# Add Team BLD event to the WCA (Proposal)



## abunickabhi (Mar 14, 2022)

https://forum.worldcubeassociation.org/t/add-team-bld-as-an-official-event/18948

What do you guys think?
Can this event be organized at a good scale at all WCA competitions?


----------



## Burrito (Mar 14, 2022)

It would be very cool. I also found a podcast episode on this https://open.spotify.com/episode/4fUmSlS28SgxiyHn2MIwPs?si=Es-M1nkxSq2SPcFPK5uqGA


----------



## gsingh (Mar 14, 2022)

sounds cool, but organization could be a problem.


----------



## turtwig (Mar 14, 2022)

I think this would be hard to organize in a competition. The problem that seems most obvious is that teams may interfere with each other since oral communication is necessary. It may be hard to hear when many attempts are happening concurrently and hearing others' solutions would bring cheating potential (it might even just inadvertently affect the blindfolded person's state of mind - very hard to unhear something). Personally, I'm not a big fan of introducing new 3x3 variants. Team BLD seems to be quite optimized already, and the solving style is almost identical to normal 3x3 speedsolving from what I understand, as long as both teammates have names for a sufficient number of F2L and last layer cases.

Additionally, the number of people that would be able to compete at a high level would be severely limited through circumstances not their own. You would generally need a partner at or higher than your level in speedsolving ability and knowledge to reach your "full potential," and naturally it would be even harder to have record-breaking potential.
Maybe conventions would develop so that people "in the know" could partner with anyone else with knowledge of the same convention, but to me that sounds quite uninteresting on its face. This would further exacerbate the problem of people hearing others' solutions (imagine you're sitting in a waiting area and happen to (or intentionally) hear someone's solution). Additionally, it would likely still be advantageous to practice and compete with fixed partner or small group of people, for example it would be near impossible to innovate without a dedicate partner. I think we should stick with individual events only. Knowing/competing with other fast speedcubers should not be a prerequisite to becoming fast yourself and team events would essentially bar people from certain areas of the world where there are not many fast people from being competitive on the world stage. (I understand not everyone competes to become world-class, but if it's just for fun I don't see a problem with simply holding it as an unofficial event.)


----------



## Tabe (Mar 14, 2022)

I've watched some team BLD solves and it's an interesting novelty. And that's about it. I don't want team events in the WCA at all. At least not officially.


----------



## DynaXT (Mar 14, 2022)

I agree. Good on its own, but wouldn't make sense as an official event.


----------



## abunickabhi (Mar 15, 2022)

GenZ Cubing said:


> It would be very cool. I also found a podcast episode on this https://open.spotify.com/episode/4fUmSlS28SgxiyHn2MIwPs?si=Es-M1nkxSq2SPcFPK5uqGA


Cool podcast. Thanks for sharing yo!


----------



## TheSilverBeluga (Mar 15, 2022)

I'm pretty sure I saw a video on the cubicle's channel where two people (I think it was Rami and someone else, don't remember who) were doing team BLD solves and getting like 16 second solves, and they pointed out that it would not be a good official event because the optimal solution would just be to get two really good BLDers with the same memo words, have one person tell the memo to the other during inpsection and have the other person execute it.


----------



## mookiemu (Mar 25, 2022)

TheSilverBeluga said:


> I'm pretty sure I saw a video on the cubicle's channel where two people (I think it was Rami and someone else, don't remember who) were doing team BLD solves and getting like 16 second solves, and they pointed out that it would not be a good official event because the optimal solution would just be to get two really good BLDers with the same memo words, have one person tell the memo to the other during inpsection and have the other person execute it.


That totally makes sense. I wonder why none of the videos I've seen do this. Every video I've seen with people doing team bld has them using CFOP or something and yelling out individual moves such as R or L and named algs like "sune" or "antisune". Why wouldn't the person looking on just call out memo words or letter pairs? The person looking on doesn't even have to be a good solver, they just have to know Speffz naming.


----------

