Yes We Can!
Veteran
I thought this thread was going to advertise an actual cup (like a mug) by Cubing World.
Cubing World Cup
- Thread starter Ltsurge
- Start date
Lucas Garron
Premium Member
Cubing is interesting because we have a simple objective way to measure performance. This comes up here once in a while, in different guises. Let's get a bit carried away.
- There's no subjective performance aspect. (e.g. scores for a choreography or technique)
- Age doesn't play a large factor, which is why we usually don't have age divisions. (By contrast, for some sports physical maturity helps a lot.)
- It's not a directly head-to-head activity. (Games like tennis can only really be contested in head-to-head matches. You can measure a cuber just as well regardless of what everyone else is doing.)
- It's not inherently done in teams. (What would soccer be without a few people on each team?)
- For most events, each competitor must be judged individually. (Holding a simultaneous race doesn't make it easier to run, nor significantly more fair.)
- Timing someone's cube solve doesn't take much space or resources. (It takes some time and space, but no specific arenas/terrain/weather or special equipment. We require Stackmat timers for official WCA competitions, but even those are cheap by most sport standards, and we don't have to share/allocate those in any complicated way.)
- Timing is a one-shot thing. (High jump and weightlifting rely on successive levels of difficulty to weed out competitors. This doesn't have to be done in parallel, but it often is.)
- Most events are short. (Many other sports are *meant* to take time.)
- Competitors don't require special preparation. (Swimmers need to change into swimsuits before you can measure how fast they are.)
- Because of the internet, most of the world-class competitive cubing is not based on local traditions. In addition, since it's not a professional things, people don't get together wquite in the same way.
- We don't currently have regional qualifications for any competitions. (Everyone "advances" to Worlds individually.)
- The WCA is not a commercial enterprise (contrast with the WSSA).
- Stefan would put this in: Dividing people by countries is kind of arbitrary, especially for a modern global sport like speedcubing. The best you get from it is that people feel better about being in a group.
Most sports seems like they came from an activity for staying fit that developed into a way to make it more fun. If you look at the list of Olympic sports, you'll see that basically all of them suffer from some of the constraints I've listed. Many of them require World Cups because you have to get everyone together so that you can measure everyone against each other fairly. To practice, many of them even need special conditions... where people are liktely to be training together.
Cubing is not inherently like that. Or at least, the way we do it is far from it. We do have a World Championship, and there's plenty of fun from the fact taht the community comes together, but our sport isn't about teams.
Any way to make cubing a team sport is going to be a bit artificial. I'm sure we could think of some fun formats, but I can't think of anything that makes the "team" aspect meaningful. It seems that people in this thread are mostly thinking about contests that combine the performance of team members – but then you're bascially still measuring everyone's individual times.
The closest I can think of is relays. We've even had international contests for that. But apart from practicing the handoffs, sprint relays are not *inherently* much of a team thing either. Everyone mostly needs to be fast on their own, and you can kind of still measure each team individually. By contrast, I think there's something viscerally important to running next to your opponent.
Sports that really have something like a World Cup.
Team BLD also require teamwork, but we don't even have well-defined rules for that. Teamsolves also sort of work, but are hard to judge. I enjoy both of them myself, but I think they emphasize teamwork a bit *too* much to be taken as a measure of *cubing* skill.
If you're going to have a World Cup that has merit separately from our curren tWorlds, it needs to be about teamwork and speedcubing both in good measure.
There's nothing stopping anyone from trying, but for better or worse I don't think we have a great way to do that. As I've put in way too much effort to detail, cubing isn't suited for this quite like other sports.
I think the most reasonable thing would be to take Worlds and try to do something interesting there. If someone wants to organize a bracket of country-based relays as a side event, that might be fun. Even that would take some effort, because I think many people would be tempted to break country groupings and compete with their friends. (Smerbia, anyone?) But I think that's a good thing about cubing. We *all* like to have fun and get along, no matter where we're from.
tl;d;r: We already have a World Championship, and it isn't really about teams. If you want a World Cup, you'd have to think creatively.
- There's no subjective performance aspect. (e.g. scores for a choreography or technique)
- Age doesn't play a large factor, which is why we usually don't have age divisions. (By contrast, for some sports physical maturity helps a lot.)
