# [3BLD] Old Pochmann Dilemma



## Timona (May 12, 2022)

I rewatched JPerm's Old Pochmann video from 5 years ago and I'm a little confused.

The way I remember OP for corners, the swapping alg is (R U' R' U') R U R' F' (R U R' U') R' F R. According to his video, the buffer piece is UBL and you swap with E (according to Speffz) with V of DFR.
But the way I have always done it or I remember doing it, you swap A (buffer) with P (target).

For example, F (R U' R' U') R U R' F' (R U R' U') R' F R F'.
According to JPerm's tutorial, the setup, swap and setup above swaps E and M.
But from my own perspective, the way I learnt it, it swaps A and D.

If I do it this way, does it change any other part of the solve, like does it affect parity or does everything remain the same?


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## IsThatA4x4 (May 12, 2022)

Timona said:


> I rewatched JPerm's Old Pochmann video from 5 years ago and I'm a little confused.
> 
> The way I remember OP for corners, the swapping alg is (R U' R' U') R U R' F' (R U R' U') R' F R. According to his video, the buffer piece is UBL and you swap with E (according to Speffz) with V of DFR.
> But the way I have always done it or I remember doing it, you swap A (buffer) with P (target).
> ...


I'm pretty sure it works just fine, but I'm by no means a BLD expert.


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## Timona (May 12, 2022)

IsThatA4x4 said:


> I'm pretty sure it works just fine, but I'm by no means a BLD expert.


I mean, it should because as far as I know, it does the exact same thing for the exact same pieces, just different stickers.


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## AbsoRuud (May 12, 2022)

Everyone on the planet who uses Old Pochman swaps A with P (or L, in case you use the KRZ letter scheme). IMO Jperm uses different letters for the sole purpose of being different.


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## Garf (May 12, 2022)

AbsoRuud said:


> Everyone on the planet who uses Old Pochman swaps A with P (or L, in case you use the KRZ letter scheme). IMO Jperm uses different letters for the sole purpose of being different.


Not everyone... I use E with V. It is easier for me to visualize pieces swapping to that location.


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## ender9994 (May 12, 2022)

AbsoRuud said:


> Everyone on the planet who uses Old Pochman swaps A with P (or L, in case you use the KRZ letter scheme). IMO Jperm uses different letters for the sole purpose of being different.


 
Back when I used old pochman, I had no letter for the buffer, and my targets were either A, D, or G depending on which of the 3 other top corners I was targeting (aka target piece would either be UFL, UFR, or UBR). 

I still use a custom letter scheme. It makes no difference really, except when trying to write out the sequence for someone else


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## mookiemu (May 16, 2022)

Why are you wasting time and effort learning pochman? Old Pochman is a dinosaur and will be limiting. And because there are so many moves just to solve one piece, it is ripe for mistakes and makes it nearly imposible to be sub 2minutes. 3-style is only slightly harder to learn, but more efficient and it teaches you how the cube works. Sub 20 second solve times are attainable with 3-bld.
I started out learning Pochman and I did. When I came upon Noah's tutorials, I realized what a waste of time learning Pochman was. 3-style is fast and once you get the concepts of commutators and conjugates, you will be making up algorithms on the fly.
Noah Cubes has some great tuts. Check out Noah's tutorials. they are a little outdated because most high-level BLD solvers today use hybrid and freestyle methods and maybe even 5-style. But what you learn here will carry you further if you want to go. Old Pochman will not allow you to go further.
This one here is the first in a series of 10 that will have you up and running in no time.


