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Abhijeet's Progression Thread | Next goal 100 points official in MBLD

abunickabhi

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June 30, 2022 : Interview with Speedsolving.com member Abhijeet Gokar : Currently (at the time of this interview) he holds the National Record for 4x4 Blindfolded (2 minutes, 24 seconds).

CL_photo_abhi (3).jpg



Where are you from and where do you live now?

I am from India. The majority of my life I have lived in India and Malaysia. I currently live in the city of dreams, Mumbai.

Occupation:

Currently I am a research student at STAR labs in IIT Powai. My mentor is a superstar in the research area of time domain astronomy. I love what I do. I got interested in astro the same year I picked up cubing, in the year 2008. In the future, I wish to be in academia. Before my current post, I have done an undergrad engineering degree, postgrad engineering degree and a job in an FPGA company.

What makes you interested in BLD?

I originally got into it by seeing the videos of Marcell Endrey in 2011 on my small Nokia phone. I was not able to replicate his fast 3BLD solves on my Rubik's brand cube. I looked up algorithms and started learning M2/R2 in 2012 and finally got to know that good cubes exist when I bought my first speedcube Dayan Zhanchi in 2013. Little did I know that my stickerless Dayan Zhanchi would be WCA illegal in my first comp in 2013.

What made you become interested in solving puzzles?

I started cubing on a Rubik's brand in 2008. Did layer by layer for 5 years. In 2013, I came to know WCA and competitions exist. I did 50 comps over the course of the next 6 years. Broke a few records in bigBLD as well. Currently I am exploring the frontiers of cubing and working on making Yo notation super useful to many cubers for alg learning.

What is your current practice routine and how has it changed since you started?

I do not practice that much nowadays. It gets harder and harder to make time even for food and sleep once we get into the 20s grind. Creating time for speedcubing is a miracle for me. I am quite happy that I still continue pursuing this sport. I remember the days in 2015/16 when I used to practice 10+ hours a day as college classes were boring and hostel life was not that great. I miss those days when I could devote a lot of time to cubing. I hope I become well practised and in form in cubing sometime again.

Out of the 54 competitions you've attended so far, which one is most memorable and why?

Hands down, Worlds 2019 in Australia. That was my first ever worlds competition, and I was eager to meet a lot of cubers.

What will the future of cubing be like and how would you like cubing to progress?

Tough question. Cubing has already changed quite a bit in the recent past. People and hardware have gotten a lot faster. A lot of cubers are younger and well practised. The sport is also getting more recognition and more popular as well. I would like cubing to progress in a calm way. Cubing should be fun and not a stressful activity. I feel the spirit of speedcubing that the WCA abides by is a good thing and it should stay for the time to come.

In 5 years, where do you see yourself both in cubing and in life in general?

A PhD takes 5 years to complete. I want to do that. It will be an exhausting experience for sure, but worth it as I will make a small dent in the known human knowledge. In cubing, I want to complete what I started in 2016. Using letter quads and UF5 algs in MBLD attempts. Both LQs and UF5 ease the mental effort during memorization and exec and it will be useful thing to do in the future of MBLD I feel. So in 2027, I see myself having a PhD in astro, mostly data science on stellar classification and good official attempt in MBLD that will be too dope to follow even for an experienced speedcuber.

What is/are your pet peeve(s)?
People mocking big algsets. Small kids not judging me properly in WCA comps.

What are your other hobbies?

There are three hobbies that I keep on the same level as speedcubing/blindsolving. They are chess, tabla and astro. Fun fact, I got deeply interested in each one of them in 2008. I was into taekwondo, painting and card collection before that when I was a kid.
Chess I have been playing quite a lot, and I kinda gave up on chess in 2013, when I got more interested in cubing. Tabla has been the backbone hobby for me and it has taught me a lot about Indian music and Indian culture. Astro is cool, a lot of things take a lot of time to understand. It is a patience process to become good in astro, in both theoretical and observational domains.


What will you be discussing in this thread?
I will be discussing my progress here. Currently I am working on a few fronts:

1. Document and internalize 126.72k UF5 algs (Started in 2016, completed 117k/126k first pass, 28k second pass)
2. Get sub-2 global in 5BLD (Started work early this year with floating orientation, block commutators for centers and cool stuff in wings, full parity for 5BLD too super hard but I wanna learn)
3. Get 100 points in MBLD (that was the whole point of invest 1 year worth of waking time into UF5 and letter quads in the first place)
4. Become a WCA trainee delegate (its long overdue, the only reason this has not happened already is because I do all 17 events)
5. Get elite in method neutral solving for 3x3 (currently global low 10 in CFOP and global high 10 in Roux, I decide which method to use according to the scramble I inspect)

Hoping for the best, M U' M' R' U2 M U' M' U' R U!

To know more about BLD know-hows controlled by me, join the 5-style discord:https://discord.com/invite/qqj6dzBjty

My current records (April 2023):
abhi_wca.JPG
 
Last edited:

abunickabhi

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Which BLD event do you want to focus most on? (I assume not 3BLD)
Is Brian Sun true when he said that BLDers have weird U Perms?
The main BLD events I focus on are MBLD and 5BLD.

Brian sun is indeed correct about weird Uperms by BLDers. It all was started by Ishaan Agarwal from the US, who showed the weird U perms to the CFOPers, and these weird U perms got more popular after that.
 

abunickabhi

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Not much progress in the last month. Currently at 117072 LQs. And did only a bit of CFOP/Roux practice, tracing on 3x3 and 5x5 to improve 3BLD and 5BLD and weekly comps. Hopefully will have a big update in this month.
 

abunickabhi

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Happy new year all!

My goal for 2022 is simple, it is to get sub-2 in 5BLD.

I will be going step by step ofcourse otherwise I don't achieve anything, F' R' E U2 F E' F' U2 R F.

My first hurdle is consistent sub-4:30, as I am sub-5 already.

Memo will be letter quads, exec will be sadly 3-style.
 
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