# 3-style/Corner Commutator Help



## josh42732 (Dec 15, 2014)

Hi, I've been BLD solving for about 5 months now and want to start learning how to do commutators/3-stlye corners. I am fine with my M2 edges, but I hate doing the y-perm at least 6 times a solve and want to learn 3-style corners. I notice that it is much more efficient doing 10-ish moves to solve 2 corners vs. doing 12+ moves to solve just 1. I have been watching Noah's 3-style playlist and understand the basic concept, but I have no idea how to learn them intuitively. Like in RedKB's video yesterday, he said that commutators are used in coming up with your own algorithms, but I don't know how to do that yet. Is there something that I'm missing, or something that I don't quite get? Is there a 'magic spell' that everyone takes except for me so that they understand them? I just don't know how to go about learning this. Thank you for your help!


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## Ollie (Dec 15, 2014)

1. Decide on a good memory system - having a strong letter pair list is good for learning 3-style/BH later on
2. Choose the case you want to learn, then check this out
3. Try breaking down the algorithm into parts to try and work out what is happening. If you can, identify the interchange and insertion moves and how they work. If not, use whatever association you can to make sense of how the pieces are interacting and swapping around. Perhaps start with the 8-movers and then move up to 9,10,11 and 12.
4. Then practice looking for patterns between different algorithms. For instance, R U2 R' D R U2 R' D' and R U2 R' D' R U2 R' D should not be treated as two unique algorithms - you only need to notice the difference between the Ds for each (this is the interchange move, and it will change depending on which pieces you need to cycle!)
5. Start doing sighted solves (solving the cube with your 3-style/BH algs without necessarily memorizing it first) and begin associating algorithms with letter pairs (R U2 R' D R U2 R' D' could be called the GH alg, or the "ghost" alg or something, depending on your letter scheme). 

If you get stuck on a case, go back to number 2 and find the case and repeat the steps.


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## A Leman (Dec 15, 2014)

Of course everything Ollie said is spot on! I'd emphasize the knowing letter pairs part. I used to do drills through every case while seeing the letter pairs and the letter pairs help settle them into muscle memory.

I learned the basic idea of the 8 movers and then the 10-12 movers by heart first. It made it easy to know that anything else can be done in less than 10 moves. 

All of the 12 movers are the inverse or mirror of 1 case so you just need to know it's shape. (UBR UFL DFR) 

The 10 movers are all bad algs optimally so you setup to an A9

A lot of the 8 movers are better as 9 movers because of better fingertricks/no rotations so you don't have to worry to much about them being optimal.

A trick that I used at first was Chris Hardwicks View point shift. You put your fingers on the 3 targets(1 is the buffer) and move all of the fingers clockwise around the corner they are on. This is the same alg, but you see it as a different shape from a different buffer. This lets you learn the 3 shapes of that type of alg and you can rotate to new cases with it.

Also read this page:
https://www.speedsolving.com/forum/showthread.php?12268-BH-Tutorial


Also, When Noah made the tutorial, he didn't have the best grasp on how to know for certain if something was optimal. He also does some A9's as 10 movers ON PURPOSE because they are faster. It's important to mention this because after you make a full list and know it by heart, you will still learn different ways to do the same cases. Everyone continues to find little parts to tweak and change over time. Oh and the one extra move here or there don't matter too much. His tutorial does do a very great job teaching how to learn the cases really quickly and it deserves merit for that.


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## josh42732 (Dec 18, 2014)

Thank you for the help! That link really helped me understand them and it is a lot easier now. I will be re-watching Noah's tutorial when I understand them a bit better. How long do you think that it would take for me to start applying them to my solves? And how much practice will it take to get them like second nature?


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## Ollie (Dec 18, 2014)

josh42732 said:


> Thank you for the help! That link really helped me understand them and it is a lot easier now. I will be re-watching Noah's tutorial when I understand them a bit better. How long do you think that it would take for me to start applying them to my solves? And how much practice will it take to get them like second nature?



That's a toughie. I think I switched to full comms in about 4 months or so.

I learnt a handful to start with, say 12 commutator cases and their inverses, so that I could set-up any case to one of these commutators and solve it. When a certain case had a lot of set-up moves or was awkward to execute, I learnt a new commutator to solve it instead. From learning that new case, I understood how a couple of others worked (and so on and so forth).


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## josh42732 (Dec 20, 2014)

OK, now I know how to continue on this long journey. Thank you for your help! BTW, I watched your 1.51.94 4BLD and was amazed.  Keep up the good work!


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