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## AnthonyRochester (May 16, 2022)

Swapping A with P achieves exactly the same thing as swapping E with V, you're just looking at a different side of the piece


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## abunickabhi (Sep 29, 2022)

mookiemu said:


> Why are you wasting time and effort learning pochman? Old Pochman is a dinosaur and will be limiting. And because there are so many moves just to solve one piece, it is ripe for mistakes and makes it nearly imposible to be sub 2minutes. 3-style is only slightly harder to learn, but more efficient and it teaches you how the cube works. Sub 20 second solve times are attainable with 3-bld.
> I started out learning Pochman and I did. When I came upon Noah's tutorials, I realized what a waste of time learning Pochman was. 3-style is fast and once you get the concepts of commutators and conjugates, you will be making up algorithms on the fly.
> Noah Cubes has some great tuts. Check out Noah's tutorials. they are a little outdated because most high-level BLD solvers today use hybrid and freestyle methods and maybe even 5-style. But what you learn here will carry you further if you want to go. Old Pochman will not allow you to go further.
> This one here is the first in a series of 10 that will have you up and running in no time.


I still think it is better to go step by step, and learn Pochmann or Orozco first before jumping to 3-style.


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## mencarikebenaran (Sep 29, 2022)

abunickabhi said:


> I still think it is better to go step by step, and learn Pochmann or Orozco first before jumping to 3-style.


yeah i think old pochmann still need to learn.
because sometimes u will meet some cases that can be solved using old pochmann method.


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## mookiemu (Sep 29, 2022)

abunickabhi said:


> I still think it is better to go step by step, and learn Pochmann or Orozco first before jumping to 3-style.


I don't know, I learned old pochman first and it turned out to be a waste of time. 3-style and R2M2(R1M1-R'1M'1) variations are just as easy to learn, and they are interchangeable with each other allowing you to pick what is more efficient for a cycle. And this way, way, way more efficient than Pochman. Once I learned 3style, I was like, what the hell did I waste my time on Pochman for? It's nearly impossible to get sub 2 minutes on the solve portion of BLD with Pochman. And having learned Pochman and 3-style I found that 3style is just as easy/hard to learn as Pochman. There are just too many moves in Pochman for each piece solved and too much room for error. Not only that, learning 3-style and RM solves teaches you how the cube works and gives you an understanding of the cube that pochman does not. You can literally create algs on the fly, and sub 10 for the solving portion is very doable. That's impossible with Pochman. The only thing pochman is good for is as one way to handle parity.


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## Thom S. (Sep 29, 2022)

mookiemu said:


> I don't know, I learned old pochman first and it turned out to be a waste of time. 3-style and R2M2(R1M1-R'1M'1) variations are just as easy to learn, and they are interchangeable with each other allowing you to pick what is more efficient for a cycle. And this way, way, way more efficient than Pochman. Once I learned 3style, I was like, what the hell did I waste my time on Pochman for? It's nearly impossible to get sub 2 minutes on the solve portion of BLD with Pochman. And having learned Pochman and 3-style I found that 3style is just as easy/hard to learn as Pochman. There are just too many moves in Pochman for each piece solved and too much room for error. Not only that, learning 3-style and RM solves teaches you how the cube works and gives you an understanding of the cube that pochman does not. You can literally create algs on the fly, and sub 10 for the solving portion is very doable. That's impossible with Pochman. The only thing pochman is good for is as one way to handle parity.


Mostly true, but you have to acknoledge that OP still has the least high learning curve out of all Methods
M2 (R2 too) has you worrying about if your on an odd or even target.
Kind of the same of Orozco
Turbo needs you to think about 2 Targets at a time.
And 3-Style / BH, despite becoming more and more intuitive over time, still needs you to be comfortable with the whole concept of commutators.

I think to remember old forum posts of Stefan telling about how before OP came to the scene, people solved mostly with commutators too, but not in the current BH way and it was very difficult to explain and learn relative to how difficult OP is to learn.


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## mookiemu (Sep 29, 2022)

Thom S. said:


> Mostly true, but you have to acknoledge that OP still has the least high learning curve out of all Methods
> M2 (R2 too) has you worrying about if your on an odd or even target.
> Kind of the same of Orozco
> Turbo needs you to think about 2 Targets at a time.
> ...


