# Should Speed FMC be added to the Weekly Competition?



## Mike Hughey (Dec 9, 2019)

Four polls are being posted; note that only a maximum of two events will be added to the weekly competition.

This thread will be open for 15 days.

Vote yes ONLY if you BOTH want the event added AND intend to compete in it if possible.

Vote no if you specifically don't want the event added.

If the event receives at least 22 Yes votes (10% of the weekly average of participants) AND ALSO has more Yes votes than No votes, and is one of the top 2 events chosen, it will be added to the competition.

Responses other than Yes or No will not have any impact on the decision. Your response can be changed up until the poll closes.

Note that for this event, the proposed scoring suggested by the original suggester (Kit Clement) is:
final score = number of moves in HTM * ln(time to write down valid solution in seconds)


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## Cubinwitdapizza (Dec 9, 2019)

Yes yes yes yes yes


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## ProStar (Dec 9, 2019)

I think its a super cool idea, but I'm no good at FMC and don't have any interest in learning it.


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## ImmolatedMarmoset (Dec 9, 2019)

Ι’m not great at FMC, but I think I would compete and be more enthused to compete in regular FMC more if this were a weekly comp event.


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## irontwig (Dec 9, 2019)

I feel like the suggested rules would emphasis speed too much; 60 moves in one minute (should be doable) would be judged just as good as 30 moves in two minutes (very hard).


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## Mike Hughey (Dec 9, 2019)

I would say the rules should be exactly as regular FMC other than the scoring issue. Three cubes allowed, stickers allowed, no other materials allowed, theoretically must write the solution down on paper, then stop the timer. Then hopefully transfer that result to the comments section of the entry form (this part would be done after the timer is stopped). I would still prefer to have it necessary to provide the solution and check that solution on submission, just as is currently done with regular FMC. Of course, as is true now, if someone chooses to type their result in instead of using paper and pen, I don't see that as a big deal, and I wouldn't want to DNF someone for using that approach instead of paper and pen. But I would think the "proper" way to compete in this would be paper and pen, as is the case with regular FMC.

If this makes it in, I will try to have a working timer ready by the end of the year, but if I run into problems and am unable to get it working in time, I'm sure I should be able to at least provide the ability to manually enter the results, and I can add the timer later when I am able.


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## Mike Hughey (Dec 9, 2019)

irontwig said:


> I feel like the suggested rules would emphasis speed too much; 60 moves in one minute (should be doable) would be judged just as good as 30 moves in two minutes (very hard).


60 * ln(60) = 245.66
30 * ln(120) = 143,62

The 30 moves in 2 minutes wins hands down over the 60 moves in 1 minute?


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## irontwig (Dec 9, 2019)

Oh, missed that logarithm, my bad. Is there any upper time limit? As it is now, 38 in two minutes would be about the same score as 20 in three hours. One of these sound more like speed FMC than the other.


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## Kit Clement (Dec 9, 2019)

irontwig said:


> Oh, missed that logarithm, my bad. Is there any upper time limit? As it is now, 38 in two minutes would be about the same score as 20 in three hours. One of these sound more like speed FMC than the other.



Unless I'm doing something incorrectly here:

20*ln(10800) = 185.75
38*ln(120) = 181.92

But either way, the point stands (EDIT: I see you're claiming "about the same score" not that one is better, my fault for misinterpreting). I had only really compared "reasonable" results when evaluating the formula, so maybe it should be restricted to some time limit. 10 minutes seems long enough to value the need to be efficient without allowing too many advanced FMC techniques to be leveraged.

Say you find 25-3c and finish for a 33 in 5 minutes:

33*ln(300) = 188.22

But you could spend the time to do a quick 3c insertion in the next 5 minutes, which usually cancels 2 more moves:

31*ln(600) = 198.30

The typical result seems to make you do worse than if you had turned in the simple solution earlier. It would take a cancellation of 4 or more in this time, making this a fairly risky move. Maybe you're insanely quick at a 3c insertion - but in this specific instance, if you get the typical 2 move cancellation, you'd need to be able to insert it in about 2 minutes and 13 seconds or less to do any better than the original solution.

