Report by Gilles van den Peerebom

Friday 13 July 2007
I had arrived the day before at Erik’s Akkersdijk place by train (a 6-hour journey) in the Netherlands. We had spent the evening cubing and preparing ourselves for what would turn out to be a very good championship.
So on Friday we had to travel 800 kms by car with Arnaud van Galen and Rama Temmink. Travelling by car is usually boring, but travelling by car with 4 cubers in it is totally different. We literally sit an entire day in a car but when we arrived, I felt like we had just left home. During our trip we had enjoyed German Highways and their absence of speed limits (I reassure you, you can’t drive fast for a very long moment as there are always ‘staus’ or works). We also met the largest group of Harley Davidson motorbikes we had ever seen. There were like 300 of them at the minimum and according to Rama the leader was wearing red devil-like horns on his helmet and had blood paint all over his jacket. We also enjoyed the nice advice of the “Annie-Annie” guiding system that had planned 500 kms away to do a U-turn. This was quite funny as it very often advised us to do U-turns or had to recalculate everything if we just stopped on the highway for a small break.
When we arrived at 10 o’clock in the evening we went to the ‘Arena’ which is the location of the championship (and many others including Chess, Bridge and Backgammon). We met Ton, Mátyás Kuti, István Kocza and lots of other cubers. Unfortunately the place was closing and we had to leave quickly.
So we went to pick our room at the hostel. The hostel was very cheap but as it is said ‘you get what you pay for’. So we could not complain about the very poor quality of the room. It turned out that I slept better there than at a Mercure Hotel in Bielefeld (where I stayed for the German Open 2007). And according to Arnaud, the same thing happened to him with comparison to another ‘cube hotel experiment’.
In the evening we remained in the lobby to cube and meet other cubers. In the end, we stayed up quite late showing our skills to 3 German Chess players. This was quite fun as we could consider each other as crazy in our respective fields. At about 2 o’clock in the morning, we decided it was time to get a bit of sleep before the big competition of the week-end.

