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ZZ is Better Than CFOP

turtwig

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Now, there’s also way less people using ZZ than CFOP so there’s way less people who have the potential to get fast using it.
Obviously. But what I said was that there were no good solvers, not that there are not many. From what I can tell, there are only a handful of Roux solvers in the top rankings of 2H, yet I believe that it is competitive with CFOP since I understand that there are fewer Roux users in general and adjust my expectations accordingly. When I asked for the fastest ZZ solvers, the examples given were Dale Palmares (who is currently ranked 634) and John Smith, who seems to have world class times at home, but seems to not have competed officially. If x% of people used ZZ and ZZ was better than CFOP, we would expect at least x ZZ solvers in the top 100 of the rankings (we assume talent is evenly distributed among the methods). And from the people on this forum, people on YouTube, etc., it seems like the proportion of ZZ solvers is much higher than 1%, yet John Smith is the only ZZ solver that could arguably place in the top 100. It's very hard to accurately estimate the proportion of ZZ users in the "population," so we could never know for sure whether ZZ is underrepresented in the top rankings, but in my estimation, it is.

On top of that, the theoretical reasons that people say ZZ is better than CFOP are not that strong in my opinion. The idea is adding a few moves to your cross to get RUL gen F2L and 1LLL. On the surface, it is entirely possible that this trade off is worth it. But it is an entirely empirical question, and ZZ has failed to demonstrate, in my opinion, that the trade off is worth it. There are many examples of new methods being proven to be better. For example, there are many Roux solvers in the top rankings of OH and Ciaran and Janos are getting CRs with Yau on 6-7. I think this is what you would actually see if ZZ were better than CFOP - a few adventurous CFOP solvers would switch to ZZ with eocross, see their times drop significantly, and subsequently ZZ solvers would make up more and more of the top solvers. Yet this has not happened. And before it happens, people talking about ZZ are merely asserting that eocross is worth it. Apparently it took like 10 years to figure out that eocross is better than eoline, but now it's just obvious that with eocross, ZZ is competitive or even better than CFOP.
I don't want to discuss, because you know I don't like to talk about this subject but I don't like that argument.
"I don't want to discuss, but here's 2 paragraphs on why you're wrong."
 
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OreKehStrah

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Obviously. But what I said was that there were no good solvers, not that there are not many. From what I can tell, there are only a handful of Roux solvers in the top rankings of 2H, yet I believe that it is competitive with CFOP since I understand that there are fewer Roux users in general and adjust my expectations accordingly. When I asked for the fastest ZZ solvers, the examples given were Dale Palmares (who is currently ranked 634) and John Smith, who seems to have world class times at home, but seems to not have competed officially. If x% of people used ZZ and ZZ was better than CFOP, we would expect at least x ZZ solvers in the top 100 of the rankings. And from the people on this forum, people on YouTube, etc., it seems like the proportion of ZZ solvers is much higher than 1%, yet John Smith is the only ZZ solver that could arguably place in the top 100. It's very hard to accurately estimate the proportion of ZZ users in the "population," so we could never know for sure whether ZZ is underrepresented in the top rankings, but in my estimation, it is.

On top of that, the theoretical reasons that people say ZZ is better than CFOP are not that strong in my opinion. The idea is adding a few moves to your cross to get RUL gen F2L and 1LLL. On the surface, it is entirely possible that this trade off is worth it. But it is an entirely empirical question, and ZZ has failed to demonstrate, in my opinion, that the trade off is worth it. There are many examples of new methods being proven to be better. For example, there are many Roux solvers in the top rankings of OH and Ciaran and Janos are getting CRs with Yau on 6-7. I think this is what you would actually see if ZZ were better than CFOP - a few adventurous CFOP solvers would switch to ZZ with eocross, see their times drop significantly, and subsequently ZZ solvers would make up more and more of the top solvers. Yet this has not happened. And before it happens, people talking about ZZ are merely asserting that eocross is worth it. Apparently it took like 10 years to figure out that eocross is better than eoline, but now it's just obvious that with eocross, ZZ is competitive or even better than CFOP.


