Like last year, the Liechtenstein Open 2019 took place in the spacious Spörryhalle in Vaduz. Among the participants from more than 10 different countries, there were some (former) world record holders as well as the current world champion
Saturday morning started off with the biggest puzzles. In 6×6, top favourite Sebastian Weyer (1:43.20 mean) from Germany won as expected. The podium was completed by Clément Cherblanc (2:06.58) from France and Daniel Grabski from Austria (2:13.58). In 7×7, the podium looked similar, but the differences were much smaller. Sebastian (3:00.28) won just ahead of Clément (3:03.10). Third was Fabian Löhle from Switzerland (3:11.83), who was there with a booth from Fabitasia and did not leave any cuber wish unfulfilled.
Since the competition was organized by Swisscubing, a little bit of Switzerland had to be present in the form of Clock. Callum Hales-Jepp (UK, 8.16 average) clearly won ahead of Swiss champion Tobias Peter (9.51) and David Lim (10.69) from New Zealand.
In the afternoon, the finals in 5×5, 2×2, Skewb and Megaminx followed. In 5×5, Sebastian (52.58) won ahead of Jules Desjardin (France, 1:05.09). Only 4 hundredths behind, Tobias follows on rank three (1:05.13). In 2×2, the favourite Tanish Dhiman (2.05) won ahead of a horde of participants with similar times as well. Jakob Fiechter and Philipp Schiemer finished second and third. Jakob went on to win Skewb (4.10) ahead of Tobias (6.26). Annika Stein (6.62) had to settle for third place after a good start and was almost pushed off the podium by Finn Ickler (4., 6.67).
Later in the evening, the final in Megaminx took place. And then Manuel Bühler turned up the heat and created something historic. After countless missed opportunities, he kept his nerves this time and finally knocked out the long awaited sub 50 average! And his time of 48.91 was even enough to win! Manuel won ahead of former Megaminx World Champion Oscar Roth Andersen (Denmark, 50.05) and Daniel (54.60). Callum (55.64) and the previous NR holder Tobias Peter (55.71), whose cube Manuel used for the new NR, followed closely behind.
Sunday morning (too early for one or the other co-favorite), the popular events took place. In the 4×4 final, Sebastian (24.13) was in a class of his own and won more than 7 seconds ahead of the pack, even though he screwed up some solves. Jules Desjardin (31.58) came second with the K4 method, ahead of Leon Schmidtchen (35.73) from Germany. In one-handed solving, 3×3 World Champion Philipp Weyer (12.66) clearly prevailed. Behind him, Tobias (13.99) and Patrick Hetco (14.27) ranked second and third.
In 3×3 blindfolded, Oleg Gritsenko dominated and clearly won both rounds. In the final, he won with a time of 41.93, ahead of Tobias (56.72) and Hannah Minas (1:00.98). Close behind were Callum (1:02.54) and Willem Klose (1:09.49). Shortly afterwards, it continued with Pyraminx. Jules convincingly won with an average of 2.69 seconds, ahead of Oscar (4.35) and Hannah (4.81).
The 3×3 final was held in head-to-head format with the twelve best competitors competing in reverse order. While the first few duels went rather calmly, the duels became more and more explosive towards the end. In the penultimate duel, Leon unpacked the first time in the final of less than 8 seconds with a 6.84 and followed this with a 7.83. With an average of 8.13 seconds he had already secured third place.
In the last duel, the Weyer brothers fought for the victory. Sebastian first pulled out a 5.90 and then followed it up with a 4.96! A counting 7.18 unfortunately cost him a new personal best average, but he still won with a diabolical time of 6.66 seconds on average. His brother Philipp could not quite keep up and finished second with an average of 7.07 seconds.
We hope everyone enjoyed the second Liechtenstein Open and would be happy to welcome many (and more) again next year in the Spörryhalle in Vaduz!