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Hello fellow cubers!

toirarmy

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Jun 24, 2014
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Hello !!

I am a 16 year old male.I picked up cubing about 4 months ago and i mainly cube on the 3x3 . I am fascinated and intrigued by speed cubing but sadly i dont seem to progress even after practice. So i am looking to get help directly from the pro-cubers.My other hobbies include playing the piano and violin, playing MMORPGs , programming and reading manga.
I currently own the Dayan Gu-Hong V2 and i average 50 sec (I know i am horribly slow) with the intuitive F2L and the beginner OLL and PLLs.I also own a Dayan mega-minx.My aim is to become a sub 20 cuber and also being able to solve the cube blindfolded(I just looked up the old Pochman method and it seemed do-able).
I am looking forward to learning from this great community.Cheers!!
P.S. -- I would be grateful if someone would point me to the next step for becoming faster on the 3x3. Ty.
 

Dane man

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P.S. -- I would be grateful if someone would point me to the next step for becoming faster on the 3x3. Ty.
Practice the intuitive F2L more until it becomes automatic. Train yourself to use good finger-tricks on both hands (experiment with this one). Practice some more. Begin to memorize the parts of 2-Look OLL/PLL. Start with PLL. Then do OLL. Remember to learn look-ahead for F2L. Take your time. Practice practice practice.

And that's my advice. You can find a ton reading around the forums, especially in the How-to section. Check out this thread as well.

Welcome! Have fun!
 

TinaIsAwesome

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Hello and welcome!

All you need to improve your times is practice. It can take a while to get faster sometimes but there's no secret to improving, it just takes practice. I would suggest focusing on your F2L. As you get more comfortable with it you will naturally improve and become more efficient at it. When it comes to F2L your goal should be to solve each pair one after the other without pausing which is done by using look-ahead. But look-ahead is also one of those things that comes naturally through practice and at this point, that's all you need. I think you would also benefit from learning 4-look last layer if you don't already know it.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask questions.
 

toirarmy

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Jun 24, 2014
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Practice the intuitive F2L more until it becomes automatic.
Thank you for your suggestion. At what point should i consider my f2l as automatic .. as in what should be my average time for the f2l. Should i stay with the intuitive f2l or use the algorithmic way? . Thank you.
 

Dane man

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Jul 9, 2010
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Thank you for your suggestion. At what point should i consider my f2l as automatic .. as in what should be my average time for the f2l. Should i stay with the intuitive f2l or use the algorithmic way? . Thank you.
'Automatically' means that you see the pair, and you can solve it without having to look at it or think about it (like you would with a memorized algorithm). Do it inuitively, but at the same time, if you have a strange case that you feel is taking to long, you can look up an algorithm for it to be faster. You'll continue to do it intuitively until they become as automatic as algorithms. If you feel that just doing it with algorithms from the beginning is better, go right ahead.
 

PJKCuber

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Mar 25, 2014
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Pune,India
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2014KULK02
Thank you for your suggestion. At what point should i consider my f2l as automatic .. as in what should be my average time for the f2l. Should i stay with the intuitive f2l or use the algorithmic way? . Thank you.
You should call your F2L automatic when you don't have to think while solving F2L. eg(I guess you know the RUR' insertion case). After practice, you wont even have to think about doing RUR' you will automatically do it. Practice F2L a lot It took me 2 weeks to go from a 1 minute solver to a sub 40 and Color Neutral solver using F2L.
 

DeeDubb

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Mar 9, 2014
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2014WHIT07
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Hello !!

I am a 16 year old male.I picked up cubing about 4 months ago and i mainly cube on the 3x3 . I am fascinated and intrigued by speed cubing but sadly i dont seem to progress even after practice. So i am looking to get help directly from the pro-cubers.My other hobbies include playing the piano and violin, playing MMORPGs , programming and reading manga.
I currently own the Dayan Gu-Hong V2 and i average 50 sec (I know i am horribly slow) with the intuitive F2L and the beginner OLL and PLLs.I also own a Dayan mega-minx.My aim is to become a sub 20 cuber and also being able to solve the cube blindfolded(I just looked up the old Pochman method and it seemed do-able).
I am looking forward to learning from this great community.Cheers!!
P.S. -- I would be grateful if someone would point me to the next step for becoming faster on the 3x3. Ty.

