Tips for getting to sub 20 with Fridrich

[Jilvin]

NOTE: I didn't know if this should be in the Beginners forum because of the time range I am talking about, but a moderator may move it if he/she finds it to be in the inappropriate forum.

Alot of people are lodged in the 22-23 second range when using the Fridrich method. This range seems to be a strange valley where many cubers cannot seem to advance from. I have some tips for finally propelling yourself over the sub 20 mark if you are at this point. These small tips should be helpful for getting sub-20 averages. I will take you through step by step with estimated time reductions

1. Cube use- If you have a cube purchased from Wal-Mart, then buy a DIY cube. Wal-Mart cubes start to lock up to much to perform quick algorithms with good consistency, no matter what the quality of lubrication is. The DIY sets could reduce your average quite significantly depending on how much you lock up. Estimated time reduction: 1.5-2 seconds

2. The Cross- Nothing much to say on this one. If your cross sucks then just practice it individually without the other steps. Nothing much to say, except that if you have a 22-23 second average you probably aren't terrible at the cross. Time reduction: Maybe a little, not much though.

3. F2L - BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP IN FRIDRICH METHOD CUBING

I don't even know where to begin on this one. There are so many improvements people could make to this step that it is almost unbelievable.
First: Learn how to take advantage of empty slots. Everybody is taught the usual 42 algorithms. However, it is never taken into account that these algorithms are designed not to affect the other slots, this necessarily makes the moves suboptimal in the context that 3/4 of the F2L execution is DONE WITH EMPTY SLOTS. Intuitive F2L fixes some of this a little bit, but go to CubeLoop.com and get a full grasp of the empty slot F2L to maximize speed. Estimated time reduction: 2 seconds

Second: Learn algorithms on CubeLoop.com for stuck pieces. This is probably the #1 slow down factor in the entire Fridrich method; having some stupid edge piece over in another slot, and a corner in another can really slow down cubing. :2 or 3 seconds depending on if you really struggle with this

Third. If you really want to get good, use some of Sebastian Felix's 87 multislotting alogirthms This is completely optional. Time reduction : ???



Fourth: Use last layer manipulation on the final slot. Not ZBF2L right away, but the VH at least if you aren't willing to learn all of the "No Edges Correctly Oriented" OLL steps. There are many unique and quick looking F2L-LL variations that look very quick that I have to look into more.

Last Layer-
Learn 2 look LL- Many people have already done this but many still use a 3-look LL. Learning full 2 look is quicker for obvious reasons.

For PLL, some people still have really crappy algorithms, so if you find an alg that feels awkward, look for other ones.

Getting all of these steps down could make you start winning competitions.

EDIT: Link to Sebastian Felix's Algorithms: http://www.cubeloop.com/php/cube/expert.php?chapter=f2l&subchapter=multislot

 

[Lord Voldemort]

"Sebastian Felix's 87 multislotting alogirthms"

Could you link to them please?
It would be an nice thing to see.

I think X-Cross is worth mentioning too.

 

[Jilvin]

The link is up.

 

[Jason]

You should give some time estimates for each step. I'm stuck at 22-23 seconds, but I reckon it's because my cross/first f2l is really bad. That and my last layer. Also I'm not sure I should be looking at multi-slotting just yet. A tremendous amount of people are sub-20 without anything like that

 

[04mucklowd]

Thank you very much i am sure this will help me greatly
I average 21-24

 

[trying-to-speedcube...]

Everybody is taught the usual 42 algorithms.

Um... no?

 

[enigmahack]

I average around 21 seconds right now...
As it sits, my Cross and F2L weaknesses are complemented by my OLL and PLL weaknesses.

I know all 57 OLL algs, all 21 PLL algs, and I can pretty comfortably do the whole last layer in under 6 seconds usually... Which means the other 14+ seconds are all cross and F2L which is very poor in my opinion.

I know what I have to work on, and I think multislotting will help me with 2 things:
1 - better understanding F2L
2 - Better lookahead. *I'll be not only looking for 1 F2L pair, but a second as well*

 

[DAE_JA_VOO]

Let me join in. My fastest avg is 20.44, and I'm struggling to top that. I know all the PLLs and about 25 of the OLLs. At the moment, I'm focusing more on improving my F2L solving than I am on OLL. I feel that my look ahead needs to improve, and that I need to learn to do less cube rotations (which is why I've been giving ZZ a read).

 

[Novriil]

You see my average in my signature. Mostly it's a little bit above 30sec. How to approve my PLL execution? My PLL execution takes 2-3 sec usually. I hate it. I don't know only N, G and V perm. Others I know one and do the mirror to reverse case.

