# Things that have helped my speed in CFOP



## jdh3000 (Jan 7, 2022)

Here are a couple more things that have helped my speed, hope it helps someone else.

I was practicing f2l look ahead, slowing down and really watching how many moves I was wasting by not knowing where my pieces were.

I practiced identifying the pieces' location, seeing where they needed to go, and the most efficient execution.

Much of the intuitive was fine, but I gathered up several algs to take care of the difficult cases.

Once I was comfortable with them, I started practicing quick pair and insert. I would pause, see the pair, imagine the what needed to be done, then quickly do it, and pause and repeat.
I then started doing this with my eyes shut.

Then I proceeded to make my look ahead better. I located the pieces, then slowly paired and inserted while finding my next pair, by then my first pair was inserted.

I did this for a while, then went back to the the first one of pausing and fast insert.

Pretty soon both practices came together. For me this worked better than consciously building up look ahead from slow to fast.

I still do both in practice because they tell me things I need to work on.

This can be done with the cross and last layer.

Now one thing that got my cross better, and it's still not what I want it to be, but way better than before.

I solve the pieces wherever they are relative to each other, then fix it.
I try to identify 2 opposite cross pieces first, and see which two will insert the quickest, then I find one of the offset pieces, and see when it goes in relation to the other first two. I imagine the moves first to get a grasp on those 3.

Next I determine if the last piece is in a good position to insert relative to the others. Sometimes it is when it will go in before I fix the cross, sometimes it goes in after the d turn fixes the cross. Sometimes it's a pickup insert halfway around.

A lot of turns involve pushing other pieces where they need to be and starting from the right position. What could be an awkward F or B turn will work better as an R or L turn(with their respective primes)

This is all planned out then quickly executed

There's a lot of variation with this and it used to frustrate me but now it's very challenging and fun to find the best and most efficient solution to the cross.

I'm starting to rocognize more LL cases that are similar looking with just one look instead of two. This just takes forcing myself to remember clues.

My next major project is to work on my f2l to first pair and x cross when available. I currently transition ok from cross to f2l but it could be plamned out better. I do not currently have it located and planned out, even when I see it I usually lose it and find something else along the way.

Better finger tricks are always an improvement for everything.

I hope this helps someone. I take no credit for any of this, I watched a lot of YouTube videos of Jperm, Caeleb Miller, and a few with Brody the cuber, along with advice I found on this site.


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