Ways to popularize Multi-Blind, make it more frequent officially and friendly to organize: 3 cubes attempt for beginners

My personal experience starting Multi-Blind:

I have seen fewer and fewer MBLD rounds being organized in my country. I have tried to vote and popularize MBLD among the organizer and the cubers but it is difficult to garner interest and have a "healthy" number of competitions adding an MBLD round. My first WCA comp 12 years back, I got podium in MBLD and not 3BLD. MBLD has been my favourite event since then. I attempted 3 cubes back then and got 2/3 within 30 minutes. I had to borrow two cubes and a blindfold from others to make my participation possible. I just had a Rubik's brand 3x3 with me and very less pocket money so I could not plan to grow and improve fast with this event. I was a 17 year old back then, and I felt MBLD to be daunting to participate it. I can imagine how much more daunting it could be for a younger competitor who has just recently ventured and is comfortable with 3BLD.

Reality Check today:

• Today's cubing community average age is less than it used to be, there is more inclination towards doing sprint events competitively, so the organizers go for the popular option to cater the demand of the local cubing group.
• MBLD is the "hardest" event in the WCA (maybe FMC and 5BLD are more challenging), so naturally less people would be drawn towards it or would continue participating in it after getting unfavourable results and DNFs.
• Doing an hour long attempt is both daunting for the organizer , the MBLD scramblers and the participant as it can be energy sapping and psychological to not make mistakes during the round / attempt.

Solutions:

• Make MBLD more friendly to practice for cubers with sprint event mindset, maybe
• Make 3BLDers try other blind events regularly at comps and not just organize 3BLD single round
• Make MBLD cheaper and easier to newcomers, maybe organizers and experienced cubers can lend out extra cubes and blindfold.
• Since 1/2 is considered as a DNF, doing 3 cubes is a logical start for beginners and they should feel this is the right benchmark to score to start their MBLD journey
• Developing more resources on the mentality of MBLD and how to progress, maybe even have private coaching for people interested in blindsolving, to get better in 3BLD as well as MBLD

I really hope MBLD gets organized more frequently as it is just one attempt at the every least and 1.5 hour of time to organize one round. Avoiding duplicates and incidents should be easy if the delegates are good and organizers are briefed well. I also hope the young cubing community takes up MBLD and enjoys it more by participating actively!

I would also love for more representation of big BLDs and multi. They're the hardest WCA events and are also hard to organise so it makes sense that they don't have much representation, but I wish this wasn't the case. These are really cool events with aspects you don't really see in any other WCA event. I'm also a BLD events main who's just turned 14 which I've noticed is much younger than most blindsolvers. Obviously there's a bunch of exceptions(e.g. Cheggins) but overall blindsolvers tend to be older than people who main other events.

I feel like this doesn't have to be the case, and maybe organising these events more and talking about them more(in yt vids etc) could maybe help popularity of events like multi. One thing is that big BLDs and multi are mostly held in PBQ comps. This obviously has a lot of benefits for organisation, but it also means that less competitors who don't know about/don't do these events never really see them and learn about them. I think trying to organise these events outside of PBQ comps could help.

I absolutely agree with this. I’ve never competed in or learned blindfolded events, but I really am a fan of them. It’s very impressive seeing someone finishing their last cube of a large MBLD attempt, the suspense and question as to how many cubes are actually solved is absolutely incredible. Something many people don’t point out is how chill and fun PBQ competitions are. They are very quiet, and I find it very enjoyable to be in the presence of one of these, even if I’m not competing. While I don’t necessarily think adding rounds of big BLD and MBLD is a good idea in a normal competition, I am absolutely in support of more PBQ style competitions.

I think multiblind is great because it's the blind event that's most accessible to beginners (after 3bld of course), but with the highest skill ceiling too. Arguably, beginners should start with 4 cubes because 2/4 is a success and you get 40 minutes. You can ignore the cube (or two cubes) with the worst scramble to effectively get more time per cube. I agree that having cubes available to borrow is important because newer cubers probably won't have four logoless 3x3s.

Fred said:

I think multiblind is great because it's the blind event that's most accessible to beginners (after 3bld of course), but with the highest skill ceiling too. Arguably, beginners should start with 4 cubes because 2/4 is a success and you get 40 minutes. You can ignore the cube (or two cubes) with the worst scramble to effectively get more time per cube. I agree that having cubes available to borrow is important because newer cubers probably won't have four logoless 3x3s.

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I absolutely agree.

I feel cubers who attempt 3blind should be shown a roadmap to start multi blind immediately.

Fred said:

I think multiblind is great because it's the blind event that's most accessible to beginners (after 3bld of course), but with the highest skill ceiling too. Arguably, beginners should start with 4 cubes because 2/4 is a success and you get 40 minutes. You can ignore the cube (or two cubes) with the worst scramble to effectively get more time per cube. I agree that having cubes available to borrow is important because newer cubers probably won't have four logoless 3x3s.

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I thought 2/4 is 0 points therefore not a success?

K3n said:

I thought 2/4 is 0 points therefore not a success?

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just 1/2 is not considered a success,

other 0 point results are allowed.

Zero is not a negative number yo.

abunickabhi said:

just 1/2 is not considered a success,

other 0 point results are allowed.

Zero is not a negative number yo.

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1/2 isn’t a success because you didn’t solve multiple cubes lol (it is called Multi-Blind after all)