I think this fits the idea of speed FMC though - you can try to do something fancy in a short amount of time, but you only get rewarded for it if it works out well (get lucky) or you are able to do it quickly.


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## MaikeruKonare (Dec 10, 2019)

Hell yeah, sign me up. (That's a "yes".)


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## irontwig (Dec 10, 2019)

How about score=moves+k*time, where k is some number. It has the pros that

* Easier for competitors to gauge their score during an attempt.
* Allows us to carefully choose a k which we feel gives a good balance between speed and movecount.
* Should discourage multi-hour attempts, unless k is small.


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## Kit Clement (Dec 10, 2019)

irontwig said:


> How about score=moves+k*time, where k is some number. It has the pros that
> 
> * Easier for competitors to gauge their score during an attempt.
> * Allows us to carefully choose a k which we feel gives a good balance between speed and movecount.
> * Should discourage multi-hour attempts, unless k is small.



From my limited experience of trying this at home, the thing I like about a non-linear function of time is that you are essentially not penalized drastically for using some extra time to find efficiencies. Your score decreases for each additional second, but it is not decreasing as fast as it was previously. And by the examples above, this also seems to make it so that you can't spend a drastic amount of time more unless the payoff for solution improvement is drastic. I hadn't considered using an excessive amount of time in this event in my testing of different formulas, but with a reasonable time limit I think that this would work okay.

If we were to use this system, I would like to significantly nerf typical FMC techniques unless they are implemented extremely quickly - thus, considering that 3c insertions will on average reduce 2 moves and rarely reduce more than 4, and the typical insertion time is around 5min for an FMC pro, an increase in 300 seconds should offset moves by 5. That would give a k of 1/60 in seconds, or just 1 in minutes.

Given that moves+time (in minutes) is actually fairly understandable, I could be on board with the idea.

Another thought: Mike said he would likely not implement this in time for the beginning of 2020, so if it passes and doesn't get implemented, we should propose some different formulas and run test contests to see how they would work with real results.


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## Mike Hughey (Dec 10, 2019)

Since it seems a very popular idea and I like the idea, I think I intend to implement this by the beginning of 2020 even if I cannot get the timer page working by then. Since it seems the only real debate here is the scoring, that can be back-adjusted after the beginning if it is absolutely necessary - I will make sure to store both time and solution, so the calculation can be redone. But it will be a little unfair to change it after the fact like that, so it would be nice to try it beforehand. Perhaps we should start a competition over the next few weeks just for this event on a separate thread?


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## kubesolver (Dec 10, 2019)

I like @irontwig formula more than the logarithm one. I think there should be a constant penalty for using fixed amount of time, as opposed for a constant penalty for doubling your time. 

The "moves+k*time" formula is super easy to understand and also I think is more in the spirit of speed FMC.
If k = 1/60 then you have a simple tradeoff : "Can I gain an extra 1 move by thinking extra 1 minute?"


Logarithm function will promote super fast speed solving with no FMC (because logarithm grows so fast at the beginning)



> Say you find 25-3c and finish for a 33 in 5 minutes:


33*ln(300) = roughly 69 moves in 15 seconds = 78 moves in 11 seconds.
so basically if someone is fast there is no incentive for him to waste time on finding efficient solution.

And on the other hand it will promote super long solving (becuase if you spent 60 minutes thinking than there is very little penalty for extra 20 minutes).

And with logarithm is very hard to calculate your score in your head during the competition.


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## Mike Hughey (Dec 10, 2019)

I will be counting down the days for these polls, both to remind people of the deadline and to make sure none of the threads disappears too far from view because of less discussion on one of them.

Fourteen more days for these polls.


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## Kit Clement (Dec 10, 2019)

kubesolver said:


> 33*ln(300) = roughly 69 moves in 15 seconds = 78 moves in 11 seconds.
> so basically if someone is fast there is no incentive for him to waste time on finding efficient solution.



If someone could find and write a solution down in 15 seconds, let alone one that exceeds 60 moves, then I'd be thoroughly impressed.