Welcome!

For BLD, you should watch Noah's tutorial. It's very long, but learning BLD takes that kind of commitment.

Also, you can solve a cube in under a minute! That's not slow. The vast majority of the world cannot even solve it, and would be extremely impressed by your solves. So don't feel bad. Just keep practicing. You should compete with yourself, don't worry about how fast other people are :)
 
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toirarmy

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Jun 24, 2014
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Thanks DeeDub I am watching the video right now. Have you seen Zane C's video? I tried to learn BLD from there ( I still am :p )
I saw your videos on youtube.. u are amazing man . After seeing your videos i am in love with Roux. I am gonna start learning that method :p.Can you please gimme a link to the best tutorial for roux?
 
Last edited:

Cubeologist

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First of all, welcome.

Secondly, the biggest mistake I made when I first started speedsolving was thinking that learning new algorithms would improve my time by some great amount. So I spent a couple weeks learning full PLL and 2 look OLL, and it took my times from 1:00 down to :50 lol. Not until I started focusing on my cross and F2L cases did my times actually start going down. But you got this! And it is so FUN! haha.

P.S. You should go join the race to sub-30 thread. And check out the wiki if you want to learn new algorithms.




Edit: added link
 

DeeDubb

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Thanks DeeDub I am watching the video right now. Have you seen Zane C's video? I tried to learn BLD from there ( I still am :p )
I saw your videos on youtube.. u are amazing man . After seeing your videos i am in love with Roux. I am gonna start learning that method :p.Can you please gimme a link to the best tutorial for roux?

I never watched Zane C's videos. Noah's was all I needed, but I've heard Zane's are pretty good too.

Thanks for watching my videos :) I have a tutorial on my channel, but it's designed for beginners who don't know how to solve a cube, so the pace might be slow. Feel free to check out my tutorial though. It really goes over the easiest way to think about block building, which is a big hurdle for a lot of people.

Otherwise, the best website I would say is definitely Waffo's, the best video series for learning Roux is probably Donovan's, and the best for learning more advanced techniques from the best Rouxer in the world would be Alex's Rouxtorials.

There's some really amazing Rouxers here, and they helped me get pretty fast in a pretty short period of time. CFOP is great too though, so play with Roux and see how you like it, but don't worry, you really can't go wrong choosing Roux or CFOP.


First of all, welcome.

Secondly, the biggest mistake I made when I first started speedsolving was thinking that learning new algorithms would improve my time by some great amount. So I spent a couple weeks learning full PLL and 2 look OLL, and it took my times from 1:00 down to :50 lol. Not until I started focusing on my cross and F2L cases did my times actually start going down. But you got this! And it is so FUN! haha.

P.S. You should go join the race to sub-30 thread. And check out the wiki if you want to learn new algorithms.




Edit: added link

I learned my algs pretty early. I don't think there's harm in it IF you aren't worried about getting fast quickly. Some people need to see progress or they will lose motivation, but if you can see that learning the algorithms will benefit you later, even though they will slow you down now, you can definitely learn them early. The earlier you learn them, the more you will practice them as you get faster.

TLDR; if you want to get fast quickly, focus on F2L, if you want to get faster in the long run, learn the algs early.
 
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toirarmy

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Jun 24, 2014
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Thanks DeeDub i will check out donovons tuts..dsbias the race to sub 30 seems old .. like i am too late for it .. its almost round 30 now
 

DeeDubb

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Thanks DeeDub i will check out donovons tuts..dsbias the race to sub 30 seems old .. like i am too late for it .. its almost round 30 now

You can join anytime. People join, graduate, and leave. I joined like round 33 or something. Just do the most recent scrambles (I think we're on round 42), and post your times and Ao12, and Brian will add you to the spreadsheet.
 

Cubeologist

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Oh okay got it i ll join the race once i get to respectable times such as sub 40 :p

No need to wait, I think it would be even more satisfying to see a spreadsheet showing your progress from 50 seconds all the way down to graduating from the race to sub-25. And nobody judges, everyone just wants to see everyone else get faster.
 
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