I acknowledge that OP is easier to understand because it solves piece by piece and there are fewer (but much longer algorithms). But, even with OP, you are still solving in terms of cycles, ie two pieces because even in OP you have to know whether the cycles are odd or even. And you still have to deal with cycles in the memo. And you have to deal with cycle breaks and parity. So thinking of 2 targets at a time is no big deal.
Once you get the idea that you are solving in cycles, (two pieces at a time), R2M2 (and R and M), turbo, BH, and commutator/conjugate solves become much easier to understand because you are solving the word (that you've used for your memo). And if you do your setup before each cycle, it's ridiculously easy and efficient.
For instance, for every face you solve, using old pochman, you have to perfom something like F (R U' R' U' R U R' F') (R U R' U' R' F R) F'), plus setups which usually add at 1 -3 moves to set up and 1-3 moves to put back. That means for every half cycle you have to do an average of 20 moves! That's 40 moves per cycle! That's 40 moves for every two solved pieces!!!
Now consider this, I want to cycle UBL>UBR>DFL. In Old Pochman, that's at least 40 moves for a tiny payday! That same cycle using a 3-style alg is L'U'L R2 U'L'U R2! 8 moves!
If you think in terms of cycles then all of the different techniques are interchangeable as long as you use one technique per cycle. And the idea would be to use whatever technique is most efficient for that cycle. It could be Turbo, R2, BH, commutators, even OP and if you add setups before each cycle, it's possible to solve each cycle in 10 or less moves! That's 10 moves for every two pieces!
It's worth going that little extra mile to start with Commutators like in Noah's 3-style video I posted above.


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## mookiemu (Sep 29, 2022)

I wanted to add that the other advantages of going an extra mile and learning some sort of 3-style first, is that the idea of cycles becomes ingrained right from the beginning. You need to understand cycles for your memo (no one I know does their memo one letter at a time). Learning and understanding cycles allows you to do things like floating buffers, cancellations, floating parity (which mitigates the parity disadvantage by subtracting a whole cycle from your solve if you get parity). 
If you do (setup)+(cycle)+ (undo setup). This gives you the power to pick and choose which technique you use for each cycle. You could for instance do (setup)+(R2R2)+(undo setup), and next cycle if it's more convenient, you could do (setup)+(commutator)+(undo Setup), and the next one (setup)+(turbo)(undo setup), all in one solve. 
You can also do possible 5-style solutions. For instance If I have DF buffer for my edges and I come across two cycles I need to solve RU>UL and UB>FU (ID and AE) in my naming schedule, it would be nearly 80 moves to solve those four piece using pockman. It would be roughly 18 moves using M2, about 17 moves using just R and M moves, about 20 moves with Turbo. If I recognize those two memo words together ID (as in photo ID) and AEEEE! (As in the Fonz), I know that I can just do UM'U'M and I've solved 4 pieces! If I see RU-BL and then UB-FU (Inn and AEEE in my memo names) then would I do a (setup)+(5style cycle)+(undoSetup) which in this case is L(UM'U'M)L'. 6 moves and I've solved 4 pieces! There are many possible variations of UM'U'M and lots of setup opportunities for when you recognize two words that are solvable this way. Of course this is advanced, but understanding cycles can take you there!


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## EngiNerdBrian (Sep 29, 2022)

abunickabhi said:


> I still think it is better to go step by step, and learn Pochmann or Orozco first before jumping to 3-style.


I agree with this. While there are surely more efficient methods OP is a great introduction with a lower barrier to entry into BLD. BLD is unquestionably difficult for many cubers to learn and OP has the least upfront information that needs presented and mastered.


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## qaz (Sep 29, 2022)

mookiemu said:


> I don't know, I learned old pochman first and it turned out to be a waste of time. 3-style and R2M2(R1M1-R'1M'1) variations are just as easy to learn, and they are interchangeable with each other allowing you to pick what is more efficient for a cycle. And this way, way, way more efficient than Pochman. Once I learned 3style, I was like, what the hell did I waste my time on Pochman for? It's nearly impossible to get sub 2 minutes on the solve portion of BLD with Pochman. And having learned Pochman and 3-style I found that 3style is just as easy/hard to learn as Pochman. There are just too many moves in Pochman for each piece solved and too much room for error. Not only that, learning 3-style and RM solves teaches you how the cube works and gives you an understanding of the cube that pochman does not. You can literally create algs on the fly, and sub 10 for the solving portion is very doable. That's impossible with Pochman. The only thing pochman is good for is as one way to handle parity.


