F2L with minimal cube rotations

[SpeedCubeReview]

So there have been a few discussions on this ( here and here ) but they are almost a decade old

I'm pretty satisfied with my times and am taking step back to experiment with some new tricks. Instead of rotating the cube on F2L I'm trying to do only d and d' moves. There are some exceptions to the rule. For example, if all that needs to be done is one rotation y followed by an r u r'. It would definitely be not very constructive to do any d or d' moves. The reason I am looking into it is that it seems obvious that d or d' is slightly faster than repositioning the hand.

My question to go out for the discussion is how many people use d or d' often in their f2l solves instead of rotating the cube?

 

[TDM]

d moves are slower than rotations. Only use them if you want to do a U move and a rotation, e.g. R U R' d R' U' R.

If you want to not rotate during F2L, learn ZZ. It really isn't that hard.

 

[nalralz]

Learn to do all f2l cases with your left hand.

 

[SpeedCubeReview]

Learn to do all f2l cases with your left hand.

I do both right and left equally as well. The problem is doing F and B moves are not as fast and that is why people rotate the cube. I am suggesting doing d and d'. This has been brought up before (I know I am in no way coming up with this myself)

d moves are slower than rotations. Only use them if you want to do a U move and a rotation, e.g. R U R' d R' U' R.

If you want to not rotate during F2L, learn ZZ. It really isn't that hard.

I can intuitive rotate the cube faster than doing a d move, but on it's own it would seem that flicking two layers is slightly faster than replacing the whole hand. I'm sure some people out there intuitively flick d and d'.... right?

ZZ looks fun. in the future I will definitely look into it. Thank you

 

[XTowncuber]

I don't know if this is how you do it, but every fast person I know does d moves with their thumbs. I would highly recommend this over using your ring or pinky fingers. Also, remember that cube rotations aren't ideal, but there are often situations in which they are your best option. You have to decide case by case what is going to be the fastest.

Losing some rotations can definitely be an advantage though, don't get me wrong. Good luck!

 

[A Leman]

If you know the EO of the 4 f2l edges after the cross, then you can solve the good edges first, keep the bad edges out of the f2l slots and do at max 1 rotation to solve f2l with the subset using <RUL>

ZZ is rotationless except for optional rotations. In my case, I almost always do a z rotation if I solved the the right block first so I finish with F2L with the <RU> subset.

There are some good algs that solve cases with bad edges without rotations like R'FRF'RU'R' , FRUR'U'F'URU'R' , rU'r'U2rUr'RUR' , RU'R'rU'r'U2rUr'. There are more cases like that on F2L lists in the wiki

 

[pdilla]

d moves are slower than rotations. Only use them if you want to do a U move and a rotation

Couldn't have said it better my self.