I’m writing this 5 days after the event and I’m still buzzing! Last week I experienced another unforgettable three days of cubing at the World Rubik’s Cube Championship in Düsseldorf.
There is really too much to tell for one post, but I’ll make my best effort to give you my impression of this epic competition.
Setting
The venue for this world championship was Burg-Wächter Castello. The main hall was very spacious and had plenty of tables and chairs to sit on. This worked very well and is much better than an auditorium with just rows of seats for the spectators. Cubers want to sit down together to chat and cube, be able to leave their stuff somewhere and walk around the venue freely.
The main stage had 16 cube tables where the competitors take place to do their they solves. A big screen above the stage showed intermediary results and live images from the camera crew that was present all weekend. The lighting was absolutely perfect: strong light, coming evenly from all directions with no annoying shadows or dark spots.
On either side of the big screen there were 2 nice world championship banners with the main sponsors and contributors on it. On the left of the main stage the officials were seated with their equipment.
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| The main hall | The main stage |
At the side of the arena there was a smaller stage with 6 cube tables where the side events were held. Above the side stage a huge world championship banner was hung aloft. A tower made up of cardboard cubes in the corner gave it a playful finish.
At the opposite end of the main stage there was also a seating area for spectators and guests. On the higher level of the venue, there was a bar that sold food and drinks. The bar looked over the main hall and the stage so you could easily follow what was going on while you indulged in a bockwurst with German beer. 
Also on the higher level at the side of the main hall there was a designated area for puzzle sellers. There were stands from V-Cubes, which had the new ILLuson and Dazzler on display, Wil Strijbos from the Netherlands, who had so many interesting and funny puzzles, cubikon.de from the online German puzzle shop, Techno Source, who were promoting the TouchCube, and Oliver Nagy from Hungary.
I was so glad that there was a decent puzzle market this time! At a competition like this, people are usually in the mood for buying puzzles. I probably spent more on puzzles during that weekend than at any other competition.
For the fewest moves competition and all the blindfolded events they provided a room upstairs, completely isolated from all the happenings in the main hall.
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| The side stage | WC 2009 banner |
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| Puzzles galore! | The side room |
Organization
The venue was situated quite a distance from the hostel that was booked by the organization and where most people stayed. Luckily the organizers thought about this and arranged a bus service that would pick up the competitors from the hostel in the morning and brought them back in the evening at different times.
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| Taxi! Take us to the venue, please! We’re about… 200 people | On the coach |
The organization team clearly made a conscious effort to mobilize experienced people to help out during this tournament. People who have organized competitions before were put in charge to do the score keeping and coordinate events. Cubers who have participated in a lot of competitions were assigned as scramblers for the various rounds and were given a separate schedule for that purpose in addition to their regular competition schedule.
Of course it’s impossible to count just on the help of the participants to make at all work. There was a well trained group of local judges who I think did an admirable job.
The back side of the stage had an area for the scramblers on one end, where the competitors walk on the stage, and a waiting area for the competitors area at the other end. This made it all go very streamlined. The competitors simply put their cube on their result sheet that’s waiting for them on the scramble table when they come up the stage and sit down in the waiting area. When they are called for their solve, they walk to the solve table, do their solve and go back to the waiting area. The judges simply have to keep walking circles between the solve tables, the scramble tables and the waiting area. No one is interfering with each other and no one has to move too much around. Perfect setup!
This meant the competition went extremely smooth and we were never in danger of running behind schedule.
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| Scramblers | Judges |
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| The final competitors anxiously waiting for their next solve | The officials doing their job |
As is customary for big events like this, there was a master caller who did the announcements and talked us through the proceedings. The organization again elected to have this done by an experienced person, this time in the form of Patrick Bellenbaum. Patrick used to organize the first editions of the German Open in Güterlsoh and is a knowledgeable cuber although he’s not active anymore and doesn’t compete. It was nice to have someone assigned for this job who actually knows what he’s talking about.