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## Mike Hughey (Dec 10, 2019)

Kit Clement said:


> If someone could find and write a solution down in 15 seconds, let alone one that exceeds 60 moves, then I'd be thoroughly impressed.


I personally would love to see someone who is really fast at this show what they can do (on video, if possible). The assumption is that you would be solving with one hand while writing with the other, and as you find moves for the next CFOP (or Roux, or whatever method you use OH) step, be writing as you are executing.

Of course, it needs to be remembered that there is no inspection time for FMC. The scramble is revealed at the time the timer starts (so obviously, no preparation allowed), and the cube is still fully solved. The person must first apply the scramble, then let go with one hand to pick up the pen to begin writing the solution. This certainly does add a significant amount of time to the solve.

Somehow it seems like 30 seconds should be fairly doable for people who are really good at OH, although I think it would require some practice. 15 seconds might be possible with real practice, but I wonder if someone already has all the skills to be able to pull this sort of thing off. I think of back when I first did the one-handed solve blind behind my back while juggling two balls - someone happened to suggest it here, and I just happened to realize that I had recently been practicing all the skills required to do it (practicing juggling 4 and 6 balls, so two in one hand was ridiculously easy, and practicing solving one-handed blind, using my weaker juggling hand), so it was actually fairly easy for me and I was able to video it in just a few tries.

If someone is already good at solving with no inspection, good at OH, and good at writing with one hand while somewhat distracted, they might already be quite good at this. I can't help wondering what the right person might be able to do right now with this.


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## ProStar (Dec 10, 2019)

Mike Hughey said:


> I personally would love to see someone who is really fast at this show what they can do (on video, if possible). The assumption is that you would be solving with one hand while writing with the other, and as you find moves for the next CFOP (or Roux, or whatever method you use OH) step, be writing as you are executing.
> 
> Of course, it needs to be remembered that there is no inspection time for FMC. The scramble is revealed at the time the timer starts (so obviously, no preparation allowed), and the cube is still fully solved. The person must first apply the scramble, then let go with one hand to pick up the pen to begin writing the solution. This certainly does add a significant amount of time to the solve.
> 
> ...



Or we could revive Albert Einstein and have him just do the solve in his head, without the need of scrambling/solving a real cube. Then we would need a magician to instantly input the moves into the computer without a bunch of typing.

I believe my solution is much more feasible and easy then Mike's above suggestion. Why practice when you can bring a genius back from the dead?


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## Kit Clement (Dec 11, 2019)

13 days left!


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## Mike Hughey (Dec 12, 2019)

I want to make sure everyone understands, because my original post here was originally improperly worded in one place - no more than 2 events will be added this year. Since it seems likely that more than two events will have enough votes to meet the minimum requirements, this becomes a race for the most votes - only the top 2 according to yes votes will be added. Fewer no votes will be used to break ties.


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## Mike Hughey (Dec 13, 2019)

12 days left! At the moment all 4 proposed new events have enough votes to be considered candidates for adding, so unless people change votes from Yes to No, it is now down to a race for the most votes. Speed FMC currently leads.


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## Mike Hughey (Dec 13, 2019)

11 days left!


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## Kit Clement (Dec 15, 2019)

9 days left!


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## Kit Clement (Dec 18, 2019)

Bump again, 7 days left!


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## Mike Hughey (Dec 19, 2019)

5 days left!


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## ProStar (Dec 21, 2019)

3 Days Left!


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## abunickabhi (Oct 19, 2020)

I want to give my feedback on the speedFMC event. Overall I have enjoyed participating in it and I found that in order to get an ao5 I have to be really careful to not make two DNFs.

It feels a bit strange while competing all events in SS to do a mean of 3 in FMC 1 hour long each, and then speed FMC which is completely having a time dependent score. I wish to see an implementation in 2021 where FMC is made to ao5 to make it consistent with Speed FMC, or FMC to be scrapped off, and we only have speed FMC.

The participation in speed FMC has not been that great with only a few weeks where I saw more than 5 competitors.

Personally, I think it will be a fun addition if we have a keyboard cube to input the moves in the speed FMC submission. Similar to the virtual cube that is there in http://snk.digibase.ca/ksim_trainer.htm and https://speedcube.site/solve/3x3.