I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say. If anything, the fact that CFOP is the only method with an official sub-5 average is evidence that it is very good.

About the CFOP part, look at how many people use CFOP vs how many people have the potential to sub5. The ratio is a very large number of solvers vs a very very small portion that have a high enough skill cap. Let’s say we take that same ratio and apply it to ZZ. You’ll find that due to the smaller user base, the chances of someone reaching that level of skill is far lower.


The other half of the equation on why there are not officially world class ZZ solvers is that most ZZers are too lazy to actually get good. So many ZZ solvers make claims about how good rotationless ZZf2L and ZBLL is while not looking ahead, improving their EOCross, working towards full CN or learning ZBLL. Seriously, there are more CFOP solvers that know even just TUL Zb than there are ZZ solvers than do lol.

ZZ has potential. It’s very clear that it does. ESP considering that the 3.47 WR is accidental ZZ. I just wish ZZ solvers would do things to actually improve and make a name for the method like Alexander, Kian, Sean, and now Fahmi are doing with Roux. I also wish the cubing community would stop perpetuating the idea ZZ sucks when in reality it’s a viable method.
 

turtwig

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that most ZZers are too lazy to actually get good
Unless you're saying that using ZZ makes people not want to get good or that people who were already lazy about getting good are more likely to switch the ZZ, than the proportion of "lazy" and not "lazy" people using ZZ and CFOP should be the same. Thus, representation in the top 100, say, should be equal to the proportion of ZZ solvers in the general population. I argue that this is the case, so that even considering much less people use ZZ, I still think that the numbers suggest it is not a better method.
ESP considering that the 3.47 WR is accidental ZZ.
All this shows is that CFOP users sometimes get the benefits of ZZ without even trying, which is a marginal reason to not use ZZ, if anything.
ZZ has potential. It’s very clear that it does.
Like, I don't get where this confidence comes from. Why is it clear that it has potential? If it were clearly better than CFOP, there would be a huge incentive for CFOP solvers to switch. Obviously there is inertia, but there are a lot of people who are open-minded about new methods, and they would be able to show others that it is a viable method. Apparently Roux has a lot of people who did this, but I guess people who use ZZ are just lazy?
 

PiKeeper

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It's absolutely certain that cfop and zz are almost equal. Whichever method is faster is only faster by a slight, slight margin. I personally think CFOP is faster by maybe 0.1 seconds at the top level because it lets you plan more pairs in inspections and still gives decent chances for a 1LLL with Tymon-level influencing.

The argument that zz must be worse because it doesn't have comp results and people haven't switched to it is faulty. People aren't switching to it because most cubers prefer to stick with CFOP and ZZ is not significantly faster. And because of this low sample size of cubers using zz, there are much fewer cubing prodigies that can take it to the next level. We know ZZ and CFOP are almost equal in speed because of basic logic, so saying that any method is significantly worse than the other is simply wrong.
 

OreKehStrah

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Unless you're saying that using ZZ makes people not want to get good or that people who were already lazy about getting good are more likely to switch the ZZ, than the proportion of "lazy" and not "lazy" people using ZZ and CFOP should be the same. Thus, representation in the top 100, say, should be equal to the proportion of ZZ solvers in the general population. I argue that this is the case, so that even considering much less people use ZZ, I still think that the numbers suggest it is not a better method.

All this shows is that CFOP users sometimes get the benefits of ZZ without even trying, which is a marginal reason to not use ZZ, if anything.

Like, I don't get where this confidence comes from. Why is it clear that it has potential? If it were clearly better than CFOP, there would be a huge incentive for CFOP solvers to switch. Obviously there is inertia, but there are a lot of people who are open-minded about new methods, and they would be able to show others that it is a viable method. Apparently Roux has a lot of people who did this, but I guess people who use ZZ are just lazy?
Did I ever say it was better than CFOP? No.
I said it has potential as a method.

Just looking at the sample size of 1, RadMac has put down spectacular times with ZZ at home (since they improved over they pandemic with no comps to go to) and that's with partial ZBLL and a few random LS tricks.

