Should the Weekly Competition Fewest Moves event be run as mean of 3 or as best of 3?

[Mike Hughey]

It is my intention to start allowing 3 attempts at Fewest Moves in the Weekly Competition at the start of 2019. The question is whether the "winner" of the event (and point scoring and Kinch scoring) should be decided by mean of 3 rules or by best of 3 rules. Remember that with WCA mean of 3 rules, while an invalid mean of 3 means a DNF for the mean, winners are still ranked by the best result for those who get less than 3 valid results.

Originally, I was leaning towards mean of 3, but lately I've changed my mind and decided that best of 3 might be best. We would of course track mean of 3 in the statistics pages, even if the "winner" is not decided that way, just as we do now with the BLD events. Going with best of 3 gives a slight advantage to those who do more than one attempt per week, simply because they have more chances to get a good solve, but still gives someone lucky the chance to "win" even if they only do one attempt.

So I'm now leaning now towards best of 3, but I could still be easily persuaded. Hence the poll - what do other people think?

 

[Kit Clement]

The main argument we had against making FMC mo3 in the WCA was that it takes too long to do in a competition. We have a week to do the weekly competition, not just a day or two, so this is an even weaker argument here. Bo3 is too prone to be determined by which of the three scrambles was easiest, while Mo3 is better for showing an overall skill level across the attempts.

 

[obelisk477]

@Mike Hughey how would this change the scoring for FMC? Would more points be allotted for effort with the three attempts?

 

[sigalig]

Is this an appropriate place to motion for 3 mbld attempts per week (bo3 of course)?

 

[ichcubegerne]

Is this an appropriate place to motion for 3 mbld attempts per week (bo3 of course)?

Yeah to me this also seems like the next logical step. Then we basically inserted all WCA events along their WCA formats into the comp besides 6,7 who are ao5 (But they are only mo3 on the wca because time)

 

[Mike Hughey]

Sigh - it is possible to do Bo3 for multi, but wow the explosion in the scramble database table. And it will also require more work, so I worry whether I can get it done in time.

 

[Mike Hughey]

I made this poll so you can change your vote. After seing Kit's argument, and, more importantly, seeing there are so many FMC fans who cared enough to vote on this, I've changed my mind. I'm now leaning back towards mean of 3 for the format.

 

[Mike Hughey]

This poll has closed. The results are pretty substantially in favor of switching to a mean of 3 next year, and that also makes very much sense to me now, so I intend to implement mean of 3 for fewest moves beginning with competition 2019-01.

To everyone who participated in the voting: thank you very much! I hope this will be a nice addition to our competition.

Now to work - much work to do to get this implemented in the next 4 weeks!