Using a real cube for doing a speedFMC attempt causes more fumble for me. But that can be a personal issue.


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## ichcubegerne (Oct 22, 2020)

I feel that SpeedFMC proved to be an absolutely boring and uninteresting event. No one is doing it, because it takes a ton of time and is almost purely luck based in comparison to regular FMC. I also thought that it would be a fun event, when it got accepted into the weekly comp, but now I just feel that it is a waste of peoples time tbh.
I generally feel that the weekly comp should not have events that are not giving anything new to the table, like Speed FMC and all kinds of relays. But since a lot of the people voting on the event additions are newbies, its almost always resulting in useless events beeing added or not removed.


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## Kit Clement (Oct 22, 2020)

ichcubegerne said:


> I feel that SpeedFMC proved to be an absolutely boring and uninteresting event. No one is doing it, because it takes a ton of time and is almost purely luck based in comparison to regular FMC. I also thought that it would be a fun event, when it got accepted into the weekly comp, but now I just feel that it is a waste of peoples time tbh.
> I generally feel that the weekly comp should not have events that are not giving anything new to the table, like Speed FMC and all kinds of relays. But since a lot of the people voting on the event additions are newbies, its almost always resulting in useless events beeing added or not removed.



Well, I was the one to originally propose it and don't think of myself as a newbie, but I do agree that the novelty of the idea has sort of worn off for me. Hard to say if that's a factor of the event or my general waning interest in cubing during COVID.


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## ichcubegerne (Oct 22, 2020)

For SpeedFMC a lot of people (also a decent amount of experienced cubers, like you and me) thought it would be a cool addition back then. But now it is clear that it is not that great of an event, since it is not really adding anything new (more luck based fmc), almost no one does it and it costs a hell lot of time. (I will also propose removing the relays again)


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## BenChristman1 (Oct 22, 2020)

I did my first Speed FMC attempts last week, and I personally think that it’s a good event. Sure, it might take longer than other events, but to be fair, about the same number of people compete in FMC and Speed FMC every week, and Speed FMC is obviously going to be the shorter event.

And do we really want to turn this into the WCA, where we just remove perfectly good events for no reason? Even if an event were to get removed from the weekly comp, I’m sure that we (the community) would be free to give more feedback than we got to give on the removal of Feet from the WCA.

I think that because it’s a week-long online competition, you can pick and choose which events you want to do, so there is no issue with having large numbers of events.


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## Kit Clement (Oct 22, 2020)

BenChristman1 said:


> And do we really want to turn this into the WCA, where we just remove perfectly good events for no reason? Even if an event were to get removed from the weekly comp, I’m sure that we (the community) would be free to give more feedback than we got to give on the removal of Feet from the WCA.
> 
> I think that because it’s a week-long online competition, you can pick and choose which events you want to do, so there is no issue with having large numbers of events.



Eventually, you can have so many events that you dilute participation within a given event, which makes for a poorer experience across the board. I enjoy Master Pyraminx as a puzzle, but haven't been as motivated to compete in it because the participation is very low. I think it's a great puzzle to have as a SS event because of it being an interesting non-WCA puzzle, but I do wish that more people would do the competition here. Speed FMC has even bigger participation issues, and I feel like it's just kind of turned into a spin-off event of FMC that seemed interesting at first but has proven to be very luck based and doesn't have as many interesting time management strategies as once thought - many seem to approach the event no differently than normal FMC. If we wanted to drop some events this year to make room for more that would have greater community interest (like FTO), I think that Speed FMC is a pretty good candidate.


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## ichcubegerne (Oct 23, 2020)

BenChristman1 said:


> I did my first Speed FMC attempts last week, and I personally think that it’s a good event.



Do you have any argument, why it is a "good event"? I get that a online weekly comp can have more events at all. It is cool to have a weekly comp where we can compare ourselves in e.g. Master Pyra or Redi. BUT there is no point in having events, that are just a slight variation of another one. And SpeedFMC is literally just a way more luck dependent variation of FMC. if the weekly comp gets too full, then participation on the events goes down and when that happens more people will not participate, because there is no competition anymore.


