Austin Fall 2009

Okay, so this is a bit late, and I don't know if anyone will even look at this thread anymore, but I felt I should give it a shot.

What did you guys NOT like about the competition? As in, what things did you guys think could be improved, made better?

I would really like to hear what you guys think. I'm assuming people had fun (since we continue to have people show up, lol), but I know that the competitions are far from perfect. Here's a few things that I've noticed that need improvement:

  1. All displays not working - Okay, I know this sucks, but really, we're working on it. Most of the other available funding opportunities have too many restrictions on them, so the only real way for us to get money is the competitions. But fear not! We are close to our goal! I think one more competition should grab us enough money to buy our own timers and displays! :D :D :D
  2. Semi-chaotic at the front of the room - Yes, this sucks too. However, if you've been to all of our competitions, you know that each time we're trying something new in hopes of making it less chaotic. Next time we'll try something yet again new, but I think it will end up working much better than anything we've tried before.
  3. Things running behind/events having to be cut - There are two reasons I see for this problem:
    1. The chaos in the front of the room. We'll get this down someday, I promise. However, the more interesting reason is:
    2. We have a lot of competitors and interest. This is a great problem to have! When we started hosting these competitions, we weren't even sure if it was going to work. There were a few attempts at competitions in Texas before, but only one ever succeeded (and that was because Caltech ran it). For us to have a solid number of people show up to each competition is pretty awesome. Here's a recap, if you're interested:
      • Austin Open 2008 - 24 (6 events)
      • Austin Spring 2009 - 38 (8 events)
      • Dallas Open 2009 - 29 (12 events)
      • Houston Open 2009 - 25 (9 events)
      • Austin Fall 2009 - 29 (10 events)
      Those are all pretty decent numbers, if you ask me! We also need to keep in mind that we have always tried to give you the maximum number of attempts as possible (for example, round 1 of both 3x3x3 and 4x4x4 are avg of 5, when most are best of 3). This will probably change for the future competitions since we have a lot of interest in these events, but as far as problems go, this is a good one to have.
These are the things that come to mind. If you have any suggestions or comments, please let me know, as I really want these competitions to become much smoother and thus much more enjoyable.

Thanks!
-Sapan Upadhyay
 
A few things I think we need to work on are:

1. Being prepared - I know you have had to do everything on your own for the last several competitions. I am always willing to help out if I can. I think having more organized spreadsheets for registration, times, etc. would be very helpful. Out of the three competitions I have gone to, none of them has started on the given time, though we were close at this last one. I can come up with some spreadsheets templates that will be useful for us to use in the future.

2. Judges/Competitors - I like the way we did it this past competition with the two groups and had everyone switch out. Maybe since it was a last minute decision to do it this way, we can try this again and explain the process before we begin. Also, it would help to have a few people that wouldn't mind being "on-call" for judging that could help out at any time, this can be done by putting a section for this on the registration sheet.

3. Let's try to get every event completed next time. Maybe we can throw a couple of events together and have them done at the same time. With a minimal number of scramblers I know it is hard to get these done quickly, so there are times where the timers are not being used for a decent amount of time.

Other than that, I think we did pretty well in November and in August. We just need to keep moving forward and get better each time. As the competitors get more and more experienced at our competitions, things will run a lot smoother.
 
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Time management has been somewhat of a problem. I think we should plan less events next time and add on if we end up with time for them. We had to cut the 1st 4x4x4 round down to best of 3 (not to be selfish but personally none of those good solves could be in average then...).

These competitions are fun and I look forward to the next ones. :D
 
IamWEB said:
I think we should plan less events next time and add on if we end up with time for them. .
Click to expand...

The problem with this is that the only events that are worth cutting are the ones that are the most popular and anything that we cut out will make someone angry. I guess we can cut out magic and get the 5 extra minutes :-P. Just don't take out the blind events, in fact we need to add big blind next competition. There isn't much that we can cut out, maybe we can remove a round here and there, but that is the only thing I can see that would be beneficial to us. Any more thoughts?
 
The3point14 said:
A few things I think we need to work on are:

1. Being prepared - I know you have had to do everything on your own for the last several competitions. I am always willing to help out if I can. I think having more organized spreadsheets for registration, times, etc. would be very helpful. Out of the three competitions I have gone to, none of them has started on the given time, though we were close at this last one. I can come up with some spreadsheets templates that will be useful for us to use in the future.

2. Judges/Competitors - I like the way we did it this past competition with the two groups and had everyone switch out. Maybe since it was a last minute decision to do it this way, we can try this again and explain the process before we begin. Also, it would help to have a few people that wouldn't mind being "on-call" for judging that could help out at any time, this can be done by putting a section for this on the registration sheet.