- It's not a directly head-to-head activity. (Games like tennis can only really be contested in head-to-head matches. You can measure a cuber just as well regardless of what everyone else is doing.)
- It's not inherently done in teams. (What would soccer be without a few people on each team?)
- For most events, each competitor must be judged individually. (Holding a simultaneous race doesn't make it easier to run, nor significantly more fair.)
- Timing someone's cube solve doesn't take much space or resources. (It takes some time and space, but no specific arenas/terrain/weather or special equipment. We require Stackmat timers for official WCA competitions, but even those are cheap by most sport standards, and we don't have to share/allocate those in any complicated way.)
- Timing is a one-shot thing. (High jump and weightlifting rely on successive levels of difficulty to weed out competitors. This doesn't have to be done in parallel, but it often is.)
- Most events are short. (Many other sports are *meant* to take time.)
- Competitors don't require special preparation. (Swimmers need to change into swimsuits before you can measure how fast they are.)
- Because of the internet, most of the world-class competitive cubing is not based on local traditions. In addition, since it's not a professional things, people don't get together wquite in the same way.
- We don't currently have regional qualifications for any competitions. (Everyone "advances" to Worlds individually.)
- The WCA is not a commercial enterprise (contrast with the WSSA).
- Stefan would put this in: Dividing people by countries is kind of arbitrary, especially for a modern global sport like speedcubing. The best you get from it is that people feel better about being in a group.
Most sports seems like they came from an activity for staying fit that developed into a way to make it more fun. If you look at the list of Olympic sports, you'll see that basically all of them suffer from some of the constraints I've listed. Many of them require World Cups because you have to get everyone together so that you can measure everyone against each other fairly. To practice, many of them even need special conditions... where people are liktely to be training together.
Cubing is not inherently like that. Or at least, the way we do it is far from it. We do have a World Championship, and there's plenty of fun from the fact taht the community comes together, but our sport isn't about teams.
Any way to make cubing a team sport is going to be a bit artificial. I'm sure we could think of some fun formats, but I can't think of anything that makes the "team" aspect meaningful. It seems that people in this thread are mostly thinking about contests that combine the performance of team members – but then you're bascially still measuring everyone's individual times.
The closest I can think of is relays. We've even had international contests for that. But apart from practicing the handoffs, sprint relays are not *inherently* much of a team thing either. Everyone mostly needs to be fast on their own, and you can kind of still measure each team individually. By contrast, I think there's something viscerally important to running next to your opponent.
Sports that really have something like a World Cup.
Team BLD also require teamwork, but we don't even have well-defined rules for that. Teamsolves also sort of work, but are hard to judge. I enjoy both of them myself, but I think they emphasize teamwork a bit *too* much to be taken as a measure of *cubing* skill.
If you're going to have a World Cup that has merit separately from our curren tWorlds, it needs to be about teamwork and speedcubing both in good measure.
There's nothing stopping anyone from trying, but for better or worse I don't think we have a great way to do that. As I've put in way too much effort to detail, cubing isn't suited for this quite like other sports.
I think the most reasonable thing would be to take Worlds and try to do something interesting there. If someone wants to organize a bracket of country-based relays as a side event, that might be fun. Even that would take some effort, because I think many people would be tempted to break country groupings and compete with their friends. (Smerbia, anyone?) But I think that's a good thing about cubing. We *all* like to have fun and get along, no matter where we're from.
tl;d;r: We already have a World Championship, and it isn't really about teams. If you want a World Cup, you'd have to think creatively.
yoinneroid
Veteran
While scanning the thread I was thinking of Thomas and Uber cup
so, have a 1-1 battle, and every winning result of each event contributes to a point
not much of a teamwork there though, unless the team is composed of a bunch of all-rounders
so, have a 1-1 battle, and every winning result of each event contributes to a point
not much of a teamwork there though, unless the team is composed of a bunch of all-rounders
Ollie
Legend
How about using a scoring system like the ones used for heptathlon scoring? In a competition where lots of nationalities are present, the highest ranking cuber for each nationality, in each round and in each event would score points for their country based on a predetermined co-efficient for that event. Points are accumulated throughout the competition and the highest scoring country wins. No need to change the competiton format 
EDIT: this might actually be a nice addition to Euros?
