Anyone have a pic or know the times for Sunday’s finals?
Yup. It’s in an hour and 8 minutes for 2a finals
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Finals have started!!!
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MAJOR congratulations to our 1A victor and World champion, EVAN NAGAO!
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Is Rei out of practice? What happened there? I haven’t really been following the asian competitions the last year so I don’t know how well he’s been doing this year but He’s been so dominant at the worlds stage for years. Awesome for Hajime though, really didn’t think he could get the double win.
And poor Alex. Seems like someone always comes out and is one step ahead of him. First it was Hank, then Hajime came out of nowhere, I really hope he gets a world title soon.
Also super hyped that Yuki got on the podium for 1a, I’ve always been a big fan of him and really felt like he was the underdog this year.
Also major congrats to Evan, completely honest I really didn’t think he could do it, wasn’t sure if he would even make podium. Nice W for the US, can’t say I wasn’t hoping for Takeshi to get it tho. 2nd place 2 years now 
I’m absolutely delighted to see Evan win Worlds! Seems like destiny…
Now, I am new to all this contest stuff and I don’t really understand how the judging works. Evan tangled his string in the middle of the routine and lost valuable seconds fixing it, and yet he was able to place 1st. I would have thought that, given the level of competition involved, the winner of Worlds would have to be nearly perfect.
Also, the USA had 9 participants and Japan had 8 in the finals (a total of 17 out of 20). Is that typical?
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So excited for Evan winning Worlds. I had fun working with him on Plutonium. He’s obviously a great player, but also a really nice person.
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It just shows that Evan won by a smaller margin than he could have. He scored high enough with everything else so that minor slip up didn’t affect his placement.
Another thing is his performance evaluation is always very high so that helps him score a little higher.
This was a similar instance to when Gentry won worlds. His performance evaluation was what allowed him to get 1st over Takeshi, who had a higher technical execution score.
As for the countries, yes, the US and Japan typically dominate the competition, Japan a little more so than the US. I would say US had a slightly better showing than most worlds.
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Does anybody know wich Song Ryuichi Nakamura used in his final round? Cant find it.
Evan Nagao has a big trophy to go with his new yoyo😀
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
No shortage of Amazing freestyles in all divisions.
Wow!
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Evan is great, his performance was great, he is so entertaining. Selfishly I am bummed that he did a third (fairly similar) freestyle to Freebird within the last 10 months. He deserves to be a world champion, he knew what would get him there and he succeeded but I would have loved a new song and a new routine. Takeshi already has plenty of world championships under his belt but his routine was the most interesting to me: Keiran was just flat out robbed. Robbed.
Evan changed a lot of stuff though
Takeshi’s freestyle was insane. The control he had despite the difficulty of all of his tricks was ridiculous.
SF summed it up well “No matter who wins, Takeshi was the best player at this event.”
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Do you feel there is a problem with the judging system? If the best player didn’t win, then something in the system is flawed maybe?
I mean, this kind of thing plagued the Olympics for a very long time. Judging in events like gymnastics during the 1980s became strained due to differences in performance evaluation, rules interpretation, and cultural and political influences. The best athlete did not always win gold.
“Who is the best yoyoer” is a very subjective question. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the judging system. It’s about as good as can be. Fact of the matter is there’s a lot of intangibles that make certain players not score as well as others because of their play styles. Contests have always catered faster players because they can rack up clicks faster, and slower players that use a lot of slow slacks and stuff typically don’t score as well. This isn’t as big of a problem as it was 5-10 years ago but it’s still there. The best players construct their freestyles to score well with all of this in mind. The best competition players know the judging system well, they know what clicks, what scores high.
I don’t think that just because you place high at contests means that you’re the best player, it just means you’re the best contest player.
Gentry is a great example of this. His tricks, especially prior to this year, weren’t as difficult as some other players that would score lower than him but he knows the judging system so well he knows what clicks and he really knows how to take full advantage of the performance score, something a lot of the Japanese players lack. Gentry beat out Takeshi in 2014 because he had a much higher performance evaluation than Takeshi, despite having a lower tech score, and Evan edged out Takeshi in a similar way this year.
PERSONALLY, I feel like technical evaluation should be worth more because that element shows who the better player is imo, the performance evaluation just shows… who’s the better performer. I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority with this opinion though because the the value of the performance evaluation gives incentives to the player to put on more of a show, so it’s more interesting for spectators.
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Well said. Personally, I am glad for the balance of including the performance aspect of the judging, as it often makes for more moving/interesting play. When it is just purely sting hits and mind numbing fast tech, it’s amazing, but I enjoy it more in segments than for the length of it.
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Gentry beat out Takeshi in 2014 because he had a much higher performance evaluation than Takeshi, despite having a lower tech score, and Evan edged out Takeshi in a similar way this year
Evan had a higher TEx score than Takeshi.
Was it Gold Dust by DJ Fresh?