How can you tell when you are good at looking ahead for F2L?

MaxHsiao

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I am trying to get under sub 20 and decided to learn how to look ahead. I have been practicing looking ahead for about a week now and taking it slow. I don't know if I am doing it "correctly" sometimes thinking that I am doing something wrong. How did you guys tell when you had it pretty much mastered?

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I sometimes mess up on looking ahead and still pause. I also have the urge of going REALLY fast when being timed.
 
I agree with everyone above, but I would add that the true answer to your question is never. Even Feliks messes up on his lookahead and pauses at times. These are normally due to lockups, but still you honestly can never be too good at look ahead. I still work on it every day and I am working my way into the 10's now. IMO, its not something you ever master, but rather something that you get to a point where its no longer your focus or even really a thought. Eventually you will start to lookahead more than one pair at a time as well so you truly never end or master it. But as people mentioned above, the key is to start looking for your next pair the moment you find your current one. Also, I tend to keep a mental map of where any of my cross colors (the f2l corners) that I see and their edges if possible and that way finding the next pair is easy because you either know exactly where it is or you only need to look for the edge. My goal right now is to know where all of the corners are by the end of second pair that way I can do the last two with little thought and start working on edge control and OLL case reduction.

If your curious how I do it you can check my vids in my sig. I have a multi-part tutorial on looking ahead.

Edit: Oh and you mentioned you feel the urge to go faster or even im guessing the fastest you can during f2l and there are three main problems I see with this at the stage your at: first of all your lookahead likely isnt fast enough to track the pieces when you are moving at full speed which means you will have to a lot pause more and even if you only do it lets say twice during cross and f2l, thats at least two seconds in which you were literally achieving nothing PHYSICALLY on the cube. So in terms of solving those two seconds are a complete waste of time (not literally because you are still thinking, but you actually achieve nothing on the cube itself).

Second, in my experience it promotes bad habits, laziness and contentment when solving. By this I mean a lot, not all, but a large amount of the people who i see trying to go full speed tend to focus on trying to move faster to get better as opposed to learning better algs, working on pair choice, doing better and more x-crosses or any of the other far more important things to cubing than just tps. Also, because you get so used to going at full speed most people who do this don't like learning new algs because it slows them down in the short run even though it will be better in the long run. I know people who are practically sub 10 and they still have cruddy to average f2l algs, but they don't/wont/are too lazy to change them because it will make them slower now even though if they did they would probably start dropping time like crazy in the long run. Unless we are talking about sub 9 times you really dont need to have that fast of tps; I can get sub 10's going at maybe half speed (3-4 tps during f2l), and I can also get them going at full speed (6-8 tps during f2l); I go full speed during OLL/PLL btw. If you go slower you will be more tempted to optimize your solving method and focus on far more important things like lookahead.

Finally, you should never move faster than your mind can comprehend, especially during F2l and if you are going full speed then you pushing or surpassing your mental limits which means you are missing out on so many opportunities on the cube including pair preservation, multislotting, next pair influencing and soo much more. But since you are going so fast your mind doesn't have enough time to track everything and so it just focuses on the easier and most trained solutions and doesn't have the time for any real thinking, adaption or innovation. Again this is just based on what I have seen in teaching my class so take from it what you want, but imo full speed tps is really not that important until you reach sub 10.
 
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I think you can only consider yourself as 'good' when your F2l is faster when you are going slowly than when you are going quickly.
'good' being a relevant term.
 
If you can metronome solve in excess of 200 bpm, completing 12 crosses with F2Ls without missing a beat or wasting moves (U,U,U,U) at this speed (3 and a third moves per second) you will complete the f2l in under 10 seconds, on average. If you then take away the regimentation of the enforced click click click and allow the f2l to accelerate and decelerate as they tend to do under real conditions this level of lookahead will be enough to handle a 4 -5 tps average movement speed, which translates to around a 6-7 second f2l average. I consider this good.

http://www.metronomeonline.com/

This metronome goes up to 204 bpm. If you graduate from this site by comfortably being able to complete cross+f2l without losing a beat a dozen times in a row including cross to f2l transition, then congrats you have national class lookahead. To become world class, you need to be able to spot two pairs of pieces and solve them both without looking whilst looking for the third and fourth. At this level, the speed is sorted, so its about increasing the amount of content that the lookahead absorbs.

Even if you dont use metronome solving to train your lookahead, its pretty much the only way I know of to actually measure and put a figure on it. If you train with other methods, I would take the time out to periodically find out what speed you are able to handle to see if progress is being made, and how much.

I posted at length about techniques for lookahead development in the following thread: http://www.speedsolving.com/forum/showthread.php?39709-How-can-a-beginner-get-faster&p=808805&viewfull=1#post808805
 
Going back to never mastering lookahead, this is completely true. You may be able to lookahead at a few tps well, but can you lookahead at 8 tps? 10 tps? Probably not, unless you are sub-8. You can ALWAYS lookahead better, and at faster tps's, so there is no real way to be able to know if you "master" lookahead. What you should do is to be able to lookahead slowly at first, and when you got that down, turn a little faster. Repeat, repeat, and surprise!, your f2l is now like 10 seconds. Repeat, repeat, and your f2l is like 7 seconds. If you keep looking ahead a little bit faster, a little bit faster, a little bit faster, there is no limit to your f2l times.
 