EDIT2: top 10 for each round scores points for their country, perhaps
EDIT: this might actually be a nice addition to Euros?
EDIT2: top 10 for each round scores points for their country, perhaps
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Coolster01
Veteran
How about using a scoring system heptathlon scoring? In a competition where lots of nationalities are present, the highest ranking cuber for each nationality, in each round and in each event would score points for their country based on a predetermined co-efficient for that event. Points are accumulated throughout the competition and the highest scoring country wins. No need to change the competiton format
EDIT: this might actually be a nice addition to Euros?
EDIT2: top 10 for each round scores points for their country, perhaps
I like the first idea, but the second one would be not so great because getting first place would be just as many points as tenth, so that will make it less of a competition. Definitely have set numbers for each place in a round (I'm thinking 20 for first, 19 for second, 18 for third....1 for twentieth, none for other places)
EDIT: I'm thinking double the points for the final round, due to that being more important.
Also, there should be a significant difference between podium and non podium, so maybe more like 30, 29, 28 for podium, then down to 18 (in a final round these numbers would all be doubled). Does that sound like a pretty good scoring system? I honestly don't think this would happen, but as a forum world cup this would work greatly.
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Ollie
Legend
I'm not sure how you gleaned that coming in 10th gets as many points as coming 2nd. I'll try and explain with a 3x3x3 example:
1st - A (USA) - 7.75 ao5
2nd - B (UK) - 8.00 ao5
3rd - C (Spain) - 9.00 ao5
4th - D (Spain) - 9.25 ao5
5th - E (Spain) - 9.50 ao5
If I work out points using the heptathlon scoring system (using some simplified values from the 200m table because maths) then:
A - 1040 points
B - 1024 points
C - 961 points
D - 946 points
E - 930 points
In this example Spain triumphs due to having 3 competitors with sub-10 averages in the final round.
So a country scores points:
1. If a competitor gets a time below a set standard
2. As performance improves, the number of points awarded increases proportionately.
Obviously the values going into the equation P = a(b-T)^c need to be adjusted for cubing and 'standards' need to be discussed and worked out, but it's a nice system.
Competitors that make the final rounds score more points for their countries due to the fact that there are much fewer competitors scoring points for their respective countries
But yeah, maybe something can be included for podiums. +150pts for 1st, +100pts for 2nd etc.
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Lucas Garron
Premium Member
If you're going to assign numbers based on rankings, keep it simple. Something like 3/2/1 points for the top three places, or points equal to the number of people you placed ahead.
You could try to come up with something fancier that can be tweaked until it is "good", but now you're fiddling with a precise calculation based on subjectively assigned numbers. Here's how I would put the flaws:
- If some teams simply have a lot of good people, the fiddly details don't matter.
- If the fiddly details *do* influence rankings a lot, then the system doesn't actually determine a winner in a meaningful way.
- If people start taking the numbers seriously, gaming them may result in people focusing on events in ways we don't necessarily want to encourage.
I like the heptathlon idea, but unfortunately it takes only the very fastest cuber for each event. It's no longer really a team performance.
In order to combine the results from multiple people who may not be at comparable same levels, you can consider Ravi Fernando's "hertz/cubes per minute" idea.
If one team has a cuber who can solve a cube in 10 seconds (6 cubes/minute), one who can solve it in 15 seconds (4 cubes/minute), and one who can solve it in 30 seconds (2 cubes/minute), collectively they can solve 12 cubes/minute (meaning that if all three of them get together to solve a pile of cubes at their respective rates, they will produce a solved cube about once every 5 seconds). This way, even a few medium/slow cubers can contribute to the measurement of the team's pace in a fairly natural way.
However, this suffers from the fact that a significant number of decently fast cubers can overpower any team that simply doesn't have enough people. I wonder if there is a good middle ground between "everyone matters" and "only the very fastest person". The nice thing about Ravi's idea is that it doesn't involve picking some arbitrary constants to make things "fair".
As an example, consider 3x3x3 at Worlds 2013. The US would overpower any other country if we give significant weight to every competitor... but Germany has 3 of the top 5 spots, which should probably count heavily in favor for Germany.
