phalentin's APB progress thread

[Phalentin]

Hello! I'm starting this thread mainly for self-motivation and to track my progress. Feel free to give advice (although there are not too many other APB users out there lol)

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Spoiler: My PBs are

single: 5.28
ao5: 7.21
ao12: 8.21
ao100: 9.15
ao1000: 9.79

Spoiler: And PRs

single: 6.47
ao5: 8.45

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Like I said in the title, I use the APB method. I know all of the alg sets (not EOPair, but that's not part of the method anymore, I still know and use the misoriented U cases). I currently do pair creation intuitively because otherwise (at least for the misoriented cases) I'd have to abandon the EOPair algs I've learned.
Next I think I should practice inspecting more (atm I inspect the 1x2x3 block, sometimes a bit more), better ZBLL recognition, AUF recognition and just general lookahead (of course).

yes I only care about 3x3

 

[abunickabhi]

Good luck exploring APB!

 

[Phalentin]

So, last weekend I had a competition. In the first round I got a 9.19 ao5 which I was really happy with (I got a 7.13 PR2 single). Afterwards, I had a really long break and during practice, I averaged almost sub-9 which gave me hope for the next round. But then in the second round I got a 9.82 average which is not too bad, but also not amazing at all (especially considering my practice before). After that roiund, I started feeling quite tired (I had to travel for 3 hours to the comp and back for two days in a row) and my last ao5 was a 10.93 with a DNF worst solve.
I think I really have to improve my ZBLL recog confidence. Almost every solve I was just hoping not to get a difficult case which I think kills my consistency. I'm going to go through all the cases again with Anki to get my recognition down. Also I might think about only going to one day of the competitions, especially if I don't care too much about the events on the other day.

Just realised that this sounded quite negative, overall the comp was still so fun. Even though most of my friends couldn't come, I got to talk with some other people instead. This was one of my first competitions after learning full ZBLL so of course I'm going to be a bit inconsistent.

 

[Caleb Valenzuela]

do you know full LXS?

 

[Phalentin]

do you know full LXS?

I do

 

[Caleb Valenzuela]

I do

nice, how long does recog usually take?

 

[bldcuber314]

Good luck with your progress, there are a couple of active APB users on the forums!

 

[Phalentin]

nice, how long does recog usually take?

i just framecounted in an ao12 and it was about 0.26 seconds

Anyway, I did a lot of solves again two days ago and today (590 and 290). I think I'm getting better with ZBLL recog, I've now revised the hard cases and I feel much more comfortable recognising. On Sunday I got a new PB ao500 of 9.59.
Today I sadly choked the easiest scramble ever. I think I could've gotten a sub-5 single but who knows.
Scramble: R D' L2 U2 L U2 F' U2 B2 U D2 B2 L2 U B2 L2 U R2 B' U2

Spoiler: Solution without the mistake I did

x'
D' B2 U r'
U2 R
R' U2 R2 U2 R2 U' R'
U' F R U R' U' R' F' R U2 R U' R' U R U2 R'

That's 30 moves or 26 if you cancel moves.
I misrecognised ZBLL (a SINGLE sticker), then got an N-Perm and still got an 8. Whatever, I guess that shows I can still improve my recog.

I feel like I don't have to hyperfocus as much anymore to get good times.

 

[Phalentin]

i was at a competition again this weekend and i did quite well, i registered for more events again because i felt like it was less fun doing less events. I got a new pr for 2x2 single (1.84), 7x7 mean (4:37.57) and oh single (18.83 with improvised zbll).
I did really well in 3x3 too, well except in the first round, there i got an 11.31 ao5. I counted a thirteen because i got a 17. That solve would have been really good i think, but i messed up the eopair alg... For some reason i felt really nervous in the first round, but that went away later.
In the second round I got an 8.99 ao5 with a counting 10.24, which placed me third in that round. Then in the final I got a 8.94 average which ties my pr2. For some reason my nerves almost vanished in the last two rounds and the averages were similar to what i was getting practicing at the comp.