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## BenChristman1 (Oct 23, 2020)

ichcubegerne said:


> Do you have any argument, why it is a "good event"? I get that a online weekly comp can have more events at all. It is cool to have a weekly comp where we can compare ourselves in e.g. Master Pyra or Redi. BUT there is no point in having events, that are just a slight variation of another one. And SpeedFMC is literally just a way more luck dependent variation of FMC. if the weekly comp gets too full, then participation on the events goes down and when that happens more people will not participate, because there is no competition anymore.


I have fun doing it, and I think it’s good practice for doing FMC-like approaches in a short amount of time. If you have 5-10 minutes left in an FMC attempt, and you don’t have a good start, you need these strategies to try to get at least a decent result. Also, FMC requires luck as well. You’re not going to get a 16 or 17 move single if you don’t get a little lucky.


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## Mike Hughey (Oct 23, 2020)

I'm starting to get the feeling that maybe it isn't so good to be so cavalier about adding new events. Last year we added 4 events, and now the one event that took the most work for me to add (by far - it took many hours of coding to add it) is being suggested to be removed, even by the person who suggested it to begin with.

It does seem like there are perhaps some events that aren't worth the trouble of keeping. My biggest regret with removing events is that the churn makes for a messier database - events that are held for a few years, then removed, then re-added. I also hate to remove events that mean a lot to some people. However, there is precedence for it; we have quite a few events that have been removed in the past. So I think I should consider it.

Because of my status as owner of the competition now, and as a sort of "payment" for my work here, I intend to enforce my absolute rule that 6BLD and 7BLD cannot be removed. Even though I haven't competed in either one this year (since my good big cubes are locked in my office which no one is allowed to enter because of COVID-19), I intend to make sure I can compete "semi-officially" here any time I want in those events. I also don't think I'm personally ready to remove 3x3x3 with feet; the forum competition is a great outlet for those who had the pain of seeing feet removed last year, and we've had quite a few site records this year (all by the same person , but still... ). But other than those 3 events, I think I may consider the following as a way to cut down on unnecessary extra events being added, for this year at least as an experiment. My idea is this:

1. Run a discussion as usual to select events for consideration to be added.
2. Simultaneous to (1), run another discussion to select events for consideration to be removed.
3. Run a poll selecting from the nominations in (1) to vote for events to be possibly added. The top two selected events go on to step 5.
4. Run a poll selecting from the nominations in (2) to vote for events to be possibly removed. The top two selected events go on to step 5.
5. Run a poll between the two events in (3) and the two events in (4) to select which 2 of the 4 events are in next year's competition. The other two are dropped.

This would guarantee that the number of events in the competition does not grow. It would also guarantee that there is an (at least temporary) groundswell specifically favoring a new event over an old one before the new one can be added.

If certain events really don't belong, perhaps they will be selected out this way eventually. Of course, sometimes popular vote isn't the best way to select things, so this still may not be perfect. I suspect all three of the events I am "protecting" (6BLD, 7BLD, feet) would be potentially on the chopping block if it were not for my insistence. I do fear we might have oscillation of events - an event gone one year, back the next year, gone the next year, etc., which makes an event kind of difficult to track. But realistically, I guess the code is already in to mostly handle that, so it's not that hard to handle now; I just think it looks messy. Also, tyranny of the majority is a real thing; some of the best events might be removed just because the average cuber doesn't like them. I guess I'm hoping the limited number of event changes helps limit the harm in that, but I still think it might be an issue.

Anyway, I'd be interested in any opinions or discussion on my suggestion above for handling new events / event removal this year. Any opinions on whether this is a good idea or not? I'm still not committed to it yet - I want some sort of process to exist every year, but I feel like last year I gave in too easily to adding too many events.