I'm really struggling with lookahead. I've done nothing but F2L practice for a couple of weeks and put in 10s of hours of practice but am not improving. My F2L average slowed down to 28s and is just stuck there. I've tried slow solving, eyes closed, metronome, and watched countless videos, but the bottom line is that it takes me time to spot the next pair and I'm not shortening that time by practising techniques that simply limit the time or allow me more time. How can I spot the next pair quicker? Are there any practice techniques that address this directly rather than manipulating the time available and relying on natural improvement?

I'm also having doubts that learning F2L intuitively is the best approach, despite the majority opinion that this is the case. That's the way I learned it and now I feel that it's holding me back because it is hard to break the habit of watching the pair being inserted rather than the next pair.
 
My advice would just to keep at it. It depends on how much practice you do but once you practice your "intuitive" f2l enough you will memorize and remember the cases. In my opinion f2l in CFOP isn't really full intuitive in solves because there are only 42 cases.
But just keep practising your intuitive f2l and you will improve. However i use roux so i can't really give you any specific advice but at this stage it sounds like you just have to practise more until you fully know your f2l cases. Believe me you will improve with time.
 
I'm really struggling with lookahead. I've done nothing but F2L practice for a couple of weeks and put in 10s of hours of practice but am not improving. My F2L average slowed down to 28s and is just stuck there. I've tried slow solving, eyes closed, metronome, and watched countless videos, but the bottom line is that it takes me time to spot the next pair and I'm not shortening that time by practising techniques that simply limit the time or allow me more time. How can I spot the next pair quicker? Are there any practice techniques that address this directly rather than manipulating the time available and relying on natural improvement?

I'm also having doubts that learning F2L intuitively is the best approach, despite the majority opinion that this is the case. That's the way I learned it and now I feel that it's holding me back because it is hard to break the habit of watching the pair being inserted rather than the next pair.

Are you color neutral? I can give a more specific answer knowing that. If not, which color do you do on bottom?
 
I do white on bottom. I'm reasonably efficient with all the F2L cases but without special case algs, and do inserts on all 4 corners using d and d' turns to minimize cube rotations.
 
I'm really struggling with lookahead. I've done nothing but F2L practice for a couple of weeks and put in 10s of hours of practice but am not improving. My F2L average slowed down to 28s and is just stuck there. I've tried slow solving, eyes closed, metronome, and watched countless videos, but the bottom line is that it takes me time to spot the next pair and I'm not shortening that time by practising techniques that simply limit the time or allow me more time. How can I spot the next pair quicker? Are there any practice techniques that address this directly rather than manipulating the time available and relying on natural improvement?

I'm also having doubts that learning F2L intuitively is the best approach, despite the majority opinion that this is the case. That's the way I learned it and now I feel that it's holding me back because it is hard to break the habit of watching the pair being inserted rather than the next pair.

Your F2L time is slow in general. How well do you know what you are doing in the first place? If you're not 110% comfortable with knowing what you're doing, then you can't know what's next. I'd suggest instead learning F2L more; typically lookahead is best achieved when trying to break sub-25/20
 
Technically d and d' are cube rotations since the centers moved.

That is an arbitrary definition of a cube rotation. One could just as easily define a cube rotation as a change in orientation without change in state, which would make d and d' not cube rotations.

I do white on bottom. I'm reasonably efficient with all the F2L cases but without special case algs, and do inserts on all 4 corners using d and d' turns to minimize cube rotations.

It sounds like you just need to get out of the habit of focusing on your current pair.

I recommend finding all remaining pairs between each pair you solve to get used to seeing the right pieces. Since you're not color neutral, you can practice seeing pieces without yellow on them.

Pick whichever of the pairs you feel is best, and take as long as you need to see the solution before making any moves. Once you have it in your head for sure, pick a corner or edge from one of the other pairs, and close your eyes. Track that corner or edge (alternate or choose randomly) in your head while you solve the current pair. Open your eyes and repeat until the F2L is solved.

The tracking of the corner/edge is not only a great mind stretcher (do both if one is too easy for you), but the real point is to get you focusing on something other than the pair you're solving. The issue is that if you have your eyes open looking for the next pair, but you're in the habit of looking at the pair you're solving, you will not break the habit that way. However, even with your eyes closed you may still "see" the pair in your head and follow it that way. What you really want is for your mind to be focusing on what is coming while your hands do the dirty work. The idea with this exercise is that you are putting your focus on something (potentially) related to the next pair, forcing yourself to replace a bad habit with a good one. For the fourth pair, track a top layer corner and pay attention to it's orientation to take your mind off the pair itself and put it toward the next step.

Still, 28s is pretty long for just F2L to be thinking so much about look ahead. Can you put a few written cross+F2L examples?
 
Your F2L time is slow in general. How well do you know what you are doing in the first place?
Well, I'm slower than I'd like to be and trying to get faster, like everyone else on here :). I've been cubing about 2 months and average somewhere in the 50's using CFOP/3LLL. I'm trying to learn good habits and technique before hammering speed. TPS is coming slowly - I learned all PLLs and practice speed on those, getting them down to about 6 seconds average with smooth movement. I know all the F2L cases and the basics like RUR', RU'R', hiding, splitting, going over, joining on the side, empty slot, have them committed to muscle memory, and use all of that without hesitation once I recognise the case so I feel like I know what I'm doing even though my TPS is slow.

The reason I decided to practise lookahead is because of that 50 seconds I probably spend about 10 seconds not turning at all, just looking for F2L cases. So since my TPS is slow I figured it would be good to eliminate pauses and reach say sub-40 with good technique, continuous movement and minimum pauses, then try to make everything gradually faster from there.
 
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