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When should I consider becoming colour neutral and actively use look-ahead?

GAN 356 X

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I currently average around 25-28 seconds using partial CFOP, and am wondering if becoming colour neutral is worth it and when I should consider doing so. Right now I have a slow-ash TPS when I use F2L, and usually speed up when I reach OLL and PLL, so look-ahead is something I'd like to know how to improve at.

Thank you
 

Owen Morrison

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practice slow solves, to do this just get rid of any timer you use and do solves with absolutely no pauses. you may have to turn really slow to do it.
Color neutrality is not extremely important, it only improves your times by about 0.25 seconds but greatly increases your odds of an easy scramble, i recommend if your wanting to learn it, do it now, it will only get harder as you progress
also make sure your F2L solutions are great before working on either of these things
 

GAN 356 X

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practice slow solves, to do this just get rid of any timer you use and do solves with absolutely no pauses. you may have to turn really slow to do it.
Color neutrality is not extremely important, it only improves your times by about 0.25 seconds but greatly increases your odds of an easy scramble, i recommend if your wanting to learn it, do it now, it will only get harder as you progress
also make sure your F2L solutions are great before working on either of these things

Thanks for the early reply and advice... I'll work on yellow first!
 

icarneiro

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When i was 30-26 i only trained f2l really fast to keep in muscle memory, dont worry about look ahead

lookahead appeared after training HARD F2L, so f2l became automatic while solving a pair, i was already looking at the other
lookahead became more evident to me when i became sub25
still not so good, but I can in most solves have a little lookahead

I keep training f2l, and trying to maximize my loohadead to make me sub15 more easily

Good luck and conitnue training!
 

Owen Morrison

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not really, i recommend doing a color then the opposite of that, like green then blue or red than orange
some people like doing them all at once, which gives you the ability to choose which cross is best
 

Electrical

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If you're thinking about becoming color neutral, do it right now, because it only gets harder as you get faster. It doesn't improve your times by a lot, but greatly increases the odds of a good scramble.

You should learn look ahead when you're nearing sub-20, and for now work on F2L efficiency. You might want to watch a look ahead tutorial by J Perm:

 

Zain_A24

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If you're thinking about becoming color neutral, do it right now, because it only gets harder as you get faster. It doesn't improve your times by a lot, but greatly increases the odds of a good scramble.

You should learn look ahead when you're nearing sub-20, and for now work on F2L efficiency. You might want to watch a look ahead tutorial by J Perm:

I agree this tutorial is very good for lookahead. I haven't reached the lookahead stage myself, but I have been practising seeing an F2L then spamming TPS when solving, then pausing to find another case, then doing the same thing. Before you can try looking ahead to the next stage, you must be able to do the current stage without thinking. In terms of colour neutrality, I haven't seen all of this video but it seems to be helpful in describing dual colour neutrality, doing opposite colours as was mentioned by a few other people in this thread.


Good luck
 

GAN 356 X

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I agree this tutorial is very good for lookahead. I haven't reached the lookahead stage myself, but I have been practising seeing an F2L then spamming TPS when solving, then pausing to find another case, then doing the same thing. Before you can try looking ahead to the next stage, you must be able to do the current stage without thinking. In terms of colour neutrality, I haven't seen all of this video but it seems to be helpful in describing dual colour neutrality, doing opposite colours as was mentioned by a few other people in this thread.


Good luck
Thank you. I saw that video by J perm. So should I just start doing as high a TPS as possible? I find that when I do that my times go up like 5 seconds.
 

Zain_A24

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Thank you. I saw that video by J perm. So should I just start doing as high a TPS as possible? I find that when I do that my times go up like 5 seconds.

I personally haven't reached the lookahead stage myself, but in F2L particularly, I would try spotting a pair then solving it as quickly as you can. Your turning will be choppy and there will be pauses, but this is to reinforce the current stage to ensure it is in muscle memory. Once you get confident in doing the current stage without looking at the pair you are solving, you can start tracking edges and slowing down in your solves, using a metronome etc.

In terms of the cross, you could practise tracking an edge or corner which will remain in the top layer after solving the cross. This will mark the basis of your F2L. Also just a note, ensure your F2l fingertricks are correct, minimising regrips which can slow your times.

Times will spike, but after practise, the times will begin to descend - just like when learning F2L.



I am no expert, so anyone is free to correct me on any of the advice I have provided.
 

Llewelys

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I'm about the same level as you (22.37 pb ao12, 25.10 pb avg100) and I'm currently working on being CN, so here's my two cents on the question:

Color neutrality
Start whenever you want. You don't have to be CN to be fast, but it does make for easier crosses and it makes planning cross + 1st F2L pair much easier.
Start for a good reason. Mine was I got frustrated when I saw easy crosses on other colors but I was stuck with white. Being CN demands work and if your reason is not good enough you'll easily give up.

JPERM talks about 2 ways of becoming CN (either directly starting solving on every color or working on one color at a time). I started with the 2nd method (starting with red) but the same thing happened: I got frustrated with red because I saw easier crosses on other colors. So here's my solution: I work on a color at a time but only for about 100-200 solves, not necessarily timing them. I'm not trying to get as fast as I am with white, I'm just trying to get familiar with the new color schemes. Once I was done with 2 colors (I began with red then blue) I did a timed average of 100, starting with either red or blue (whichever had the easiest cross). I'm almost done with green and once I'm done I'll do another session of 100 solves where I'll start with either red, blue or green. I'll then go on with orange, then yellow.
This method works really well for me, so I'm just putting it out there ;)

I'm going with red > blue > green > orange > yellow, but the order really doesn't matter.

Look ahead
Like you I'm not a the level where looking ahead is important yet, so I'm just gonna put Jay's rant on look ahead videos here, it's really interesting:
 
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