Saturday 14 July
On Saturday morning we had to register ourselves for the competition. I cannot say this was the worst registration ever since I have been to Czech Open 2006 so I knew what to expect but this times it was very bad because there were queues. Indeed, we had to register first for the general Czech Open competition (which includes other puzzles and games), then to the office number 3 we had do fill in some forms for the accommodation, then number 4 would compute the total amount of money we had to pay and finally at office 5 we would pay. But afterwards we had to register again for the Rubik’s competition but that was much faster since we only had to confirm which event we wanted to compete in.
After all this which lasted easily over 45 minutes, we could prepare ourselves for the first event: the 4x4 combined final. I was happy to be allowed to do an entire average and at the same time improve my best official average by a little less than 1 second. My goal for this is to reach a sub 1:30 average, no more than that. As for the 3x3 First round, I was quite happy with my times but for some reason I was completely certain to make it to the final. It was quite a shock for when I realized that I was the last one allowed to go and compete in the final. But the result was there, so that was not a big problem.
Time slipped by very quickly and after a horrible lunch (including nearly swallowing an horrifyingly big mosquito hidden in my orange juice glass), the main event for was about to happen: 3x3 One-Handed. For the past days I had practiced a mental technique that was supposed to allow me to keep cool and control of myself in stressful situation. I have to say that it was quite a disaster. The more I wanted to keep cool, the more stressed and the worse were my times. As usual in these situations, luck was there to help me not to ruin everything. Indeed, it was the first time that I had 2 PLL-skips in the same average of 5 in a competition. It helped me keep the first time quite good (22.xx seconds) and prevent me from a catastrophe on the last one (26.xx seconds). However, it was not good enough to get to the first place. After long minutes of waiting for the results, Rama was awarded the first place for the One-Handed competition by a small difference of 0.15 seconds in average. I have to say that I find it better that he wins, and that for a couple of reasons. First of all, he did great (usually normal and bad cases) on his solves. And secondly (and more importantly for me), this will push me harder to train more for the next competition (probably Lyon Open 2007 on the 1st of September). Anyway, I was quite happy since I was still on the podium and furthermore ahead of Mátyás who is showing incredible improvements in this category.
Finally I just would like to mention that a special TV crew came all the way from Japan just to film the OH event. That was pretty nice. :-)
A lot less nice was my performance on Czech Television. They wanted to film a race between the 3 best OH cubers at the competition so I, Rama and Mátyás sat behind stackmats and raced each other for just one solve. The scramble was of course the same for each of us. The result was astonishing: 22.58 for Rama, 22.9x for Mátyás and 23.09 for me ! So now I look like a very bad OH cuber to the entire Czech population. :p Afterwards Rama had to do a rehearse of his solve but he admitted that he could not do it because he did not remember it at all (thanks to various mistakes). Even though I lost (once again), this was pretty funny too. :-)
Afterwards there was the 5x5. As I had not practiced much, all I expected was to have around 3 minutes times and I was quite happy (again :p) to hit sub 3 minutes twice. However, these times are not good anymore if you want to do an average.
Then the 3x3 Blindfolded came. I knew I was not as good as I once were but I expected at least to be able to solve one of these 2 cubes. I DNFed both of them though one was pretty close to the solution with just 2 corners twisted and 2 edges flipped.
For the 3x3 Final, all I wanted was not to finish last. It started well with a 13.84 time. The second was also very good in the 14’s but unfortunately I received a 2 seconds penalty. All other solves were average (in the 17 seconds) for me so I had a final average of 17.21 which is still my 4th best official average and moreover I finished 7th.
After the competition we first had the winner’s ceremony (in which Mátyás was called every time if I remember correctly). I received a nice silver medal (the new ones with a cube on the front).
Then we went back to our hotels to pick out bath suits which some of us would use later in the evening at a large swimming-pool party. But first we went to eat in a restaurant in the center and besides learning the Thisselweight method, one of the highlights was when Arnaud asked for some soda to the waiter and then his answer was a wonderful “No!”. We all burst out laugh. That was quite wonderful.
Afterwards and finally we reached the swimming were me, Arnaud, Thomas and Josef had nice swim. We even found a very cool swimming pool that was built above the ground so that there were windows. We all thought about making under water cubing videos but we planned to do it the next evening when we would come back. We also discovered that in Czech, when you enter a swimming pool, you have to have your wallet with you to be able to pay for slide rides.
We finally reached our hostel again and I, Arnaud, Erik and Petra had a beer and a pool game in the bar inside the hostel. At 2o’clock, we hit our beds.