The big screen behind the stage was put to very good use: all the captured images were directed by a professional crew and displayed in combination with live, up-to-date result sheets. They even mounted an overhead camera above the center cube table in the front row so that you could get a very good view of the solves happening on that table.
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| M.C. Patrick Bellenbaum | Live results coming in | Overhead shot |
All this made it a very enjoyable experience for the spectators. I watched most of the finals from the front of the stage and I can tell you it was entertaining and exciting. The tension was built up nicely by showing provisional rankings in between attempts. During the 3x3x3 final, the crowd was really packed and it made for a great atmosphere.
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| The crowd really starting to get in to it during Sunday’s finals | Spectators filming and taking photo’s |
Another nice touch was the addition of mystery events in between official events when there was time to spare. A regular at US competitions, these mystery events involve random people who are called on stage to solve a random puzzle in a not-so-common way. We did a race for assembling a 3x3x3 cube and a team blindfolded competition but there was one other event that I absolutely loved.
At one point the whole hall was asked to pick a cuber he or she had never met before and invite the newly made friend for a race. The people who won had to repeat the same process over and over again until 6 people were left. Those 6 people had to do a head-to-head race on stage to whittle down the group to 3 people before the final head-to-head race declared the ultimate winner.
I thought this was a great idea and something that could only work well at such a unique occasion with so many people from so many different countries gathering.
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| Tyson doing what he does best | International team blindfolded competition |
Remarkable performances
Winning a world title is remarkable no matter how you put it, but for me personally there were a few moments that stood out.
THE performance of the tournament was undoubtedly Breandan Vallance’s victory in the 3x3x3 final. Breandan, next to being a very likable fellow, is a cuber with an enormous potential. I’ve seriously never seen anyone handle a cube the way he does. The cube is like an extension of his fingers.
Despite his skill and natural talent, he never quite succeeded in living up to expectations. This time however he didn’t twitch once, nailing a 10.74 seconds average, well ahead of the other finalists. To pull off your personal best average at a time when it matters most is just massive! I don’t think there was anyone who wasn’t happy to see Breandan win.
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| Breandan’s reaction after his last and fastest solve of the final: 9.63s | Thomas Zolnowski (3rd), Breandan Vallance (1st) and Erik Akkersdijk (2nd) |
It was proven once again that the 4×4x4 Rubik’s Cube is one of the most difficult puzzles to perform well on. In a final that was characterized by mistakes and sub-par times from big contenders, Syuhei Omura managed to get his act together by producing a personal best average of 45.18 seconds and running away from the competition with a clear margin.
Yumu Tabuchi stole the show in the one-handed competition by setting only the second fastest average ever recorded in the first round, before going on to break the world record in the final. Not only did he break it, he demolished it by a comprehensive margin and claimed the crown with a 16.90 seconds average.
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| Syuhei right after being announced the 4x4x4 winner | One-handed podium: Rowe Hessler (3rd), Yumu Tabuchi (1st), Syuhei Omura (2nd) |
If you would look at the best overall performance, I think Erik Akkersdijk deserves credit for being the best all rounder. Finishing in the top 3 for 3x3x3, 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 takes a lot of doing!
We also saw some incredible single world records from Dan Cohen (36.46 seconds on 4x4x4), Piotr Michal Padlewski (10.96 seconds on Square-1), Bálint Bodor (57.94 seconds on megaminx) and Michal Halczuk (3 minutes and 43.15 seconds on 7x7x7). Very impressive, guys!
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| Erik made more podium appearances than any other cuber | Dan discussing his 4x4x4 world record with Erik |
My results
In the build up to the world championship, I set myself a few goals. I made this commitment public in my previous blog post but I’ll restate it here. I wanted to:
- average under 13s for 3x3x3 in Düsseldorf
- average under 55s for 4x4x4 in Düsseldorf
- average under 1m40s for 5x5x5 in Düsseldorf
- average under 20s for Square-1 in Düsseldorf
- average under 8s for pyraminx in Düsseldorf
- put in 100 hours of preparation time
Let’s first look at my preparation. I didn’t put in as much practice as I wanted to: about 40 hours spread over 30 days and I only ended up practicing 3x3x3 and Square-1.