You could try to come up with something fancier that can be tweaked until it is "good", but now you're fiddling with a precise calculation based on subjectively assigned numbers. Here's how I would put the flaws:
- If some teams simply have a lot of good people, the fiddly details don't matter.
- If the fiddly details *do* influence rankings a lot, then the system doesn't actually determine a winner in a meaningful way.
- If people start taking the numbers seriously, gaming them may result in people focusing on events in ways we don't necessarily want to encourage.
I like the heptathlon idea, but unfortunately it takes only the very fastest cuber for each event. It's no longer really a team performance.
In order to combine the results from multiple people who may not be at comparable same levels, you can consider Ravi Fernando's "hertz/cubes per minute" idea.
If one team has a cuber who can solve a cube in 10 seconds (6 cubes/minute), one who can solve it in 15 seconds (4 cubes/minute), and one who can solve it in 30 seconds (2 cubes/minute), collectively they can solve 12 cubes/minute (meaning that if all three of them get together to solve a pile of cubes at their respective rates, they will produce a solved cube about once every 5 seconds). This way, even a few medium/slow cubers can contribute to the measurement of the team's pace in a fairly natural way.
However, this suffers from the fact that a significant number of decently fast cubers can overpower any team that simply doesn't have enough people. I wonder if there is a good middle ground between "everyone matters" and "only the very fastest person". The nice thing about Ravi's idea is that it doesn't involve picking some arbitrary constants to make things "fair".
As an example, consider 3x3x3 at Worlds 2013. The US would overpower any other country if we give significant weight to every competitor... but Germany has 3 of the top 5 spots, which should probably count heavily in favor for Germany.
Ltsurge
Veteran
*What he said
I'm not trying to flame here, but do you have any suggestions? I mean sure it is easy to pick out the flaws in each of the concepts, but its far more difficult to come up with one that would work. Again, I understand that cubing is inherently a solo 'sport', but a team based element, like a relay (maybe a relay might be the best way...like the uni relay except on a more global scale), I'm sure we'd agree, would be alot more fun. I mean even if we only pick the fastest cubers from each country, the fun is in rooting for your country not just (or necessarily) competing. I'm sure it would be nicer if we could get everyone involved, but I would also be really pumped to see a team of Felix, Jayden etc... go up against say Cornelius Dieckman (I think thats how you spell his name
), Seb weyer etc... or Kevin Hays etc... the list goes on... There isn't much separating the top cubers from each country, so I would say its still roughly even. In anycase the whole point of a World Cup is to determine the best country (the country with the best speed cubers). If that means Germany overpowers all the other countries, then that means Germany is the best cubing country...
Carrot
Veteran
What's wrong in making the teams like in Athletics? 2 athletes per event per team, and the teams can compete with the individuals and every athlete can be re-used x amount of times. (teams needs to be specified beforehand)
This way a team can vary from 2*(events/x) - 38 persons.
I'm with Oliver on this.
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Lucas Garron
Premium Member
Yeah, in my last post I discussed Ravi's cubes/minute idea for measuring teams.
I'm aware that it's easier to take things down, but I like to focus I think enough on creating. I'm hopeful about doing something more "World Cup" style at Worlds, but I wanted to make people aware that this if you want something more meaningful than country-based fantasy cubing you'll have to try a bit harder. (With a bit more detail than Dene.)
Nothing particularly wrong, but to me it still seems like an arbitrary way to combine people's individual performances... which isn't really a "World Cup".
Doing it this way in particular would also force competitors to divide themselves into events ahead of time, which 1) doesn't really save you time if you do use the results of a comp like Worlds the times for your team, and 2) requires a bit of strategizing on the to place team members into events, in a way that isn't exactly that interesting. Unlike athletics, it isn't unusual for a cuber to be good across an eclectic variety of events.
Even the Wikipedia page makes the scoring system tacked on: "Athletics is mostly an individual sport, with the exception of relay races and competitions which combine athletes' performances for a team score".
Carrot
Veteran
to be fair, I didn't even know what thread I was posting in when I posted, after posting I was like "ohhh, I see, I was posting in the world cup thread, I should probably have thought of that before posting"
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