This is simply not true. I averaged ~50s for memo+execution using M2/OP when I did BLD. 3-style is obviously much faster, but you are exaggerating the gap between them.


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## mookiemu (Sep 29, 2022)

qaz said:


> This is simply not true. I averaged ~50s for memo+execution using M2/OP when I did BLD. 3-style is obviously much faster, but you are exaggerating the gap between them.


You said you average 50seconds for memo and execution. Let's unpack that. Assuming you get good scramble with no parity and no flipped edges, the average BLD solve is 4 cycles for corners and 6 cycles for edges. OP corners average 20 turns per face or 40 turns per cycle (two faces). That's 160 turns just to solve the corners. Then if one uses OP for edges that's average 240 turns to solve the edges. That's 400 turns just to solve a cube.

OK, you are using M2 and saving some turns. Straight up M2 averages 16 moves per cycle except 4 bad cases which add another 8 turns to every cycle. But that is mitigated by the really good UB case, so we'll only count 3 bad cases. So 16x6 plus 3x8 turns for bad cases. That's 96+24=116. 116 turns just to solve the edges using M2. 116+240=356 moves just to solve the cube using OP/M2. You said you do memo and execution in 50 seconds. OK, the world class, cream of the crop memo averages about 10 secs, Tommy Cherry averages 8 seconds for the memo. Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say your memo is an incredible 15 seconds. That leaves you with a solve time of 35 seconds. 356/35 is roughly 10TPS! World class average TPS in regular cube 3x3 is about 8TPS. So, if you are being truthful, you have a TPS of about 10 TPS. Right? If your memo is 15 seconds then that's 11TPS, and if it's 20 seconds, your TPS is about 12TPS! That's cream of the crop amazing. OK, I have no reason to doubt that you are telling the truth and you have incredible memo and TPS. How many people are gonna come close to that?

If your memo and TPS is that good, imagine how much better you would be if you learned R2? If you took the time to learn M2 (Which personally I think is easier than OP. I taught my 9 year old son M2), you could have learned R2 as well. R2 and M2 are pretty much the exact same concept. It's as easy to learn as M2 because it's the same exact idea! Each R2 cycle averages about 16 turns as well, except the 4 L-slice bad cases which add 8 moves apiece, minus the one UL R2 case. That's 16x4+(8x3)=88 turns just to solve corners. 88 turns +120 turns = 208 turns. Already a huge drop in turns. 208/40 is a much more reasonable 5TPS to get to a 40 second solve with a 10 second memo. At 10TPS you'd be a sub 30 BLD cuber. If you know M2, you already know R2 because it's the same thing! Why aren't you learning R2?

OK, you said I'm exagerating the difference between 3style and OP/M2. Let's unpack that too. If you were to learn 3 style, you could solve every cycle in 8-12 turns a cycle. Let's average that out to about 10 turns per cycle because there aren't that many 12 turn BLD cases. (6 cycles x 10 moves)+(4 cycles x 10 moves). That's 100 turns to solve the cube (could be a lot less if you learn floating buffers, floating parity, cancellations, and a few 5 style algs). 100/10TPS gives you and execution time of 10 seconds and with a memo of 10 seconds you would average sub-20. You don't think there is a big deal of difference between Sub 50 and sub 20? 30 seconds is an astronomical gap in the world of cubing.