The reason I chose to put in a certain amount of practice is because that way you can go to the competition knowing that you’re prepared and that you’ve given it your best shot. It gives you that extra bit of confidence.
I found that setting this goal worked both motivating and demotivating during the weeks before the competition. The good thing is that it actually did made me practice more when I normally wouldn’t. It made me “show up” for practice, and once I got going I was enjoying it and wanted to keep practicing more. I was also doing more quality practice instead of solving a few cubes in between doing other things, because I wanted to make it count.
Another positive side-effect is that I started journaling my practice time by keeping a log. This made me more aware of how often and how long I really practice, which was a good learning experience. I think I’ve always overestimated how much time I actually spend on focused practice.
On the negative side, I found out very early that the goal of 100 hours wasn’t realistic. I was lagging behind badly after a couple of weeks. I tried to recover a few times by doing some longer sessions over the weekends. This worked a few times, but it usually left me a bit burnt out which brought me back to square one because I didn’t feel like cubing the next few days. It’s not really a healthy situation when you’re playing catch-up all the time and you’re concerned more about hitting the target than enjoying your cubing and trying to improve.
My 3x3x3 and Square-1 times in practice were getting close to the times I had set out to beat at the championship, but I could not consistently average under them. I was definitely feeling improvements on my 3x3x3 solving: a lot more consistent, no bad outliers, the left hand is slowly getting stronger and on a par with my right hand. Just doing a lot of solves really helps.
For Square-1, I managed to learn a set of 16 edge permutations and I know them really well now. I also made some small improvements like learning to avoid realigning the layers in between steps and learning to swap the layers/flip the middle piece while finishing the edge permutation. I’m quite happy with this progress.
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| Logging can be very insightful | The algorithm sheets never left my side |
At the world championship, I did a very mediocre 17.22 seconds average for 3x3x3 in the first round, which meant I didn’t qualify for the semi-final. That was a huge disappointment because I can do a lot better! I don’t really know what to put this down to. I was feeling very relaxed, focused and up for the challenge. I think I’m probably lacking a bit in confidence at the moment because it’s been a while since I’ve made any significant improvements on this event.
I set a decent 25.75 seconds average on Square-1 despite a 2 second penalty on one of my solves. It wasn’t quite what I expected but I can live with it. I feel I need a bit more time on this puzzle before the practice really starts to pay off.
Obviously I didn’t set the world alight with my 4x4x4, 5x5x5 and pyraminx results either because I barely touched them over the last month or so.
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| Competing in Square-1 with the Polish cubers looking on | Best solvers per country based on single time. I was a bit lucky to be in here. |
One thing I’m very proud of is successfully designing and building a mosaic together with Charlie Cooper and Adam Wills. No one of us had ever done this before and there was a lot of last minute work being done to make this happen. The final result was quite satisfying and I hope we’ll get another opportunity soon to make a mosaic at a competition. It’s fun! 
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| Matching up one face on each of the 196 cubes of our mosaic | The end result |
Life after Düsseldorf
Every time I go to a competition like this, I return home with renewed interest and motivation. It always reminds me of what makes cubing and its community so great. It reignites the fire in my belly.
I have a few more tournaments to look forward to this year. The Dutch Open in Eindhoven, which is a classic, the UK Open in Manchester and the Swedish Cube Day in Kungsängen.
Looking further ahead, Worlds 2011 is coming nearer.
How will cubing have evolved by that time? Will cubing have become a big-money sport with lots of media coverage? Will we finally get a world championship in Asia? Will it still be an open competition? Will I still be able to qualify and make a mark as an (almost) 30-year old?
One thing’s for certain: I want to keep cubing and find out!