Very few ZZ solvers are using full CN and full ZBLL, and that's just the surface of some of the extras ZZ has to offer with options to use more OLS, TTLLs, and multislotting more often due to having eo just to name a few.
 

Thom S.

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why you're wrong
I don't quite see how I said that you are wrong, I said how this is an idiotical argument, not that what it says is wrong.
But if you insist

There was a time in 2013(?) When Feliks had the Ao100 UWR, being the world record holder for 3x3 single, but fow a few Months, Alex Lau took the Ao100 UWR. Would that meam the Roux was better for a few months because it left vonsistently good times?
 

turtwig

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Did I ever say it was better than CFOP? No.
I said it has potential as a method.
It’s literally the title of this thread though, so forgive me if I’m trying to address that point even if it’s not what you’re trying to say.
There was a time in 2013(?) When Feliks had the Ao100 UWR, being the world record holder for 3x3 single, but fow a few Months, Alex Lau took the Ao100 UWR. Would that meam the Roux was better for a few months because it left vonsistently good times?
I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say. I’ll give a simple example to illustrate my point:
If you flipped 100 coins and got 51 heads, would you automatically assume the coin was biased? Probably not. By the same logic, if we say that CFOP and Roux are similar, we would expect that Roux overtake CFOP sometimes. Obviously that doesn’t mean Roux suddenly becomes better than CFOP for a few months. Even if Alex Lau was slightly worse than Feliks, it is not unexpected that there would be some times where he had a better average of 100.

Now, if we flipped a coin 100 times and got 30 heads, would you suspect that the coin was biased? It would obviously be a much more likely possibility. Obviously there’s a spectrum. You can never say for sure that the coin is or is not biased, unless you know more information about it. But clearly merely observing its outcomes can provide strong evidence either way.

Let’s just ignore the actual numbers for now. Say that there was a method X that people said was the best method. But no one has ever gotten sub-10 with this method. We can say this is like the scenario where someone gets 30 heads out of 100. Is that not at least evidence that the method is not as good as people claim? Or is it just an “idiotical argument”?

Now, the people who claim that ZZ is better than CFOP are like someone claiming they have a coin that gets heads 55% of the time. Yet whenever we go to flip the coin it’s only showing heads 50% of the time. I can’t prove what they’re saying is false, but it’s certainly evidence that it is.

The example you gave and my argument are qualitatively different. I’m not saying CFOP is better than ZZ because Max and Tymon use CFOP or because the UWR average of 100 is with CFOP. I’m saying that in a large group of the top solvers, ZZ users seem underrepresented. It’s an inference based on a large sample size, not a few outliers.
 

GodCubing

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I feel the need to add to the debate in that ZZ does add a few moves to the cross to force a great 1LLL and ergonomic easier to lookahead through F2L. Because of these few moves added to cross it is difficult to plan further in inspection and as Tymon has shown inspection is a very important part of the solve that is often over looked. Just something to consider. Also, ZZ is more efficient than CFOP with higher TPS cap from 1LLL and more ergonomic easier to lookahead through F2L

As for why there are no x amount of ZZers in top 100 it's because that's not how effing math works. If you look at the proportion of CFOPers to CFOPers in the top 100 that should be compared to the number of ZZers in the top 100 vs the total number of ZZers
 

SuperDuperSir

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I feel the need to add to the debate in that ZZ does add a few moves to the cross to force a great 1LLL and ergonomic easier to lookahead through F2L. Because of these few moves added to cross it is difficult to plan further in inspection and as Tymon has shown inspection is a very important part of the solve that is often over looked. Just something to consider. Also, ZZ is more efficient than CFOP with higher TPS cap from 1LLL and more ergonomic easier to lookahead through F2L

As for why there are no x amount of ZZers in top 100 it's because that's not how effing math works. If you look at the proportion of CFOPers to CFOPers in the top 100 that should be compared to the number of ZZers in the top 100 vs the total number of ZZers
Yeah
Out of the 100000+ Members in the wca about 50 or so use ZZ maybe even less
It’s simple math
If you pick 50 random people in the wca what is the chance that one is sub 7 or something like that
 

OreKehStrah

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It’s literally the title of this thread though, so forgive me if I’m trying to address that point even if it’s not what you’re trying to say.