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## Abram Grimsley (Sep 30, 2022)

mookiemu said:


> You said you average 50seconds for memo and execution. Let's unpack that. Assuming you get good scramble with no parity and no flipped edges, the average BLD solve is 4 cycles for corners and 6 cycles for edges. OP corners average 20 turns per face or 40 turns per cycle (two faces). That's 160 turns just to solve the corners. Then if one uses OP for edges that's average 240 turns to solve the edges. That's 400 turns just to solve a cube.
> 
> OK, you are using M2 and saving some turns. Straight up M2 averages 16 moves per cycle except 4 bad cases which add another 8 turns to every cycle. But that is mitigated by the really good UB case, so we'll only count 3 bad cases. So 16x6 plus 3x8 turns for bad cases. That's 96+24=116. 116 turns just to solve the edges using M2. 116+240=356 moves just to solve the cube using OP/M2. You said you do memo and execution in 50 seconds. OK, the world class, cream of the crop memo averages about 10 secs, Tommy Cherry averages 8 seconds for the memo. Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say your memo is an incredible 15 seconds. That leaves you with a solve time of 35 seconds. 356/35 is roughly 10TPS! World class average TPS in regular cube 3x3 is about 8TPS. So, if you are being truthful, you have a TPS of about 10 TPS. Right? If your memo is 15 seconds then that's 11TPS, and if it's 20 seconds, your TPS is about 12TPS! That's cream of the crop amazing. OK, I have no reason to doubt that you are telling the truth and you have incredible memo and TPS. How many people are gonna come close to that?
> 
> ...


Dude, chill. @Timona was just asking a question. No need to start an argument.


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## Cuberstache (Sep 30, 2022)

@mookiemu I don't think anyone is trying to say that 3-style isn't the best method for BLD because it obviously is. What people are trying to say is that it's not a good method to learn for someone who literally doesn't know how to solve a cube blindfolded. They simply want to get a success; speed is completely irrelevant. You mentioned movecount differences, but the point of OP is that the moves are extremely easy. You literally just do the same alg over and over again and only have to worry about figuring out and remembering 2ish setup moves per piece. 3-style is so much harder because you have to consider how to make an interchange, how to insert a piece into the interchange correctly, and which direction to do the alg in. For someone new to BLD, 3-style would not even be faster than OP.


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## mookiemu (Sep 30, 2022)

Abram Grimsley said:


> Dude, chill. @Timona was just asking a question. No need to start an argument.


I'm not arguing. I thought we were having an discussion and I was honestly enjoying it and taking in the points being made. My bad.


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## mookiemu (Sep 30, 2022)

Cuberstache said:


> @mookiemu I don't think anyone is trying to say that 3-style isn't the best method for BLD because it obviously is. What people are trying to say is that it's not a good method to learn for someone who literally doesn't know how to solve a cube blindfolded. They simply want to get a success; speed is completely irrelevant. You mentioned movecount differences, but the point of OP is that the moves are extremely easy. You literally just do the same alg over and over again and only have to worry about figuring out and remembering 2ish setup moves per piece. 3-style is so much harder because you have to consider how to make an interchange, how to insert a piece into the interchange correctly, and which direction to do the alg in. For someone new to BLD, 3-style would not even be faster than OP.


My whole point is that I don't think that OP is easier than something like R2M2. If you are doing OP/M2, which is what most people learn off the bat. You might as well learn something like R2 as well because R2 is just as easy as M2 and works the same way. And the point that I tried to make, admittedly badly, is that if you learn something like R2M2, it's an easy transition to 3style once you master R2M2. While that is not necessarily true with OP.


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## Cuberstache (Sep 30, 2022)

mookiemu said:


> My whole point is that I don't think that OP is easier than something like R2M2. If you are doing OP/M2, which is what most people learn off the bat. You might as well learn something like R2 as well because R2 is just as easy as M2 and works the same way. And the point that I tried to make, admittedly badly, is that if you learn something like R2M2, it's an easy transition to 3style once you master R2M2. While that is not necessarily true with OP.


On the contrary, your first post in this thread said nothing about R2M2 and was instead recommending that people only ever learn 3-style


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## mookiemu (Sep 30, 2022)

"On the contrary, your first post in this thread said nothing about R2M2 and was instead recommending that people only ever learn 3-style"

On the first post I was mentioning that one should learn 3style right off the bat. Watch Noah's videos and you will see how easy he makes it. I learned Old Pochman first and when I came across Noah's videos I wished I had learned that first because 3 style is nowhere near as hard as people Make it out to be.