Sunday 15 July
This 2nd and last day of competition started nicely with a good breakfast from a gas station (where most of the people had breakfast). I always find that weird. Anyway, we reached the venue just after 9 o’clock and some people were already there. Indeed, most of the “multiple blindfolded cubers” were already warming up. Watching that, I decided to compete too and to try just 2 cubes to get a time. (I have already solved 2 cubes but my time remains unknown lol.) Before I could compete, Mátyás had a go with 5 cubes and to the amazement of most of the people present; he solved them under 10 minutes on a stack mat. That was very amazing but that would not be the only incredible he would yield today. Arnaud was also competing in this event and for the first time ever, he had a successful solve in a blindfolded event! This means that until now he had always failed all his “one cube blindfolded” attempts but he succeeded with 2 cubes! Moreover, his time turned out to be the Dutch Record and in some way a World Record for an attempt of 2 cubes blindfolded. He was quite happy with it and lot of people (including me) congratulated him warmly.
Directly after this, Mátyás had an attempt at the 4x4 Blindfolded. After just 1 minute and 30 seconds of memorization, he put on his blindfold and started solving. It was incredible to watch it. Immediately (or almost immediately), he had a 5x5 Blindfolded attempt. I was joking with Thomas about after how much time he would put on his blindfold. I had bet on 2 minutes and 30 seconds. I turned out not to be too far away from the reality since he just needed 2 minutes and 40 seconds to memorize his 5x5 and start solving it. I think the only disappointing fact about this is that he did not manage to solve it entirely within the 10 minutes time frame that a stack mat can measure. Indeed, he just took 10 minutes and 5 seconds. How incredible.
After this came the Megaminx for which I had to scramble. So I do not have much to say about this except that I was quite happy every time a score sheet came back without the puzzle because the solver exceeded the time limit. :p
For the Magic, I knew I had no chance of winning. So I just went for the 2nd place but I did not get it. I averaged just above the 1.4x mark and XXX hit 1.37 so I ended up to be 3rd. Anyway, it is not that bad. Afterwards I judged Mátyás attempt. I have to say it is hard to be a judge of him in that discipline because you barely have the time to write down the time on the score sheet that he had already finished another attempt. Crazy.
During the lunch time, we decided to take part in the Fewest Moves competition. Since I had learned that the Thislewaite method can be optimal for solving the cube with a very limited number of moves, I decided to give it a try. After about 30 minutes, I decided to stop and check my solution. I turned out to have just done the worst and longest solution than anyone else in an official Fewest Moves competition. 75 moves!! And I have to confide you something, I was lucky to skip a step which would have easily added at the least 20 moves. :p Now I think I will just stick with Fridrich and insertions.
We then proceeded to the afternoon events. We started with the clock where I was happy to finish 2nd given my very low level of practice. I might want to try and improve the NR record average of 12.32 some day.
As for the other events, I had only one attempt in the Square-1 which turned out to be very bad since it took me more than 1 minute to take it back into a cube shape. Fortunately for me, Arnaud did worse than I did so I did not finish last in this event. :p I did not compete in the Pyraminx, I was merely a judge. I find the fast solvers quite impressive. But I do not think this is an event for me.
Finally there was the 2x2. We had incredible new world records (just guess who did them). Personally I was happy with my results but just a bit sad because I exactly hit my best previous average. I was hoping to get closer to 8 seconds.
To close this competition there was another winner’s ceremony and once again, Mátyás broke the bank. In this competition he received 10 of these new golden medals plus 2 of silver and 2 of bronze. I merely have 1 golden (from a previous championship), 2 silver and 1 bronzen medal. But he is very proud of it. I wish him all the best for his future competitions.
Once again, we left the venue and we went to our respective hotels to pick our bath suits. Afterwards we went to another restaurant where we actually stayed a while. Among great discussions and cube races, a few memories will remain in my head for a long time. Firstly, Erik asked the waiter if his pizza was hand-made. The waiter could not answer better than saying “Ananas !”. So funny again. I think all Czech waiters have to go to a school where they learn how to make clients laugh. :p Finally when Joël came back from the restrooms, he said “Gilles, you are not going to believe this. In the toilet, there is a poster with a picture of you!”. We all rushed in the toilets to see that little wonder. In fact, it turned out that I appeared on one of the promo pictures of this year’s competition because they used pictures of last year’s competition. I hope next year we will all have the chance to appear on posters in Czech’s restaurants toilets!
To finish the evening, we went to the swimming pool but unfortunately it was closed so we all headed to a bar where we player some baby-foot and darts. That was a wonderful way to end this championship.

Monday 16 July
For our final day in Czech Republic, we (I, Arnaud, Erik and Rama) wanted to buy some T-Shirts from the event. So we went back to the venue and to our biggest surprise we met István and Mátyás once again. We also checked again the results together but we did not stay long since we had a long road.
During that long day, we had various challenges such as breaking our record speed (only if the road conditions were safe of course) or trying to get around ‘staus’. We finally arrived late in The Netherlands.
The next day I would take the train back to Belgium.

As a simple conclusion, I just want to say that I had a lot of fun during this championship and that I want to go back there next year. Thanks Arnaud, Erik, Rama, Thomas, Lars, Josef, Mátyás, István and everyone else for making this championship a wonderful experience for me. See you all soon!