 

[DAE_JA_VOO]

My PLL execution takes 2-3 sec usually. I hate it.

Dude, 2-3 seconds for PLL is fine if you're averaging 30 seconds. I'm pretty sure that MY PLL is about 2-3 seconds too, and even slightly longer for some algs (some Gs). Work on F2L

 

[soccerking813]

I average around 21 seconds right now...
...
and I can pretty comfortably do the whole last layer in under 6 seconds usually... Which means the other 14+ seconds are all cross and F2L which is very poor in my opinion.

Dude, that just made me realize how totally horrible my LL is. A 6 second full step last layer would be good for me. Sometimes it takes me 10 seconds. And my F2L stage takes around 12-18 seconds.

Need to practice LL.

 

[Novriil]

Okay,... I thought that F2L is pretty normal. Now I did it ad average of cross+F2L is about 20 sec :/ Shiiiid.. Gotta practise this now.

 

[blah]

Multislotting is completely useless at this point. Utter BS.

I think this point hasn't been made clear enough to beginners: Multislotting is an active lookahead technique. Which means, not only are you looking ahead, you are doing something about whatever you're looking ahead at. If you can't even sub-20, you have a lot of work to do on your lookahead. You're nowhere near ready for multislotting.

Lemme try to make this clearer. During "normal" lookahead, you look around for pieces, track them around as they move, so once you're done with whatever you're currently doing, you know what to do next - that's passive lookahead. For multislotting, you need to do the same and more; you look around for pieces, track them around as they move, and you do a little something extra so that once you're done with whatever you're currently doing, you have already simplified what to do next - that's active lookahead.

See the diff?

 

[enigmahack]

I agree, but at the same time...

If I start working on multi-slotting NOW, my passive lookahead will be that much better as a result.

I get the premise, but I agree... It would be MORE beneficial to someone with like a 15 second average to try and drop precious seconds.

 

[Escher]

Multislotting is completely useless at this point. Utter BS.

I think this point hasn't been made clear enough to beginners: Multislotting is an active lookahead technique. Which means, not only are you looking ahead, you are doing something about whatever you're looking ahead at. If you can't even sub-20, you have a lot of work to do on your lookahead. You're nowhere near ready for multislotting.

Lemme try to make this clearer. During "normal" lookahead, you look around for pieces, track them around as they move, so once you're done with whatever you're currently doing, you know what to do next - that's passive lookahead. For multislotting, you need to do the same and more; you look around for pieces, track them around as they move, and you do a little something extra so that once you're done with whatever you're currently doing, you have already simplified what to do next - that's active lookahead.

See the diff?

Very nice way of putting it, I hadn't really thought of it like that. I'll link to this post next time somebody posts BS about what multislotting is.

 

[shelley]

You forgot the most important thing in F2L: GO SLOW and LOOK AHEAD. Learning algs will only get you so far.

Consider adding some of this information to the wiki page on the subject. Then we have something to link people to when they ask the same question five times a day.

 

[cmhardw]

This is something that I have a lot of experience with. I was stuck with a 22.0 second pb average for about 2 years, my junior and senior year of high school. I felt like I was practicing a lot at the time, and it frustrated me that I did not improve despite my perception of hard work to overcome.

In hindsight here are some things I did terribly wrong:
1) In those two years I didn't learn anything new about 3x3x3 speedcubing. I did practice bigger cubes, other puzzles like square-1 and clock, magic, etc. But I didn't learn anything new for 3x3x3 speedsolving. The fact that I was learning to solve other puzzles gave me a false sense of security that I was also learning to improve my 3x3x3, not true!

2) When practicing I only did solve after solve after solve after solve after solve after solve, ad nauseum. I did nothing to try to experiment with other approaches or other methods. I didn't use metronome solving, I just simply solved, logged the time, scrambled and solved again until my hands got sore and I couldn't solve any more. I call this passive practicing. You are practicing yes, but I was re-enforcing my bad habits and not trying to improve them. This period made it very hard for me to break some of my wristing bad habits away to more Nakajima style finger solving only.

3) I did not improve my algorithm sets. I had some terrible speedsolving algs that I was using regularly and did not recognize that I should try to improve them.

----------

Here are the specific changes I made at the end of my rut to get my first ever sub-20 average.