3. Let's try to get every event completed next time. Maybe we can throw a couple of events together and have them done at the same time. With a minimal number of scramblers I know it is hard to get these done quickly, so there are times where the timers are not being used for a decent amount of time.

Other than that, I think we did pretty well in November and in August. We just need to keep moving forward and get better each time. As the competitors get more and more experienced at our competitions, things will run a lot smoother.
Click to expand...
Ditto
 
For Texas comps I think you guys should cut 2 rounds of 4x4 to just 1 and then maybe one-handed 2 rounds? Also I would not recommend just adding events the day of the competition because competitors would not know what to practice for and puzzles they should bring to the comps. Another thing Sapan is to get some sort of a judging team together (people that are not competitors willing to judge all day) to make the comps run much smoother.

- Greg
 
anderson26 said:
For Texas comps I think you guys should cut 2 rounds of 4x4 to just 1 and then maybe one-handed 2 rounds? Also I would not recommend just adding events the day of the competition because competitors would not know what to practice for and puzzles they should bring to the comps. Another thing Sapan is to get some sort of a judging team together (people that are not competitors willing to judge all day) to make the comps run much smoother.

- Greg
Click to expand...

I agree actually. :)

So then we just need less events overall next time. If things run well then the following competition might have 1 or 2 more again. As for what events to cut, who here wouldn't like having Megaminx cut one time?
 
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Hey guys,
I'm trying to find a venue down south for our next competition in February. One big advantage to this is that I can get a bunch of my friends to volunteer to judge all day. I'll probably get 12 or so and they can alternate as judges. I'll run through all the rules and everything beforehand and hopefully it will turn out well.

As for events, here's what I'm thinking.
2x2 is a relatively popular and quick event, so I think we can have 2-3 rounds of it. 3x3 is the main event and we've always squeezed in 3 rounds and I don't think anyone objects to that.
As for big cubes.. Honestly, Texas doesn't have anyone very fast at anything bigger than 4x4. 5x5 takes up a lot of time when, to be honest, competitors aren't very fast. For the time being, I think we should just stick to 4x4 as our sole big cube event. I think we could probably just have a combined final for 4x4. Make it an average of 5 if one of your first two solves is under 2 minutes.

As for 3x3 OH. I think OH is popular enough to have two rounds. The only issue is that in order for it to fit into the schedule, we'll have to actually enforce cut off times. Make the first round an average of 5 if one of your first two solves is under a minute and send a few people to the final. I feel like BLD has always worked out well. Our competitions our one of the few I've seen where it honestly is surprisingly quiet during the BLD events.

Side Events... I suggest Magic, Pyraminx, MBLD, and Megaminx. Magic is uber quick and Pyraminx doesn't take very long. MBLD and Megaminx do take longer, but the main reason I really want to have these events is because Texas has at least one very good competitor in each of these events. Joshua pwns in Multi and if Carlos keeps practicing he'll be a threat to the NAR in megaminx.

Long post, and it's a bit cluttered. I'm rushing because I'm leaving for the movies in a few minutes.
Oh, as a quick side note, if everything works out and our next competition is down south, 6 or so people could stay at my house if they like.

Let me know what you think,
Anthony.

Edit:
Oh, Michael, that may be my stackpod. I haven't seen ours around. I'll take a look and double check to see if I have mine. I'll talk to you about it on msn later.
 
Anthony said:
Hey guys,
I'm trying to find a venue down south for our next competition in February. One big advantage to this is that I can get a bunch of my friends to volunteer to judge all day. I'll probably get 12 or so and they can alternate as judges. I'll run through all the rules and everything beforehand and hopefully it will turn out well.

As for events, here's what I'm thinking.
2x2 is a relatively popular and quick event, so I think we can have 2-3 rounds of it. 3x3 is the main event and we've always squeezed in 3 rounds and I don't think anyone objects to that.
As for big cubes.. Honestly, Texas doesn't have anyone very fast at anything bigger than 4x4. 5x5 takes up a lot of time when, to be honest, competitors aren't very fast. For the time being, I think we should just stick to 4x4 as our sole big cube event. I think we could probably just have a combined final for 4x4. Make it an average of 5 if one of your first two solves is under 2 minutes.

As for 3x3 OH. I think OH is popular enough to have two rounds. The only issue is that in order for it to fit into the schedule, we'll have to actually enforce cut off times. Make the first round an average of 5 if one of your first two solves is under a minute and send a few people to the final. I feel like BLD has always worked out well. Our competitions our one of the few I've seen where it honestly is surprisingly quiet during the BLD events.

