2 years ago

Hi everyone,

I had a little bit of a break from cubing over the Australian summer, but am now home and keen to get back into a bit of practice before university starts up again. I’m competing in Hobart this weekend at the first ever WCA competition in Tasmania. It’s a small-ish comp with only a few of my main events. I’m looking forward to seeing a bit of the city of Hobart, having not visited Tasmania before.

As per the title of this blog, I’m simply going to talk a little bit about my plans for the year in cubing, as well as a few goals and predictions for speedcubing in 2018.

First up – a couple of people have been asking about my competition schedule and what that looks like. I recently signed up for CubingUSA Nationals 2018 in Salt Lake City, Utah. I haven’t been to US Nationals since 2014, and so this was the major competition that I wanted to attend this year. Given that it starts less than a week after the European Championships, I probably won’t be visiting Madrid for that, and instead may do a bit more travel and competing around North America. I haven’t made any specific plans beyond that just yet, but there are definitely things in the works.

Other than that, attending the Asian Championships in Taiwan would definitely be good fun, but it probably just depends on the dates. The only Asian Championships I’ve ever attended was the inaugural event back in 2010, when I was just 14 years old. (footage). This was my first time attending any sort of major competition, and I was pretty thrilled to be able to meet and watch many top cubers I’d only seen online. I started out the finals with a 13 second solve, but managed to save the round with four 9s in a row after that, ending up with a 9.43 average. Back then, 9.43 was pretty handy :p

In terms of speedcubing goals for the year, I’d basically like to continue gradually improving both at home and in competition. I think I can take a more disciplined approach to training for competitions - yesterday I found myself practicing 6x6 and 7x7, despite having a competition this weekend with other events, and probably no competitions with these events for a few months. Not the best idea. In terms of concrete goals, I’d really like to keep all my competition averages below 7.5 seconds in 2018, but this might be a bit tricky. I want to try and keep up with Max across all his disciplines, but if that’s proving impossible, then I’ll try and narrow my focus. Lastly, I’d like to keep improving my results across all WCA events (minus feet) and am looking forward to a battle with Jay to maintain the top spot in Kinchranks.

The title also said I’d throw out a few predictions, so here goes.

Max Park will break more than a dozen world records in 2018, and claim US National Championship titles across all his main events (3x3-7x7 and OH).

Sebastian will get a 4x4 world record single with parity.

All cubers on the Euros 3x3 podium will be over 20 years old.

The Nahm will break a world record! (Really hoping this one comes true)

Very easy to see, but by the end of the year, there'll be 5 people with >40 point MultiBLD results in competition.

There'll be another funny Kian storyline at CubingUSA Nationals. Maybe instead of jumping from 1st to 92nd, he'll place 92nd in the first round and end up winning the final.

In terms of plans for the website, the two main ways to improve it are breadth and depth. Initially, my focus was depth, as I wanted to make high-quality and comprehensive tutorials. Now that I'm becoming reasonably happy with the number of videos for each puzzle, I'll probably try and expand the repertoire a little bit. As I've mentioned to people previously though, I don't plan on making tutorials for events in which I'm not an expert - even for the Megaminx videos, I was a bit reluctant, as there are people who are definitely more skilled and knowledgeable in that area. When the time comes, I'd definitely be interested to collaborate with event specialists and help them create free tutorial videos.

In the immediate future, I'll be cleaning up a few bits and pieces on the site and adding a few more resources and 3x3 example solve videos. After that, I have a couple of different options - either work on some introductory Roux method tutorials, some 2x2 videos, or 6x6 and 7x7 videos. Kevin Hays' Tuesday Tips series is already a very comprehensive set of tutorials for big cubes (check it out on his YouTube channel!), so if anything, I'd start out those modules by filming some example solves, and then go back and make the tutorial videos.

As always, keen to hear suggestions for the site, as well as any goals and predictions you may have for speedcubing this year :)

Feliks