Let me get this straight...(Petrus)

[hawkmp4]

So F2L is built by block-building, which when practiced is more efficient than Fridrich F2L.
The stage where you fix the bad edges gives you all the LL edges oriented, AND the rest of the cube is 2-gen, yet the step only takes a tiny amount of time.
If I'm understanding this correctly, why, oh why, are most speedcubers using Fridrich?

 

[ooveehoo]

Here are some reasons:

1. People think fridrich is better, because so many use it. The much larger number of users feeds itself. For this reason, threre is also more information on fridrich that you can find, and the the system is much more further developed.

2. The Petrus F2L is more intuitive, so even though the move count is smaller, the thinkingtime needed makes it more difficult to do fast.

3. The tricky LL. You can do the LL in two steps, OLL(C) and PLL, but this makes twisting the edges unnessesary, because if you just learn the 50 other OLL, the move count remains the same even without the step 3. To get advatage of edge twisting, you have to learn more algorithms for LL.

 

[hawkmp4]

Well, you could use COLL, then your last layer would be COLL and then you'd either have a complete LL or a U, H, or Z perm... COLL is only 40 cases, right?

 

[rubiksfriend]

Petrus is crazy hard to get good with (I'm certainly not). You have to build a deep block (vs. shallow blocks in Roux) which can be very difficult. Of course, shallow blocks are also difficult to build quickly and have more pieces, so optimization may be harder (both require immense amounts of skill to be sub-18, etc.). Also, the availability of a method on the net greatly affects its popularity.

 

[Johannes91]

I agree with ooveehoo on 1) and 2).

You can do the LL in two steps, OLL(C) and PLL, but this makes twisting the edges unnessesary

It's still useful, because it makes S4 easier, the 7 OLLs with all edges oriented are all quite nice, and there's a 1/27 chance to skip OLLC (which you can easily get up to 1/9 or more by learning a few different ways to finish S4b). Even though doing S3 doesn't skip any steps, it makes them much easier.

because if you just learn the 50 other OLL

It's still 50 algs. COLL is less than that, gives a very easy PLL, and if you ever want to learn (a subset of) ZBLL, you'll already know how to recognize CP.

COLL is only 40 cases, right?

Yep, or 42 including the two cases with all corners oriented correctly. But if you know PLL then those don't really count as COLL cases.

Also, the availability of a method on the net greatly affects its popularity.

Lars' site is very good in my opinion, I didn't need anything else.

 

[Smartyy]

I bet that if someone got 1st in a few compoetitions andor set a world record with Petrus, it would be the new fridrich, because, in my opinion, petrus could be faster than fridrich it's just because of popularity...
I mean each move, at it's fasterst, only takes like 3 seconds and there is close to no memorization (unless, of corse you learn the 42 COLL algs) but even at that it's WAY less that fridrich's 120-some-odd algorithms.
I think Petrus is one of those "Oh don't use to 'cause I don't and you shouldn't either, it didn't work for me so there's no way it would work for you.."


sorta like this study about these monkeys and this pole with bananas at the top.. let's see if I can find it...


EDIT: yup, here it is, pretty interesting stuff: http://www.phxicc.org/?p=211


so yeah I think that once fridhrich was introduced to the world, people were like "oh don't try that because if I couldn't get sub 20 nobody else could ever POSSIBLY get it so don't even try" so next thing you know people don't even really look at it... except those few people who do and get really good at it.

 

[ShadenSmith]

I bet that if someone got 1st in a few compoetitions andor set a world record with Petrus, it would be the new fridrich, because, in my opinion, petrus could be faster than fridrich it's just because of popularity...
I mean each move, at it's fasterst, only takes like 3 seconds and there is close to no memorization (unless, of corse you learn the 42 COLL algs) but even at that it's WAY less that fridrich's 120-some-odd algorithms.

57 + 21 = 78 algorithms actually

 

[hawkmp4]

Well, I guess plus 42 for F2L if you want to nit-pick. And to get the LL edges oriented you need to learn ZBF2L which is another several hundred algorithms if I remember correctly.

 

[Smartyy]

wait-- for petrus or fridrich? i'm confused..

 

[Lucas Garron]

I bet that if someone got 1st in a few compoetitions andor set a world record with Petrus, it would be the new fridrich, because, in my opinion, petrus could be faster than fridrich it's just because of popularity...
I mean each move, at it's fasterst, only takes like 3 seconds and there is close to no memorization (unless, of corse you learn the 42 COLL algs) but even at that it's WAY less that fridrich's 120-some-odd algorithms.
I think Petrus is one of those "Oh don't use to 'cause I don't and you shouldn't either, it didn't work for me so there's no way it would work for you.."

Let's say Petrus was over-used:

I bet that if someone got 1st in a few compoetitions andor set a world record with Fridrich, it would be the new petrus, because, in my opinion, fridrich could be faster than petrus it's just because of popularity...
I mean each move [step], at it's fasterst, only takes like 1-2 seconds and there is close to no memorization with 3-lok LL (unless, of corse you learn the 57 OLL algs for extra speed) but even at that it's WAY less that fridrich's 120-some-odd algorithms.
I think Fridrich is one of those "Oh don't use to 'cause I don't and you shouldn't either, it didn't work for me so there's no way it would work for you.."

Fridrich is a good method; F2L is a consistent, semi-intuitive step that can be practiced into a ast freestyle step. Some of the efficiency is traded for well-developed consistency. The LL can be a lot of algs, but like the end of Petrus, it can made lightning-fast, too, by learning a lot of algs.

And just like Johannes points out that a large SD is not inherently bad (just inconsistent, "bad" depends on how much you value consistency), a lot of algs is not actually bad, as long as you can handle it (more algs = gets more done in the step, and I don't see that said often enough).

Petrus would not become the new Fridrich. Arguments based on popularity don't do anything in either direction (except that popularity makes a method better-advanced).
When world records get set on other puzzles, the best precedent for this, nothing really happened.

However, I'm not calling Fridrich any more than a Fosbury Flop. It's a decent method, but silly to make relative arguments on. If someone did well on Petrus, the "publicity" would help a little, but I think that the success would be more the result of better Petrus techniques.