Side Events... I suggest Magic, Pyraminx, MBLD, and Megaminx. Magic is uber quick and Pyraminx doesn't take very long. MBLD and Megaminx do take longer, but the main reason I really want to have these events is because Texas has at least one very good competitor in each of these events. Joshua pwns in Multi and if Carlos keeps practicing he'll be a threat to the NAR in megaminx.

Long post, and it's a bit cluttered. I'm rushing because I'm leaving for the movies in a few minutes.
Oh, as a quick side note, if everything works out and our next competition is down south, 6 or so people could stay at my house if they like.

Let me know what you think,
Anthony.

Edit:
Oh, Michael, that may be my stackpod. I haven't seen ours around. I'll take a look and double check to see if I have mine. I'll talk to you about it on msn later.
Click to expand...

Yes a competition in the valley! friggen sweet!!!
 
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Thanks for all the replies!

So it seems the most popular idea everyone has is to cut events, make 4x4x4 one round, and add an extra round for OH.

As hesitant as I am, I think we're definitely going to have to cut 5x5x5 from future competitions (at least for the time being).

However, I don't think we should reduce 4x4x4 to one round in favor of adding an extra round for OH. Here are some statistics of competitors from all of our competitions:
  • Austin Open 2008: 4x4x4 (8), OH (4)
  • Austin Spring 2009: 4x4x4 (15), OH (8)
  • Dallas Open 2009: 4x4x4 (10), OH (8)
  • Houston Open 2009: 4x4x4 (10), OH (7)
  • Austin Fall 2009: 4x4x4 (18), OH (16)
As you can see, they've been pretty equal since our first competition, with 4x4x4 always a bit ahead. We've never had a second round for OH before, and I think with this data you can see why. This last competition has been the only time we've actually gotten enough people for it to seem worth it.

So here's what I'm thinking:
  • 3x3x3: We'll continue to have 3 rounds; however, the first round will have to be a best of 3 now. We can't afford to give everyone an average of 5 in the first round anymore. And before you guys start complaining, every single competition out there does this.
  • 4x4x4: We'll have 2 rounds; first will be a best of 3, second an average of 5. Pretty much like last competition.
  • OH: We'll have 2 rounds; first will be a best of 3, second an average of 5. However, we will only do this if we have 12 people signed up for it. I know the rules say that you need 8 people to have 2 rounds, but it's not worth it to me if we have only 8 people to have 2 rounds. I'd rather spend that time to do another event.
We'll cut 5x5x5 for now. I haven't really thought about the other events too much, but I don't think a lot of the side events should be cut for the same reason that Anthony said. Blindfolded is a whole other battle to fight. If people want to do stuff like 4x4x4 blindfolded and stuff, we'll try to work it in; however you will definitely have to not do other competitions (like 3x3x3 or something). But we'll cross that bridge when the time comes.

If you guys have any comments on any of my comments, feel free to post, as usual. Just justify your reasons if you can.

Thanks,
 
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cubekid said:
We'll continue to have 3 rounds; however, the first round will have to be a best of 3 now.
Click to expand...
It's pretty silly for faster competitors to only need two more solves to complete an average and not let them finish.

cubekid said:
We can't afford to give everyone an average of 5 in the first round anymore.
Click to expand...
Exactly, we can't afford to give everyone an average. That's why we should enforce cut off times.

cubekid said:
every single competition out there does this.
Click to expand...
Not true, almost all of them give a full average.

cubekid said:
[*]4x4x4: We'll have 2 rounds; first will be a best of 3, second an average of 5. Pretty much like last competition.
[*]OH: We'll have 2 rounds; first will be a best of 3, second an average of 5. However, we will only do this if we have 12 people signed up for it. I know the rules say that you need 8 people to have 2 rounds, but it's not worth it to me if we have only 8 people to have 2 rounds. I'd rather spend that time to do another event.[/LIST]We'll cut 5x5x5 for now. I haven't really thought about the other events too much, but I don't think a lot of the side events should be cut for the same reason that Anthony said. Blindfolded is a whole other battle to fight. If people want to do stuff like 4x4x4 blindfolded and stuff, we'll try to work it in; however you will definitely have to not do other competitions (like 3x3x3 or something). But we'll cross that bridge when the time comes.
Click to expand...
Sounds good.

Well, like I've said before, these are speed competitions. Even though some people may think it's somewhat unfair, even from the time I went to my very first competition and was one of the slower competitors I felt that the "fast guys" in each event had probably put the most effort into practicing and therefore deserved to get the most solves. Which is why I've always suggested enforcing cut off times in every event at our competitions. It's just my opinion and I understand people may disagree, but whatever.

Anyway, we still have plenty of time to discuss this stuff. It'll be interesting to see what we do in the end.
 
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