[2011 ideas]: Revision of Combined Rounds

[Tim]

Note: The below is merely a textual revision, and if I didn't make any mistakes, it shouldn't affect the way competitions are run.

The rule as it stands now is:

9g) A Combined round is two or three rounds combined during one time frame, where results of earlier rounds are taken into account for next rounds.

* 9g1) A Combined round can be used to save time in the time schedule.
* 9g2) Whether a competitor proceeds to next phase of a Combined round, must be decided on position (best x competitors) or on result (all competitors with a best result under x).

and

9o) A Combined round and a Qualification round count as one round when counting the number of rounds per event.

I would like to propose the elimination of the term "Combined". For one, I've never been fully satisfied that

9p1) For each round of an event, at least 25% of the competitors must not proceed to the next round.

need not apply to combined rounds. I don't think 9o says that 9p1 doesn't apply. For another, it just sounds confusing. Why should an average of five be thought of as two to three rounds? It seems more logical to call it a single round with a cutoff.

So my proposal is to rewrite 9g:

9g) A round may have a cutoff to limit the number of competitors allowed to do all attempts in the round.
9g1) The cutoff must either be decided on position (top x competitors) or on result (all competitors with best attempt under x)

Then naturally "Combined round" should be stricken from 9o.

[BryanLogan]

9g1 could be written even further to handle the "You get a total of 15 minutes for your 3 BLD attempts" case, which kind of is a combined round-type limit. But I'm trying to think of other scenarios that may be used. For example, I sometimes have a "hard limit of death" that I will actually stop you from doing further solves if you exceed this (this is normally used when I'm really crunched for time).

Does anyone else have some other cut-off criteria they've used?

[MadsMohr]

Does anyone else have some other cut-off criteria they've used?

We often use a format of best of 3 for 4BLD where you would be able to do a 2nd attempt if the first attempt was sub 30 min and a 3rd attempt if first two attempts was sub 40 min combined. (Just remember to write down the time even if it's a DNF)