When qaz mentioned that he could do memo and solve sub 50 using OP/M2, that's when I brought up R2M2 because I think if you know M2, it's trivial to learn R2. Here is what I said:
"I don't know, I learned old pochman first and it turned out to be a waste of time. 3-style and R2M2(R1M1-R'1M'1) variations are just as easy to learn, and they are interchangeable with each other allowing you to pick what is more efficient for a cycle."

and I said:
"If your memo and TPS is that good, imagine how much better you would be if you learned R2? If you took the time to learn M2 (Which personally I think is easier than OP. I taught my 9 year old son M2), you could have learned R2 as well. R2 and M2 are pretty much the exact same concept. It's as easy to learn as M2 because it's the same exact idea!" (I don't see how that could be taken as arguing)

OP is only two algorithms, but they are very long and prone to mistakes. Especially in the setup moves which also take time to learn. Think back to when you learned M2, you basically have a setup and a center slice turn. The setups on the R and L are simple and much more intuitive than OP setups. Then you only have to learn the algs for the four bad center slice cases. R2 is the same way. very simple setups for any piece on the L slice and then an R2 rotation. Then you learn simple algs for the bad cases just like M2. It's simple if you already know M2. And it's an easy transition to 3 style once you learn R2M2. 

I'm not trying argue or to be a dick. I really think that R2M2 is easier than OP. And I really think it only takes a little more effort to learn 3 style. I personally regret spending so much time on OP when I was learning.


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## TheSixthSide (Sep 30, 2022)

mookiemu said:


> OP is only two algorithms, but they are very long and prone to mistakes.


I think this is the crux of your problem with OP. Most cubers coming into 3BLD are already reasonably experienced with 3x3, and therefore will already know the algs required for OP, and will be able to intuitively learn the setup moves very easily. I've worked with a lot of people learning BLD for the first time and very few have significant difficulties with the length or difficulty of the algs. For most beginners the length of the solution is fairly unimportant, because they're unlikely to mess up the swapping algs anyway. Far more important is the complexity of the method - and that's where OP shines, since everything can be solved with the same approach, there are no special cases, and you only need to think about one piece at a time. Methods like M2 or R2 may not be _massively _more difficult than OP, but they are definitely _somewhat _more difficult for the majority of cubers - and for an event like 3BLD where there's so much to learn up front, it's best to simplify the solving method as much as possible.


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## mookiemu (Sep 30, 2022)

TheSixthSide said:


> I think this is the crux of your problem with OP. Most cubers coming into 3BLD are already reasonably experienced with 3x3, and therefore will already know the algs required for OP, and will be able to intuitively learn the setup moves without very easily. I've worked with a lot of people learning BLD for the first time and very few have significant difficulties with the length or difficulty of the algs. For most beginners the length of the solution is fairly unimportant, because they're unlikely to mess up the swapping algs anyway. Far more important is the complexity of the method - and that's where OP shines, since everything can be solved with the same approach, there are no special cases, and you only need to think about one piece at a time. Methods like M2 or R2 may not be _massively _more difficult than OP, but they are definitely _somewhat _more difficult for the majority of cubers - and for an event like 3BLD where there's so much to learn up front, it's best to simplify the solving method as much as possible.


Maybe you're right. Maybe R2M2 was so easy for me because I learned OP first. I learned OP and then I learned R2M2 from Marcell's post. I found it ridiculously easy. It was easier to me than Pochman, but maybe that's because I learned Pochman first. I don't know. Knowing OP and R2M2 probably made 3 style much easier than people make it out to be, for me. I'll never know. But It's an interesting conversation though.