I think i am really starting to get comfortable using zbll in competition and now i need to focus a bit on other aspects of my solves. I realised that my movecount is quite high sometimes and i could definitely inspect a bit more. I also saw in some recordings of my solves that i often look at the back to find the pieces for the BR pair. I could definitely improve that by tracing those pieces. I think those are the three things i'll focus on practicing for swiss nationals in two weeks, in addition to still practicing zbll recog a bit.

Hoping to start averaging sub-9 at least when i'm really focused (which i guess i already am sometimes)

 

[Phalentin]

So i was at Swiss Nationals this past weekend and i did really well. The comp had four rounds of 3x3 which i really wanted to take advantage of. I absolutely butchered the first solve though and got a 16.58 because i had to keyhole a 2x2x3-corner after making a mistake. I think that helped me focus for the other four solves though, because immediately after, i got a 7.96. The ao5 was a 9 flat and the only bad thing i noticed, apart from the 16, was a bit slow zbll recog, but it was really not too bad.
In the second round i got a 10.06 average, mainly because i counted an 11.98. The other counting times were 8.59 and 9.6. In both bad solves i misrecognised zbll and i +2ed one of them. Takeaway is i guess to still practice zbll and just. do. the. auf. correctly.
The third round was my best round, i got an 8.73 average and a 6.89 single, both are PR2s. All-in-all i just didn't really do any big mistakes and i found a really nice 2x2x3 solution on the sub-7. I was a bit anxious in this round because if i did too bad i might not have made finals, but luckily that didn't impact my solves.
In the final i got a 9.00 average again, which i was really proud of, especially because it was head-to-head finals. Apart from a 12 due to really bad zbll recognition on a sune, all the solves were really good. I was really surprised that only one place higher would have made me podium (out of the swiss competitors). This makes me feel so motivated though, podiums still feel kind of unreachable for me, especially at Nationals. Sadly i'm not sure if i can even go to swiss nats next year because of school stuff. I guess it doesn't really matter, in the end any competition is really fun.

Regarding my (planned) practice for this competition, i really wasn't able to do much of it because of school and lack of motivation. It would probably have been smarter to continue practicing zbll for a bit longer, so I'm going to do that in the next few weeks. Otherwise i think i really do need to practice inspection. I have a lot of time until my next competition so i think this time i will actually be able to practice more.

Also, during practice on the competition weekend i got as many 6s and 7s as never before i think, so i'm probably on a good path.

 

[Phalentin]

Sorry for not posting in a while, i was kinda busy doing other stuff
Still, kind of a lot happened since Swiss Nats. I went to four competitions since, in the first one i got a solid 8.64 average in the first round and a 9.47 average in the second round. In Second competition i got an 8.63, 9.00 and 10.12 average. Then, a week ago i got a 9.57, 9.35 and 9.00 average. At that competition, i beat my pr single by 0.01, so i guess it is 6.46 now... Finally, the past weekend i had another competition. In the first round i got a 9.15 ao5 which i felt ok about. When i started warming up for the final round, I somehow was extremely focused, i don't think i've ever been so focused when cubing and i got really good times. i got so many 7s and my ao50 was like mid 8. I started my first solve of the final and it was a 7.09. I was getting really nervous, but i managed to get a 7.81 ao5. That's just crazy to me. I don't even have a sub-8 ao12 at home.

I should probably also write something regarding my practice. Last week, I went through all the ZBLL algs and marked the ones that I still struggled with. I then trained those a few times (really not too much, just like 2-3 times). I experimented a bit with doing some solves where i really try to push my TPS and then doing some were i try to have really clean turning with good lookahead. That i think was quite beneficial and i should do it more.

At one of the other competitions, i talked with some friends about other events and i decided that i should practice some other events too. At the end of the year, we have a competition where the overall performance in many events ranks you high, and i'll try my best to at least somewhat practice the other events till then. Now i will probably still practice more 3x3 than the other events, but i've started doing some megaminx and square-1 in the past weeks and it was really refreshing to do something else once in a while.

Finally, during the last few months, i worked on an update to the APB website and it is now available under apbmethod.net. Fell free to give feedback or suggest new things to cover on there.