1) Stop Rushing on F2L
If you're stuck in the low 20's I guarantee that you solve F2L too quickly to look ahead. I'm not saying that it's a possibility I am saying absolutely, 100% for a fact you turn faster than you can look ahead. Please try to realize this is true because it will help you speed up tremendously! This one allows for lookahead and allows you to go faster. I still struggle with the perfect balance for this to this very day. It's paradoxical, I know. But seriously, If you go at 80% speed throughout your solving you will get faster times more often than not than if you go 100% speed. Trust me on this. It is one of the biggest changes I made to my solving that allowed me to go sub-20 on average for the first time.

2) I learned X-cross
At this time I was experimenting with Petrus block building, and decided I liked it but did not want to completely give up Fridrich F2L. So I decided to combine the two together and do Petrich for a while. This is building a 2x2x2 block, then immediately finishing the cross edges after that. This approach was told to me by Heath Litton in about 2002 which is where I got the idea. I noticed that sometimes I could literally do the 2x2x2 and the cross at the same time, and thus this gave birth to me trying to purposefully build an X-cross rather than just do it when it was easy to see. So in this sense I was experimenting with an approach that worked for me. I don't have the same turning speed as the pros, so I try to make up for it by making my solving more efficient than most. I now do Xcross on nearly 40-50% of my solves because I practice it all the time and try to refine my technique for it.

If you do have godly turning speeds, then try the "fast and choppy" technique. Maybe you need to solve your pairs in a finger tricky frenzy madness, but then slow down just as you do the insertion to facillitate look ahead. I noticed when hanging out with Daniel Beyer that his turning speed is crazy fast. So I forced him to solve this way for an average and his F2L times actually improved. So you might want to consider this if your turning speed is already very good.

3) Update your algorithms all the time. I don't mean learn new ones so much as learn better ones. I've had lots of times where someone told me about an alg for a case that was "awesome!" but when I tried it I did not like it at all - it just did not fit my style. In this case, learn a different alg. Just because people say "dude this alg R0x0rS!" doesn't necessarily mean it's a good alg for you. Learn algs that you like, not that other people say are popular or fast.

One important thing to note here, learn algs that are fast, not that feel cool. For example I used to use the 17 move Y perm, because it just felt amazingly cool. I now use the 14 move alg because I am faster using it. It was tough for me to change, because I really loved the feel of the 17 move PLL alg, and I was pretty fast with it. However I was more consistently fast with the 14 move version. My goal is to solve quickly, not such that it feels cool, so I changed.

---------------

Yes this message is long so I'll stop now. Hope this helps someone,
Chris

 

[Jason]

Great post Chris . Edouard gave me a great tip that helped me improve loads: Solving without a timer! It takes off the pressure to go fast so as to relax a bit. You slow down, see things, think about things and eventually get faster. I reckon cubing for 2 weeks without a timer is great practice.

 

[Mike Hughey]

I noticed when hanging out with Daniel Beyer that his turning speed is crazy fast.

I'm glad I'm not the only person who noticed this. I remember the first time I ever really watched Daniel do something - he was fixing my 4x4x4 cube after I failed my first ever official BLD attempt. I couldn't believe what I saw when I watched him turn it. As you say, it was just crazy fast. I guess I've seen Rowe turn that fast, but he's probably the only other person I've noticed in person who "looked" that fast.

And Chris, thanks for the good advice.

 

[enigmahack]

...One important thing to note here, learn algs that are fast, not that feel cool. For example I used to use the 17 move Y perm, because it just felt amazingly cool. I now use the 13 move alg because I am faster using it. It was tough for me to change, because I really loved the feel of the 17 move PLL alg, and I was pretty fast with it. However I was more consistently fast with the 13 move version. My goal is to solve quickly, not such that it feels cool, so I changed.

Chris - I think you give some awesome advice... And while I've heard it before, I think sometimes it's nice to have that reinforcement that yes, slowing down DOES speed you up.

The ONLY thing I have a question about is the section I just quoted:

Without practicing, how do you know if one alg is faster or not? Like, If I'm good with a specific Y perm for example, how would you determine if you should invest time into learning and practicing a specific perm that is shorter and doesn't feel as good if you're not 100% sure it'll be faster? Or is it more of a trial and error thing? Just learn it anyway so you know if it's faster?

I guess that's my question mostly, because I have a few OLLs that are a touch slower but are super easy to remember and execute... but because they're easy to execute I think it'll be faster for me that way than to remember a complicated OLL that I can't perform very well...

Hopefully I'm making sense because I can't justify learning a bunch of new OLL or PLL algs if it's not going to benefit me somehow.

Thanks for your advice!