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## Thom S. (Sep 30, 2022)

mookiemu said:


> You said you average 50seconds for memo and execution. Let's unpack that. Assuming you get good scramble with no parity and no flipped edges, the average BLD solve is 4 cycles for corners and 6 cycles for edges. OP corners average 20 turns per face or 40 turns per cycle (two faces). That's 160 turns just to solve the corners. Then if one uses OP for edges that's average 240 turns to solve the edges. That's 400 turns just to solve a cube.
> 
> OK, you are using M2 and saving some turns. Straight up M2 averages 16 moves per cycle except 4 bad cases which add another 8 turns to every cycle. But that is mitigated by the really good UB case, so we'll only count 3 bad cases. So 16x6 plus 3x8 turns for bad cases. That's 96+24=116. 116 turns just to solve the edges using M2. 116+240=356 moves just to solve the cube using OP/M2. You said you do memo and execution in 50 seconds. OK, the world class, cream of the crop memo averages about 10 secs, Tommy Cherry averages 8 seconds for the memo. Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say your memo is an incredible 15 seconds. That leaves you with a solve time of 35 seconds. 356/35 is roughly 10TPS! World class average TPS in regular cube 3x3 is about 8TPS. So, if you are being truthful, you have a TPS of about 10 TPS. Right? If your memo is 15 seconds then that's 11TPS, and if it's 20 seconds, your TPS is about 12TPS! That's cream of the crop amazing. OK, I have no reason to doubt that you are telling the truth and you have incredible memo and TPS. How many people are gonna come close to that?
> 
> ...


In another CubingWorld video, Noah said to start with 3-Style once you are at the 1Minute/sub 1 Stage with M2/OP
I'd say considering that was years ago, their opinion seems to be backed up.

Maybe your Opinion is a bit skewed because you never tried R2, but nobody except for Stefan actually used R2. Setup Moves can be so long that you are better off sticking to OP

Also, please, can you stop saying cycle when you mean Letter Pair / Target Pair? I get confused until I remember you use the wrong term.


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## mookiemu (Sep 30, 2022)

Thom S. said:


> In another CubingWorld video, Noah said to start with 3-Style once you are at the 1Minute/sub 1 Stage with M2/OP
> I'd say considering that was years ago, their opinion seems to be backed up.
> 
> Maybe your Opinion is a bit skewed because you never tried R2, but nobody except for Stefan actually used R2. Setup Moves can be so long that you are better off sticking to OP
> ...


I said, I used to do R2. I love R2, I find it incredibly easy and much faster than OP. I used Old Pochman for at least two years, and R2 for at least 3 years before I came upon Noah's videos. 
OK, please try and give what I'm about to say some serious thought. Setup up moves are not long using R2 at all if you treat R2 as cycles. I mean "cycles" because of the thought process that I think makes R2 more efficient. Let's be clear, moving 'n' number of pieces and nothing else is a cycle. Right? BH, 3-Style, and Commutators are based on cycles. Can we agree on that? With these methods, we are solving a letter pair, but cycling 3 pieces. Agreed?
If you do R2 twice, you are performing a cycle and only three pieces get moved and you are solving a letter pair. If you treat (R2)2 as a cycle that solves a letter pair, you can make R2 more efficient because you can do a simple setup before each letter pair and treat the letter pair as a cycle. For instance if my letter pair is AB (UBL, UBR) and my buffer is DFR I can treat (R2)2 as a cycle. L'U'LU R2 U'L'UL R2 solves the letter pair and is a commutator (but it's a commutator based on R2). If I do the set up move before I do this cycle, I can efficiently solve different letter pairs with this one cycle. 
For instance, what if I want to solve the letter pair JK (both of these are on the R slice and can be a problem with Marcell's R2). But what if I can setup first before performing (R2)2 and do B L'U'LU R2 U'L'UL R2 B'. And I got two pieces on the R slice with 10 turns. Suppose I wanted to get CD letter pair (the D being problematic because it's on the R slice). Then I would do U2 L'U'LU R2 U'L'UL R2 U2. That solves an R piece and an L piece with 10 turns. The possiblilities are endless if you think of R2 as cycles instead of placing letters individually.
Suppose we wanted to solve QB. We could do U'L'U R2 U'LU R2 and solve that with 8 turns. Now that we did that, let's look at letter pairs BK. This would be problematic if you solve each letter individually using R2 because both pieces are on the R slice. But if we treat R2 like a cycle, then we could do a setup first and do B' U'L'U R2 U'LU R2 B and solve that letter pair with 10 moves! You could solve KX with a simple B2 U'L'U R2 U'LU R2 B2!
If I treat everything like a cycle and solve letter pairs instead of individual letters, I can interchange between R2, Pochman, 3style, and even pure Commutators. That's because treating letter pairs as cycles only moves 3 pieces. Don't you see? You can use whatever method is most efficient for each letter pair by thinking in terms of cycles! You don't have to be stuck with solving the whole cube with one method. And you can truly average 10 turns a letter pair! You can do the same thing with M2 to make it more efficient.