I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say. I’ll give a simple example to illustrate my point:
If you flipped 100 coins and got 51 heads, would you automatically assume the coin was biased? Probably not. By the same logic, if we say that CFOP and Roux are similar, we would expect that Roux overtake CFOP sometimes. Obviously that doesn’t mean Roux suddenly becomes better than CFOP for a few months. Even if Alex Lau was slightly worse than Feliks, it is not unexpected that there would be some times where he had a better average of 100.

Now, if we flipped a coin 100 times and got 30 heads, would you suspect that the coin was biased? It would obviously be a much more likely possibility. Obviously there’s a spectrum. You can never say for sure that the coin is or is not biased, unless you know more information about it. But clearly merely observing its outcomes can provide strong evidence either way.

Let’s just ignore the actual numbers for now. Say that there was a method X that people said was the best method. But no one has ever gotten sub-10 with this method. We can say this is like the scenario where someone gets 30 heads out of 100. Is that not at least evidence that the method is not as good as people claim? Or is it just an “idiotical argument”?

Now, the people who claim that ZZ is better than CFOP are like someone claiming they have a coin that gets heads 55% of the time. Yet whenever we go to flip the coin it’s only showing heads 50% of the time. I can’t prove what they’re saying is false, but it’s certainly evidence that it is.

The example you gave and my argument are qualitatively different. I’m not saying CFOP is better than ZZ because Max and Tymon use CFOP or because the UWR average of 100 is with CFOP. I’m saying that in a large group of the top solvers, ZZ users seem underrepresented. It’s an inference based on a large sample size, not a few outliers.
Again, Just looking at the top 100 solvers or whatever and seeing no ZZers is in no way indicative of whether the method is good or not, as way fewer people have used ZZ in competition, thus less of a chance for ZZ to show up.
 

S1neWav_

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It’s literally the title of this thread though, so forgive me if I’m trying to address that point even if it’s not what you’re trying to say.

I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say. I’ll give a simple example to illustrate my point:
If you flipped 100 coins and got 51 heads, would you automatically assume the coin was biased? Probably not. By the same logic, if we say that CFOP and Roux are similar, we would expect that Roux overtake CFOP sometimes. Obviously that doesn’t mean Roux suddenly becomes better than CFOP for a few months. Even if Alex Lau was slightly worse than Feliks, it is not unexpected that there would be some times where he had a better average of 100.

Now, if we flipped a coin 100 times and got 30 heads, would you suspect that the coin was biased? It would obviously be a much more likely possibility. Obviously there’s a spectrum. You can never say for sure that the coin is or is not biased, unless you know more information about it. But clearly merely observing its outcomes can provide strong evidence either way.

Let’s just ignore the actual numbers for now. Say that there was a method X that people said was the best method. But no one has ever gotten sub-10 with this method. We can say this is like the scenario where someone gets 30 heads out of 100. Is that not at least evidence that the method is not as good as people claim? Or is it just an “idiotical argument”?

Now, the people who claim that ZZ is better than CFOP are like someone claiming they have a coin that gets heads 55% of the time. Yet whenever we go to flip the coin it’s only showing heads 50% of the time. I can’t prove what they’re saying is false, but it’s certainly evidence that it is.

The example you gave and my argument are qualitatively different. I’m not saying CFOP is better than ZZ because Max and Tymon use CFOP or because the UWR average of 100 is with CFOP. I’m saying that in a large group of the top solvers, ZZ users seem underrepresented. It’s an inference based on a large sample size, not a few outliers.
sure but you're ignoring the fact that everyone saying zz bad actively discourages people from trying zz and even causes some zzers to switch off of the method. the low representation is largely due to the opinion on the method. people haven't given new zz the opportunity to prove itself (full zbll, cn, eocross)
 

ruffleduck

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ZZ is a strange method. On the surface, it is respectable and well-developed, undoubtedly a rival to other top methods. The issue is that its (already very small) community is overall unfit for mastering doing ZZ fast.
Why would you concede the use of a well documented method with a large community? To experiment. By the nature of the method, you are tempted to experiment. The reduction to RUL opens up way more viable techniques because of the smaller state sets.
That is the charm of ZZ. To experiment. But when it comes to actual speed improvement, it emanates a nasty negative aura. To actually squeeze all the speed potential of ZZ, you must use EOcross and ZBLL. No one likes this, because those that come to the method come to experiment. EOcross and ZBLL is a pain to learn and is feels rather uninspired.
 
