New idea for competitons: new way to make groups

[LorenzoViganiPoli]

Hello everyone!
I'm Lorenzo Vigani Poli, a WCA delegate from Italy.
I want to discuss with all of you about an idea we applied in the last two competitions here in Italy.
We decided to make groups in a new way, depending on the number of displays and stackmats we can count on during a competition.
For example: if we have 10 displays, we make groups of 10 people.
Every competitor, after leaving the puzzle at the Scramble Area, choose a position and just sit down there for the whole round, doing his five attempts almost in a row.
This idea made us save a lot of time and energy during competitions. We don't have to call and wait for people because they're already sat down, ready to solve.
Acting in this way cancel the need of a Competitors Area too.
We also usually call the competitors of a group as judges for the next group.
I hope this could help during competitions and I hope someone will give me some advice to improve this system.
Thank you all for the attention!

[Sebastien]

Interesting idea but kind of impossible to realise for bigger competitions. But already having 4 groups for like 40 people is way more work for the delegate because there are more scrambles to print. It also seems to increase thebunfairness because there are way more different scrambles in one round.

[LorenzoViganiPoli]

I don't think that printing more scramble is such an hard work for a delegate...

I usually try to make groups carefully, putting the cubers of the same level (according to the WCA database) in the same group. So I'll be sure that the top 8-10 competitors will have the same scrambles.

I know it could be difficult to realize during a big competition, but it could help during regular competition (about 50-60 competitors). I've been to several big competitions and usually the organization can count on a large number of displays and stackmats and a big venue, so it's not so difficult to settle a proper Competitors Area. They don't even need to save a lot of time too, because those competition usually takes 3 days. So there is more time for every event. If I have to run a competition with all the events in 2 days I may need to save some time. We're talking about dead times, like looking for a competitor in the Competitors Area, looking for a free stackmat...

Thanks for your opinion, I'll keep working on this system to see where it could be improved.

[BryanLogan]

One thing I notice that takes a bit of time is the switching of groups (unless you have so many judges that half can easily judge the other half with no slowdown). It would seem like this method, you'd have some slower people that might slow things down, and have stations empty for a bit.

[Radu]

I kinda agree with all opinions until know. The idea is nice and has some advantages that Lorenzo has mentioned. I don't agree though that it will save that much time and indeed I find Sebastien's point very good. We had this format at RomanianOpen2011, after some Hungarian cubers asked for it, but my decision was to have it only for the final (last 10 persons). It's more feasible like that; still 5 scrambles, and creates some hype for the public until the last competitor will appear. Of course, the final has started with the worst to the best qualified average.

So, my conclusion is that for the finals, it's something doable...the magics already are like that, but during the competition I don't see this to improve anything too much. Maybe we should test this system a bit more also in other competitions and see how people feel.

[Pedro_S]

I just saw this topic today, and here is my opinion:

We used to do what Lorenzo said for a big competition (100+) people, and it seemed to work good.
But this year we called groups of 2n people (n timers) and it works so much better, because the timers have almost no not-busy time. If people are sitting down and doing all 5 solves, the timer is basically wasted while the cube is brought to scrambling, scrambled and brought back. With quick events like 2x2 that is not a big problem, but with 4x4 or 5x5 it starts to make things go slow.

Unfortunately we only used this other system in the 3rd day, for 3x3 and OH events, but we managed to go much faster than the previous days.

[LorenzoViganiPoli]

Hi Pedro!
I'll probably try your system (2n competitors with n timers) on the next Italian competition. I'll see if it's better than the one we currently use for every events or just for the 30-plus-seconds-solve puzzles, like you said.
Thank you!