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## Samuel Baird (Sep 30, 2022)

mookiemu said:


> You said you average 50seconds for memo and execution. Let's unpack that. Assuming you get good scramble with no parity and no flipped edges, the average BLD solve is 4 cycles for corners and 6 cycles for edges. OP corners average 20 turns per face or 40 turns per cycle (two faces). That's 160 turns just to solve the corners. Then if one uses OP for edges that's average 240 turns to solve the edges. That's 400 turns just to solve a cube.
> 
> OK, you are using M2 and saving some turns. Straight up M2 averages 16 moves per cycle except 4 bad cases which add another 8 turns to every cycle. But that is mitigated by the really good UB case, so we'll only count 3 bad cases. So 16x6 plus 3x8 turns for bad cases. That's 96+24=116. 116 turns just to solve the edges using M2. 116+240=356 moves just to solve the cube using OP/M2. You said you do memo and execution in 50 seconds. OK, the world class, cream of the crop memo averages about 10 secs, Tommy Cherry averages 8 seconds for the memo. Let's give you the benefit of the doubt and say your memo is an incredible 15 seconds. That leaves you with a solve time of 35 seconds. 356/35 is roughly 10TPS! World class average TPS in regular cube 3x3 is about 8TPS. So, if you are being truthful, you have a TPS of about 10 TPS. Right? If your memo is 15 seconds then that's 11TPS, and if it's 20 seconds, your TPS is about 12TPS! That's cream of the crop amazing. OK, I have no reason to doubt that you are telling the truth and you have incredible memo and TPS. How many people are gonna come close to that?
> 
> ...



You added Op edges movecount instead of OP corners movecount for your M2/OP total which gives 80 moves extra. Also using some more exact calculations drops even more moves

Move distribution for target setups with OP
0 - 1
1 - 10
2 - 10

Average movecount 2(30/21) + 15 = 17.86
x 8 corner targets on average = 142.87

Move distribution for targets with M2
13 -1
11- 2
9 - 2
7 - 14
4 - 2
1-1
Average target movecount 160/22=7.27
x 12 edge targets on average = 87.27 moves

OP
Ja (10) - 1 0 mover, 3 1 movers = 46
Jb (14) - 1 0 mover, 3 1 movers, 5 2 movers = 152
T (14) - 1 0 mover, 3 1 movers, 5 2 movers = 152

Average target movecount (2(152) + 46)/22 = 15.9 moves per target
x12 targets = 190.9

OP movecount ~ 330
M2/Op movecount ~ 230 moves

20 second memo for a 50 second solve with M2/OP would be 7.66 tps, 15 second memo 6.57. Both aren’t too difficult to attain with some practice, have a very low learning curb and pretty suitable for someone who doesn’t want to invest too much time into 3bld but wants good times


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## Cuberstache (Sep 30, 2022)

mookiemu said:


> Watch Noah's videos and you will see how easy he makes it.


I have watched the whole series except the one on 4BLD/5BLD. It was not as easy as you make it out to be. In addition, I stopped using 3-style for a while after getting the hang of it because I was still making up my own comms on the fly, which was slow and *not how 3-style should work*. I think the videos are just old, but he uses DF/UBL buffers and just does intuitive comms. Nowadays, that's not how you should do 3-style at all. You should watch like the first 5 videos or so to get an understanding of how commutators work, but then you should find a sheet and learn optimal comms from UF/UFR buffers. Movecount isn't everything.


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