't manage it. And if the event takes too long to even do one solve, then ignore it! They are both uncommon side events after all... and I have been to competitions that didn't even hold main staples like 5x5x5 because of time constraints, so consider yourself lucky.

I know people like Maskow are fast, but suppose we bring down the limit to 20 or even 10 minutes. Now people like me (noobs - yes, I am a BLD noob!) can't even try 2 or 3 cubes safely. Getting two cubes done in 10 minutes is not so easy - just look at the percentage of people who attempted 2 cubes in competition and got under that limit. All this change would do is make multiBLD even less accessible to newer people, and also arguably less fun for people who have a different reason to enjoy BLD solving - because of the memory-sport aspect and not the "turning the cube really fast" aspect. Why push people away from the event at a time when only a few people really care about it anyway?

And about the problem of bringing so many cubes to competition... nobody ever said you had to. Just because you are good at an event doesn't mean you have to win at every competition. You can do three cubes in 3 minutes or five cubes in 8 and people will respect you just as much as the guy who finishes his FMC solve ten minutes in and still gets his sub-35. If you put too much pressure on yourself to compete to a given standard, you will just make yourself unhappy. I've seen it many times, and I even think that was what led to the downfall of a certain cheater several years ago...

 

[Ickathu]

I think it should stay the same. It just seems... nice right now.

 

[Kirjava]

I'd rather we removed it altogether.

 

[Mike Hughey]

H1b already defines the time limit:

"H1b) If he is attempting fewer than 6 puzzles, the competitor is allotted a time limit of 10 minutes times the number of puzzles in the attempt, else the time limit is 60 minutes."

I would really like clarification on whether or not this really does what you're saying it does. Does this rule trump rule A1a? Or does A1a apply on top of this rule? To me, it could be interpreted either way.

I'm pretty sure hard limits have been imposed on multiBLD at previous competitions (with an older set of regulations). I remember seeing at least one competition that had a hard cutoff of 10 minutes. But I don't remember where that was, and I can't seem to find it - I thought it was a US competition. Am I remembering it wrong? Is it possible it got invalidated because someone decided it was against regulations?

I'd also like to point out that I see the justification in all of qqwref's comments. And I even understand Kirjava's comment, although for me it's 3x3x3 OH that I'd rather remove altogether. So I'd rather not remove any event - for each event, there are people who hate it and wish it were removed.

 

[Stefan]

Does this rule trump rule A1a?

As I understand it, article H (multiblind) explicitly takes+supersedes article B, which explicitly takes+supersedes article A.

H1) Standard speed solving procedures is followed, as described in Article B (Blindfolded Solving). Additional regulations that supersede the corresponding procedures in Article B are described below.
B1) Standard speed solving procedures is followed, as described in Article A (Speed Solving). Additional regulations that supersede the corresponding procedures in Article A are described below.

 

[Bob]

As I understand it, article H (multiblind) explicitly takes+supersedes article B, which explicitly takes+supersedes article A.

H1) Standard speed solving procedures is followed, as described in Article B (Blindfolded Solving). Additional regulations that supersede the corresponding procedures in Article B are described below.
B1) Standard speed solving procedures is followed, as described in Article A (Speed Solving). Additional regulations that supersede the corresponding procedures in Article A are described below.

I also interpret it this way. I do not think the current regulations allow organizers to decide upon their own time limits for MultiBLD.

I do think the time limit for multiBLD should be changed to 10 minutes, though...but I wouldn't mind Kir's suggestion, either, that we remove it completely.