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ZZ is a strange method. On the surface, it is respectable and well-developed, undoubtedly a rival to other top methods. The issue is that its (already very small) community is overall unfit for mastering doing ZZ fast.
Why would you concede the use of a well documented method with a large community? To experiment. By the nature of the method, you are tempted to experiment. The reduction to RUL opens up way more viable techniques because of the smaller state sets.
That is the charm of ZZ. To experiment. But when it comes to actual speed improvement, it emanates a nasty negative aura. To actually squeeze all the speed potential of ZZ, you must use EOcross and ZBLL. No one likes this, because those that come to the method come to experiment. EOcross and ZBLL is a pain to learn and is feels rather uninspired.
1660150695040.png
 

ruffleduck

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View attachment 20317
redemption arc: i reacted this obsolete post with "Angry"
 

Yoruba

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ZZ users seem underrepresented. It’s an inference based on a large sample size, not a few outliers.
Here's why ZZ is underrepresented and doesn't have that much good results:
Because of the aforementioned lack of results, most people switched to ZZ either from trying to explore new methods and ideas or from being quirky. Generally, not from a speed-oriented reason.
Then when they realized the lack of resources for improvement, variants, the difficulty of the eostep and the broad theorycrafting that comes with the method, there is not really that much motivation to switch from exploration to wanting to get fast with the method. Especially when the people in the group i just mentioned were typically older, so they might not even had that much time to speedsolve since they had work and other stuff.

Why there were no good results with ZZ for a long time? I think it's because people were just doing unnecessary BS. So when CFOP was becoming mainstream with Feliks and the rest, and Roux solvers were also doing progress with solvers like Alexander Lau, ZZ solvers were to busy trying to find the "missing link" or the "optimal variant". Basically focusing too much on the already optimized ZZ LSLL instead of trying to improve EOLine or ZZF2L. Phil managed to get WR2 OH and Hyeon got some singles (one of them being NR for an hour), but that's pretty much it for the competitive history of ZZ.

Basically, it wasn't the method that was bad. It was the development with it. Now that people use EOCross, there are plenty of sub 10 solvers, and a few of them are even sub 8 (best of them being Radmac with sub 6.5). I think that's really impressive considering the very low popularity, and that EOCross ZZ has been the meta for only 3-4 years now. ZZ just needs time to get it's first good official results, then it could get slowly on to the mainstream.

When I asked for the fastest ZZ solvers, the examples given were Dale Palmares (who is currently ranked 634)
Just saying that my 7.98 zz average is ranked 441.
 

Nevan J

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Why there were no good results with ZZ for a long time? I think it's because people were just doing unnecessary BS. So when CFOP was becoming mainstream with Feliks and the rest, and Roux solvers were also doing progress with solvers like Alexander Lau, ZZ solvers were to busy trying to find the "missing link" or the "optimal variant". Basically focusing too much on the already optimized ZZ LSLL instead of trying to improve EOLine or ZZF2L.
I think i can agree on this, plus i really think what we are waiting for is that one person who gets the first official sub 6 average with ZZ, then it will come into the 3 MAIN METHODS.

Now the problem with ZZ is that people say it's bad qualities outweigh it's good qualities, and i agree. But what if there was a way to make it better? Now CFOP has a lot of bad qualities, but they don't outweigh it's good qualities.

Overall i think there has to be atleast one person who takes ZZ atleast comparable and probably main worthy method by putting in enough effort making it good and practicing it, but as i mentioned earlier, i don't think anyone will consider even thinking about switching to ZZ until either a WR gets broken or a UWR. And if not, then it will just be good as a concept and nothing else
 
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