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## ichcubegerne (Oct 23, 2020)

Mike Hughey said:


> I'm starting to get the feeling that maybe it isn't so good to be so cavalier about adding new events. Last year we added 4 events, and now the one event that took the most work for me to add (by far - it took many hours of coding to add it) is being suggested to be removed, even by the person who suggested it to begin with.
> 
> It does seem like there are perhaps some events that aren't worth the trouble of keeping. My biggest regret with removing events is that the churn makes for a messier database - events that are held for a few years, then removed, then re-added. I also hate to remove events that mean a lot to some people. However, there is precedence for it; we have quite a few events that have been removed in the past. So I think I should consider it.
> 
> ...



My problems with this approach would be:
1. Having a fix number of 2 events that will be choosen from this procedure. I think that would just limit potential good changes to the event list too much. If everyone would dislike 6 events, then why would we keep 2 of them for 2 years?
2. As you said tyranny of the majority is a problem and I feel like it is very underestimated. I feel that there has to be some kind of requirement, to have a vote in this matter, like having to write a reasoning for that. "Some people/I like that event" is not a good argument to have an event in the weekly comp. 

I feel like the event list should be built around the WCA events. And then events that have some sort of unique value can get added, where we can be a bit more extensive, than the WCA is. This is a good strategy to get an event list that is well thought through.


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## abunickabhi (Oct 23, 2020)

I do like the new system of discussing and proposing events. I do not intend to have speedFMC removed. It is an enjoyable event. But it's tough to get average of 5 in it as it requires accuracy.

I am quite happen that 6BLD and 7BLD are still maintained throughout the years. Although I get only one success a year, knowing that I can compete in it is very useful. Also, I like that Mats Bertsgen regularly does 6BLD so it's not a no-show for most of the weeks.

For next year, I would like the addition of FTO and Dino cube. But I want to gauge if the community wants it's addition too.


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## ichcubegerne (Oct 23, 2020)

abunickabhi said:


> I do like the new system of discussing and proposing events. I do not intend to have speedFMC removed. It is an enjoyable event. But it's tough to get average of 5 in it as it requires accuracy.
> 
> I am quite happen that 6BLD and 7BLD are still maintained throughout the years. Although I get only one success a year, knowing that I can compete in it is very useful. Also, I like that Mats Bertsgen regularly does 6BLD so it's not a no-show for most of the weeks.
> 
> For next year, I would like the addition of FTO and Dino cube. But I want to gauge if the community wants it's addition too.


Isnt Dino just Redi without centers?  seems a bit redundant


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## xyzzy (Oct 23, 2020)

ichcubegerne said:


> Isnt Dino just Redi without centers?  seems a bit redundant


Yeah, but one interesting thing about the Dino is that it has two (really distinct) solutions: one with the standard colour scheme, and one with the mirrored colour scheme.

(But people already complain about Redi being too fast, and Dino would be even faster, so it doesn't seem like a good idea to add Dino regardless.)


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## abunickabhi (Apr 7, 2021)

Kit Clement said:


> From my limited experience of trying this at home, the thing I like about a non-linear function of time is that you are essentially not penalized drastically for using some extra time to find efficiencies. Your score decreases for each additional second, but it is not decreasing as fast as it was previously. And by the examples above, this also seems to make it so that you can't spend a drastic amount of time more unless the payoff for solution improvement is drastic. I hadn't considered using an excessive amount of time in this event in my testing of different formulas, but with a reasonable time limit I think that this would work okay.
> 
> If we were to use this system, I would like to significantly nerf typical FMC techniques unless they are implemented extremely quickly - thus, considering that 3c insertions will on average reduce 2 moves and rarely reduce more than 4, and the typical insertion time is around 5min for an FMC pro, an increase in 300 seconds should offset moves by 5. That would give a k of 1/60 in seconds, or just 1 in minutes.
> 
> ...


Sorry for the bump and super late reply. I revisited this post as I wanted to explain a few cubers how the scoring in speedFMC works.

I too feel the formala moves+k*time would nerf the FMC techniques as people will just go for luck or linear solution, and it will not be the most rewarding experience to do attempts like this as compared to classical 1 hour FMC.

As Kit pointed out, I would love to see test contests with different scoring system for speedFMC and see how it fares and makes it more competitive. I am not sure how these test contests should be conducted though, maybe just via a SS thread, and there will be a person manually verifying the attempts and computing the score using the different sets of formulas.


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